For Your Love

By Dee Kuziwa

For your love is a Christian love story.

Carna has returned home and is trying to re-graft herself in Marble Heights without incident. She'd love a welcoming party, but she doesn't want the fuss… or the stares, the pity or the questions. She's trying to find herself after six years away. She's all bruised and broken and afraid to let God heal her.

Taise Michaels never left. Familiarity and family have kept him rooted in Marble Heights. He's on Grace Baptist's leaders committee and serves his community as a plumber. Until his neighbour steals back and hibernates for two days straight.

Suddenly, the rumour mill is active again. What happened to Carna? Did she really find God in Bible College? So, why hasn't she come back to church? What about their relationship with Taise? They made such a cute couple? Will she stay this time? Or hit and run like the last time…?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Dee Kuziwa
• Release date: Nov 24, 2019
• ISBN: 9781393130239

Book preview

Prologue

The smoke burned her chest, toxic fumes born of petrol and fire. From the corner of her eye registered a tangle of metal and glass. The stench of fried human flesh invaded her nostrils. She hardly recognised the long truck and abundance of wheels, in the commotion and veil of smoke. As her vision continued to clear, she could see bright lights flashing red, white and blue. Police lights? Ambulance lights? Ambulances meant survivors or fatalities. Which was she? People moved around her in some form of activity. The emptiness of the night carried undefined sounds. Voices? Cries? She felt cold but cold could mean anything.

Her breath coiled in a frozen puff of vapour in front of her face. An involuntary gasp brought a shudder to confirm the chill down her spine. She tried to look around, but her neck stayed immobile. She attempted moving her limbs, but they remained firmly looped under the seat, trapped by the steering wheel. The word help in her mind refused to connect with her voice until a brighter light shone in her face. A flashlight.

‘The last live one, Fred.’ The wielder of the flashlight called out.

I can hear, she thought, relieved. At least I can hear.

‘Should be Carna. I heard her mother asking about her.’

‘We need help to get her out.’

Suddenly, tears streamed through her unblinking eyes.

‘Don’t cry now ma’am. We are going to get you out of this fix soon enough.’ The man spoke softly to her, asking her routine questions. Did she know who she was? Could she tell him her name? Did she recognise where she was? Did she remember how she got here?

In her own mind echoed one question on repeat; taunting her: where are the others?

One

Classes registered ; check.

Colour-coded lecture and tutorial schedule; check.

Pretty bedside lamp, practical notepad, cute book bag; check, check and check.

Week one done; check. She self-praised, hoping the boost from ticking off more items from her mental to-do list would shift her intellectual gears into a brighter mood for her first semester.

Except for groceries. And that crucial item on her to-do list had brought her here.

Carna parked her shopping cart at the end of the aisle and walked across to pick up a box of bran flakes. Her fingers touched his hand first before realising she had failed to connect with her chosen product. They each gave a shy smile, offering a silent apology with looks only strangers can manage. She didn’t catch every detail but noted how beautiful his face was. That was the first word that popped into her mind about him. She allowed him to take the box she had reached for and settled for the one behind it. They exchanged trite smiles and Carna moved on. Could’ve happened to anyone, she reasoned, selecting cans of baked beans and tuna chunks. Mental list done, she found a spot in a stationary queue a few strides later.

Her mind quickly filled with other thoughts as she prepared for the long wait. She didn’t want to risk invoking Murphy’s Law by switching queues only to find the one she left moving faster. The main culprits up ahead were two men not nearly thirty but far from boyhood. Their shopping cart, Carna observed, laden with the perfect makings of a barbecue. A discreet peer yielded stacks of tender steak, sausage, pork and almost every variety of beers, ciders and soft drinks. They took turns to fish out charcoal, water and pre-barbecue chips to run by the cash register.

‘Here, I think we’ll need these,’ a male voice sounded behind a massive arm that reached across Carna’s shoulder carrying three packs of crushed ice.

Turning to pay a curious glance at the owner of the voice, Carna realised she recognised him from the cereals aisle. He edged past her to join his mates.

‘This is exactly why we allowed you to tag along,’ one of the men said tossing the packs into the shopping cart.

‘That and to keep you from claiming your stake on all the hot chicks back at the house,’ the second man winked.

‘That’s no fun without an audience,’ the Cereal-aisle man replied, giving a prize smile.

He turned and whispered, ‘You sure know how to pick them.’

‘Excuse me?’ Carna faced him.

‘Queues. You picked the one where you’re stuck behind grown men who have no clue what they are doing. This is what happens when women send men to do the shopping.’

Carna took stock of the damage done. ‘It doesn’t look like you broke a sweat. You made this effortless. Women the world over will hate you.’

He chuckled but it didn’t graduate into a decent laugh.

‘You are welcome to the party. To pay you back for being so patient with us,’ he offered.

Engaging twenty-twenty hindsight, Carna should have declined the invitation. Yet Carna being Carna, didn’t accept immediately but politely watched without further comment as they paid and manoeuvred the shopping cart to their car.

That should have been the last of them, had she not found the same guy waiting, it seemed, leaning against the door of a car parked opposite hers. He pushed himself off the side of the door and walked to where she packed groceries into the trunk of her car.

‘I wanted to give you my number, in case you change your mind. My name is Erin, by the way.’ He left her his card, scribbled the address to the party and returned to his friends. She stood for a minute or two, wondering why she had accepted his card and clear as a bell invitation for her to call him; change of mind or not. Never mind his real name, she thought later, shifting her car into gear and heading home, his name should be Cunning.

My name is Erin, by the way, Carna remembered how he’d said it, in an easy drawl that left her neck hairs on edge. Two hours later, however, Carna had changed into a pair of jeans and a loose top and was poring over an old map to locate the road Erin had given her.

This is stupid, she kept murmuring to herself as she flipped through pages. I was having a perfectly normal adult-size evening and now I am about to plunge into an experiment. She quickly shrugged it off, retrieved her car keys from their hook and wove her way through foreign streets to the designated venue.

‘Are you sure you don’t want to join me?’ Carna’d enquired of Nsoaki, her best friend.

Nsoaki shook her head, cringing playfully. ‘I have a new novel and an assignment.’

‘So do I. It could be fun. They seem like a fun group of guys.’

‘Go,’ Nsoaki waved off. ‘You need the full college experience more than I do.’

Carna found a corner, settled into a seat and ate quietly, paying half a mind to various strains of conversation around her. It was laced with complaints about endless deadlines, frustrating group assignments and insufferable lecturers or tutors who thought they knew it all. She smiled or chuckled occasionally, so she wouldn’t look or feel like an alien. Once or twice she caught Erin headed for the kitchen and back out again with beers and ice.

As night turned to late, Carna wandered out to the guys’ huddle near the grill and planted herself beside Erin. He was finishing off the animated telling of a joke. She smiled as the guys laughed. Erin turned to her with a wide grin.

‘Welcome,’ he extended his hand to her. ‘Are you just arriving?’

Carna took his hand and shook her head. ‘I’ve been here. I mingled.’

‘Have you eaten? There’s food and plenty of beverages,’ he glanced around for a paper plate and cup. ‘What’ll you have?’

Carna declined with another shake of her head. ‘I’ve eaten too. Just wanted to prove I showed up and didn’t dishonour your invitation. It’s past my bedtime and I live far.’

‘No,’ Erin groaned, and a couple of his friends also lamented her exit announcement.

Carna laughed. ‘Thanks, but I really have to go.’

Erin grabbed his beer and placed his pair of tongs in a friend’s hand.

‘Let me walk you out to your car.’

‘How far out do you stay?’ he asked when they reached her car.

Carna smiled and looked away. She didn’t know what the protocol was around dishing out her hostel address to a stranger, never mind that she wasn’t even from here.

‘I mean,’ Erin cleared his throat. ‘The other guys will be sleeping over, so you could stay and drive out in the morning.’

‘It’s just best if I go. Thanks again,’ she unlocked her car.

She expected him to ask when he’d see her again. He was just the type of guy to ask that type of question. Instead, he watched in silence as she bundled herself into the car and drove off. Carna allowed herself a shrug as she joined other motorists on the highway. The experiment could have been an epic fail. She’d enjoyed herself, though. She could admit that at least.

It was Monday, however, that she rudely learnt Erin and she took the same module at His Word Bible College; for him in his third and final year and for Carna, her first.

A folded note made its journey from one end of the top row to her open page. Carna opened it carefully to reveal three simple words: I see you.

‘What’s that?’ her best friend, Nsoaki, asked, picking the note up.

‘Some random person telling me that they see me. Whatever.’ Carna dismissed it and just then the lecturer stepped into the auditorium and the lesson began.

At the end of two hours, Nsoaki left Carna to meet up with her cousin at the library. Carna, with a couple of hours to spare before her tutorial, perched at a coffee shop on the building’s third level and passed the time browsing through her notes.

‘Mind if I join you?’ a voice that should have been familiar broke into Carna’s concentration. But it had been a little over thirty-six hours since their first encounter.

She lifted her eyes from her book just briefly to offer him a glance. ‘Not at all,’ she pulled her half-empty coffee closer to her.

‘I’m Erin, by the way,’ he extended his hand while he unslung his bag from around his shoulders and settled it on the floor by his feet.

Only then did Carna raise her eyes to meet his. She immediately started to drown in the large pools of dazzling brown and struggled to resurface.

‘Oh, hi,’ she whispered, unsure whether her real voice sounded controlled. ‘You’re a student here?’

‘Third year. You?’

‘First. Wow, this is certainly unexpected.’

Erin chuckled. Again, laughter did not reflect in his eyes. ‘I thought the same when I saw you entering the lecture hall. I guess this school is as small as they say after all.’

‘Or the world is just not as big as it used to be.’ Carna closed her book and took a sip from her cup. Her beverage was bordering on cold.

‘I see my note was not romantic or witty enough to keep.’ He opened the palm of his hand to reveal the crumpled piece of paper.

‘Oh that!’ Carna laughed. ‘An unsigned note is inadmissible as far as first impressions go. Both unoriginal and corny.’

‘Shame,’ he shook his head sadly. ‘Some of my best work.’

‘How come you’re taking SG137?’

‘I’m taking it as an elective for my final year. I wanted to finish off with simple modules.’

‘And the rest of the party? How was it?’ she asked, feeling the need to change topics.

‘Clearly not the same without you. But I was glad you showed up. I offended you but you were so quick to pardon a stranger. You’re a shining example of true forgiveness. Your face must show up next to the definition.’

‘Sometimes strangers are the easiest to forgive. Where there is no shared history, there is no equal or greater expectation bestowed.’

‘Well, I hope we are no longer strangers...’

It was too perfect, she mused. It was unexpected; smelled a little like an act of random coincidence but also hinted strongly at orchestrated. Or perhaps the world simply wasn’t big enough?

Two

Everything moved rapidly from there. Well, except Erin’s final year at His Word Bible College. But Carna Ray had invaded his existence. He couldn’t remember a time when he hadn’t known her. He’d loved her on sight, Erin thought as she frantically took notes; the lecturer’s voice a quiet drone in the background. And she’d dismissed him, eyes at half-mast and mouth twisted in derision. She’d looked beautiful; cocky. Her eyes had blazed in fury, but her mouth had twitched playfully. Well, playfully to him of course. He should have kissed that dangerous pout off her smug lips. But he’d charmed his way to her heart, even he had been impressed; using a little patience and the power of suggestion.

‘Go out with me, Carna Ray,’ he said four months after their initial encounter.

‘Whatever,’ she rolled her eyes and gave him a thorough tickle on his funny bone.

‘You’re just going to break my heart like the rest of them,’ she added in dismay. ‘Somewhere in Texas, someone is ready to write a song about it.’

Never, he promised. Not when she’d rendered every past relationship of his meaningless. Not when she’d taken him up on his coy barbeque invitation and bravely mingled with his friends; strangers above all else to her. He wanted everything; the girl and the promise of forever. But she turned him down and offered friendship. Just friends, she warned him. No frills, no physical gestures and definitely, no emotional intimacy. She didn’t have time, she told him. Nor the capacity to derail her future on empty platitudes.

She didn’t have time for his captivating smile, or his attentive look, or his treacle-smooth tongue; she’d masked the deterrent in a compliment.

‘Of course, you’ll love me back, Carna,’ he declared in a whisper, his voice caressing the iron locks off the bolts around her heart. ‘You just need time. And I have plenty.’

Erin knew he was psychopathic in his patience. Pedantic; obsessive-compulsive. It would grate on her nerves, how he could sit still and wait through anything. Even her undecisive heart. Her deceptive heart, she probably called it now. She’d determined to deny him a chance. If anything, to prove that she was right, and he was wrong for her.

But he wouldn’t let it discourage him. Because a guy like Erin took such challenges very seriously.

He’d earlier paid Carna an amused smile when she stumbled in frazzled and squeezed herself into a spare seat in the front row seconds before the lecturer strode in. He watched for a distracted half-minute as she tried not to glance behind her and locate her best friend or her boyfriend. This was the only course they shared since he was taking it as an elective and it was among her first two core units.

‘Today we tackle a new subject.’

The hum that buzzed over the class died down. Erin flipped to a blank section of his notepad and poised his pen. The lecturer continued but