Contract Marriage starring Love and Revenge
Chapter 43. Woman in my dreams

Chapter 43: 43. Woman in my dreams

{Duke’s POV}

Most people think I don’t believe in God. But the truth is... I do.

I know he’s up there, I know he sees everything, I believe he exists...

I just don’t have faith in him.

To be more accurate, I lost my faith in him a long time ago. I no longer trust him. I no longer want to have anything to do with him.

However, just because I lost my faith in him and refused to talk to him doesn’t mean he stopped talking to me. On the contrary, he refused to stop talking to me.

Although I try to ignore him, and I stopped praying to him, he still finds a way to reach me. Very annoying, really. I don’t know why he won’t leave me.

He’d reach me through my dreams, taking total control of it. Telling me to come back to him. For years that has been his major discussion with me.

Trying to win me over, it might sound like a lie, but it’s true.

But things began to change early last year. In place of his regular visit, it was a woman who was appearing in my dreams.

They say when you meet someone whom you love, you see them in everything you do, even in your dreams.

However, with pagne, things happened in reverse.

I met her in my dreams before I met her in real life.

It all started out as a silhouette, just a figure in the dark. I could tell it was a woman, I just couldn’t figure out what she looked like. For over four months, it was like that. The same dream over and over again.

I felt like God was finding a new way to mess with me. Maybe just like Jonah in the bible, he’s tormenting me, but not by putting me in the belly of a fish or anything, but by causing my dreams to be on repeat and making my imaginations run wild as I tried to figure out who the person in the dream was and what they wanted.

But then, on one of the very rare days that I visited the office, I had fallen asleep there, and I dreamt. And in the dream, it was no longer just a silhouette.

For the first time, standing by the beach just by the edge of the water in a long white dress that touched her feet, I could see the color of her hair. Black as the feathers of a raven. Every strand caught the bright afternoon sunlight, and something was set ablaze inside me as I saw her.

Her back was turned to me, I could not see her face, and the moment I moved to take a step closer to her, I woke up.

Just like that, another five months passed with the strange woman of my dreams appearing every time, and every damn time I tried to walk towards her, I would wake up.

It was a rather frustrating dream. But it made my curiosity grow wider and wilder. I wanted to know. I was dying to know.

Who was this mysterious woman? Why in hell did she keep appearing to me in my dream? And why won’t she turn her face to me?!

This was all his doing. I knew it, so for the first time in years, I prayed and I asked him to at least show me her face. But for someone who refused to leave me alone all these years, he suddenly vanished. He was nowhere to be found. He wasn’t answering.

So I was left with no choice. All I could do was sit back and wait. Wait till she was revealed to me.

And one day, the wait was finally over. It was around this time last year, two days to my birthday, I remember it clearly. That cold afternoon, Mary had taken the week off. I had painstakingly gotten the twins to take a nap, and out of exhaustion, I had fallen asleep next to them.

I had seen her, in that familiar setting, on that familiar beach, hair and dress fluttering in the wind as usual, and I would move to try my luck once again.

And this time, I take the first step, second step, and third step. I paused, thinking I would wake up any moment now, but unexpectedly, my feet kept moving and the dream remained.

Just as I was about three steps away from her, her head turned.

Slowly, so slowly she had turned. Her eyes were the most beautiful dark eyes I had ever seen. But they were glistening... with tears.

Her lips were small and pink and they trembled.

Her entire body trembled.

The tears that were in her eyes fell and it seemed as though I would go mad. I did not know her and yet it felt like I had known her for a long time. It was the first time I was seeing her face and yet the urge to destroy any and everyone who had caused her to shed tears was immeasurably strong.

And above all, I yearned to wipe those tears with my own hands. I yearned to whisper to her that no matter what and who had caused her tears I would bring them begging at her feet.

But again, he played tricks on me. He pulled me out of that dream before I could reach for her.

The person called God, he can be very wicked. Maybe that’s why the psalmist had used the expression that he was a terrible God.

He’s been bringing me this woman, slowly and carefully tattooing her into my mind through my dreams, carving her into my thoughts, making me go crazy over someone that was as good as a fictional character.

A figment of my imagination, some would say.

Making me think of her as I wake up and as I go to bed, building my curiosity into adoration, infatuation and to an extent, obsession.