Six months later, they opened the new space.
It wasn't just a gallery.
It was a hybrid: art house, youth hub, rooftop garden, and recording studio—built in a renovated cocoa warehouse near the lagoon.
They called it The Bridge.
Because that's what they'd become to each other.
Not two halves. But two shores—connected by effort, faith, and the long, patient work of staying.
Amaka taught a weekly storytelling class there.
Not just design—but truth-telling. Her students learned how to build spaces that breathed, how to tell the history of a place without words.
One day, a girl raised her hand and asked, "How do you know when something is worth staying for?"
Amaka thought for a long time.
Then said, "When it still feels like yours… even after it's been broken."
Tunde painted again.
Not just community murals, but canvases of his own. He filled the top floor with unfinished pieces. Some abstract. Some literal. All honest.
One showed a city bending, but never breaking.
Another: two birds in opposite skies, flying parallel.
But the one he hung in the main entrance was simple:
A pair of hands—open. Reaching.
Not holding. Just ready.
They didn't get married right away.
That part surprised people.
"You two made it through everything," friends said.
Amaka would laugh. "Exactly. So we're not rushing the rest."
They lived together again. Traveled occasionally—sometimes together, sometimes apart.
But they always returned.
One evening, Tunde stood on the rooftop of The Bridge, watching the city glow.
Amaka joined him, barefoot, holding two cups of warm palm wine.
"You still think about Paris?" he asked.
"Sometimes," she said. "But mostly… I think about this."
She gestured to the city, to the mural-lit walls below them, to the soft hum of music from inside.
"All of this we built. Not in spite of who we are. But because of it."
He took her hand.
"I used to think we were on borrowed time," he said.
Amaka smiled.
"Not borrowed," she whispered. "Chosen."