Love and Hate Are Over, the Vow Undone

When I was twenty-three, I took a blow to the head saving Logan Henson, and lost my sight for it.

After that he became my human walking stick, refusing to let go of my hand no matter where we went.

But on our wedding day, Logan suddenly told me:

Vivi, the way this works, the groom waits for you up at the front. In a minute you'll need to walk in on your own.

"Everyone's watching. Be brave, don't embarrass me, all right?"

I felt my way forward one careful step at a time, and still tripped on a stair.

Blood ran down my forehead, and somehow my sight came back.

The next second, the scene in front of me froze me where I stood.

No reception. No guests.

No Logan.

Just an empty, abandoned factory.

Two of Logan's friends were tucked off to the side, on a video call with him.

"Logan, Vivi knows you so well. What if she figures out you skipped the wedding?"

His voice was careless.

"Just don't let her hold anyone's hand, use the audio I recorded ahead of time, and she's blind. There's no way she'll notice."

"Debbie gave me a son. I promised her I'd give her a wedding."

Debbie Delgado. His secretary.

On the screen, Debbie leaned into his arms in a wedding gown.

Behind them was an Alice in Wonderland wedding theme, the one I'd always loved most.

So at the end of this aisle, no one had ever been waiting.

Then there was no reason for me to keep walking either.

...

The old speakers were still playing the wedding march.

It echoed, empty, through the abandoned factory.

I lowered my eyes and pulled my mouth into a bitter little smile.

Because he thought I couldn't see, Logan hadn't even bothered to get me a decent gown.

Some old thing dug up from who knew where, the hem yellowed and unraveling, now spotted with blood, like a rag torn to pieces.

The custom gown on Debbie, worth a million dollars, I was seeing for the first time, and yet I knew it well.

Logan had described it to me countless times.

"Vivi, I ordered you your favorite satin mermaid gown. I can't wait to watch you marry me in it. You'll look like the most beautiful mermaid bride."

But the truth was, his bride had been someone else all along.

As if only now noticing I was standing behind the concrete pillar, his two friends jumped.

"ViVivi? We were just talking to Logan about something private. Did you hear anything?"

Maybe I wanted to see exactly how far Logan would push the lie.

I kept my eyes vacant and shook my head blankly.

"The music's too loud, I couldn't make it out..."

On the other end of the call, Logan visibly relaxed.

"Vivi, you're hurt. Let's stop the wedding for now, I'll have them take you to the hospital."

I clutched the hem of my dress and asked, not ready to give it up.

"Logan, I'm a little scared. Will you come with me?"

Before he could answer, Debbie hooked her arm through his with a wounded look, signaling that the ceremony was about to begin.

Logan pressed his lips together.

"Vivi, you can't depend on me for everything. You have to learn to stand on your own."

"The ceremony stopped so suddenly, I need to stay and settle the guests first. Be good, I'll come find you soon."

I slowly let go of the hem. My palm was cold.

In the end, he still chose Debbie.

On the way to the hospital, I kept my eyes shut and rested against the back seat.

One of them got bored and turned on the entertainment screen in the front, pulling up the livestream of Logan and Debbie's wedding.

The one driving hurried to lower his voice.

"Turn it off, Vivi's still sitting right behind us. What if she notices? Don't cause trouble for Logan!"

The other one glanced back at me and curled his lip.

"What's there to be scared of? She's asleep, I've got it on mute, and a blind girl can't see anyway."

"Besides, if you ask me, Vivi's Logan's biggest headache. She saved him once, so what? She didn't even die. Five years of him looking after her should be more than enough, and now he still has to spare her feelings, even hide his own wedding from her."

"Someone in Logan's position now, who's going to actually marry a blind girl? It's embarrassing. Debbie suits him better. A good-looking couple, a real match."

"This wedding today is way grander than that proposal back at the start of the year, that White Valentine's one. Logan really does treat Debbie well."

No one noticed the two lines of tears sliding down my face in the back seat.

That Valentine's Day, Logan hadn't come home.

He said something had come up at work, told me to sleep early.

At the time I was touching the blisters on my hand and said nothing, only told him not to overwork himself.

I'd wanted to cook him a special dish, and had been learning from Audrey Lambert, our housekeeper.

Because I couldn't see, I'd burned myself on the hot pan.

I opened my eyes and quietly watched the screen up front.

Logan slid a diamond ring onto Debbie's finger, saying something with feeling.

Debbie's tears came, moved, and he kissed them away gently.

I looked down at my own empty palm.

When I was twenty-three, out on a date with Logan at the mall.

A billboard overhead suddenly came loose. On instinct I shoved him out of the way, and it struck my head instead, and that was how I lost my sight.

When I woke, Logan sat at my bedside, holding my hand, shaking.

I touched his face, and my palm came away full of tears.

He said from then on he'd be my walking stick and my eyes, that he'd hold my hand everywhere we went, terrified I'd fall.

Later he threw himself into building his business, saying he'd give me the best life, the grandest wedding.

Now he finally had the means to do it.

Only it was to marry another woman.

While the two up front weren't paying attention, I took out my phone.

And sent a message to that familiar number.

Those two dumped me at the hospital and left.

Their excuse was that they were going to check whether Logan needed any help on his end.

Once my wounds were bandaged, I waited alone from day into night.

Logan never showed up.

Close to eleven, he finally called.

Vivi, one of our clients lives one city over, and he came all this way for nothing. I feel awful about it.

I'm going to drive him back myself. Just tough it out at the hospital tonight, and I'll come get you first thing in the morning.

Then he hung up.

He didn't ask how my injuries were, or whether I'd eaten.

Only that veiled reproach, as if I were the one who'd made trouble for him.

On social media, the two who'd just left had posted several videos back to back.

Time to crash the wedding night for our Logan and his bride~

A wife's tears are a husband's weak spot. The bride cried, and Logan dropped the whole idea of going to the hospital to fetch a certain dead weight, hahaha.

So this was the real reason Logan wouldn't come.

The first few clips were all of him and Debbie playing their little games.

I watched them sitting on our wedding bed, mouth to mouth, trying to bite the apple dangling between them.

They couldn't reach it, so their mouths met in a kiss instead.

Debbie flushed red, but Logan curled his lips, pressed a hand to the back of her head, and deepened the kiss while everyone egged them on.

She burrowed shyly into his arms, then seemed to jab against something.

What's this?

Logan pulled out a protective charm, yanked it off, and tossed it into the trash without a second thought.

Nothing. Cheap junk off a street stall.

Did it hurt you? Let me rub it better.

My heart felt like it was being crushed in a fist, until even breathing hurt.

There was a time Logan had been sick, and for a long while he wouldn't get better.

I'd secretly asked the driver to take me to a hilltop chapel on the outskirts, and I'd knelt up all 999 steps to pray for that charm.

Because I couldn't see, I even tumbled down partway, nearly losing my life.

When Logan found out, he was furious and heartbroken all at once, and he held me tight, shaken.

Vivi, you don't need to do anything for me. As long as you're by my side, I'd run back from the gates of hell itself to take care of you.

Don't worry. I'll treasure it with my life.

And now he'd thrown it away like garbage.

I tapped open the last video. Someone, uneasy, was asking.

But Vivienne can't see. Leaving her by herself at the hospital, won't something happen to her?

Pfft, it'd be for the best if something did. Then Logan would finally be free. What can Vivienne do besides drag other people down? Nothing like the bride, who's not only Logan's right hand at the company but gave him a big healthy son too. Now that's a good wife.

Logan, be honest. These five years with Vivienne, do you regret it?

Logan paused.

Vivi was my girlfriend back then. Taking care of her, I've never regretted that.

Hearing that, something in me stirred.

But Debbie's face shifted, and she smiled with something pointed behind it.

Right. She did save Logan's life, after all. He should be responsible for her his whole life.

Only Logan's face went cold in an instant, and he let out a scornful laugh.

I clawed my way to where I am in Pearl City so she could live well. That's still not enough?

I really should take care of her. But now and then I do wish she hadn't saved me that day. Or just maybe then I wouldn't be this worn out, having to tiptoe around her feelings at every turn.

Debbie leaned into his arms, delicate and pitiful.

Logan, you don't have to think about me. I don't mind taking a little unfairness.

I'm content just to have a wedding. At least in other people's eyes, no one will call our child illegitimate. As for the marriage license, I won't dare hope for that.

Logan held her close, aching for her, as if he'd made up his mind.

It's just a marriage license. I'll give it to you.

But what about Vivienne

Some other day I'll get a fake one to fob her off. She can't see, she won't notice.

I couldn't make out the rest.

Clutching my chest, I curled up on the hospital bed. It felt like there was a hole torn open there, cold wind whistling straight through.

What Logan had meant to say was: or better yet, if I'd just been crushed dead by that billboard, there wouldn't be all this trouble.

My phone rang. On the other end came my brother's voice, one I hadn't heard in so long.

Vivi, your eyes are finally better? I was so happy to see your message. I thought you were still angry, so I didn't even dare come to the wedding.

Are you happy being a bride? Is Logan good to you?

Listening to my brother's concern, I couldn't hold it in any longer, and I broke into sobs.

Julian Carrington, he married someone else, and they have a child. He's hoping I'd already dropped dead.

I don't want to be with him anymore. I want to come home.

The year I was thirteen, my mother died of an illness.

My father's other women and their children began circling like wolves.

To keep me out of the family's fight for power, my brother quietly sent me away from Harbor City to study in Pearl City.

I was too young then. I thought he found me a burden, that he didn't want me anymore.

I resented him for it, and I refused to tell anyone who I really was.

Later our father died too, and my brother became head of the family, so busy clearing out those other branches that he had even less time for me.

Then in college I met Logan Henson. He made me feel cared for, wanted, and I fell headfirst into it.

But because I was injured saving him, my brother would never agree to let me be with him. We had a violent fight over it.

I never went back to Harbor City again.

Even so, my brother was still afraid I wasn't living well.

So from the moment Logan started his own company, he was secretly funneling our family's resources to him.

Through third parties he brought in capital, steered projects Logan's way, planted elite talent on his staff, and let it all happen.

He said, "The little princess of the Carringtons can't marry down. Her future husband can't be some second-rate man dragging her down."

The funny part is, everyone on the outside thought I was dragging Logan down. Even he thought so.

My ID and a few other important things were still at the marital home.

The next day, instead of waiting for Logan to come get me, I took a cab back myself.

The moment I walked in, I saw Debbie standing in front of the full-length mirror in a pale moonlight embroidered gown.

"Logan, do I look pretty?"

Logan had one arm around her waist, doting.

"You're beautiful. You look good in anything."

My eyes went cold. That was the gown my mother had embroidered for me by hand before she died.

Through her illness she had imagined the woman I would grow into and cut it to her own measurements from when she was young.

She wanted me to wear it after I married, on the day I came home to visit. It was the last gift she ever gave me.

I had kept it carefully for over ten years and never once brought myself to wear it.

"That's mine. Take it off."

My voice came out of nowhere, and it startled them both.

Logan said, surprised, "Vivi, how did you get here by yourself"

He didn't finish. Something in my eyes must have registered, because his own went wide.

"When did you get your sight back? Why didn't you tell me?!"

His face was a tangle of things, but not one of them was pure happiness.

I looked at him with contempt. "Yesterday. Right when you dumped me at an abandoned factory and held a wedding with another woman. You must be so disappointed."

For a moment Logan couldn't get a word out.

It was Debbie who came over instead, her eyes rimming red. "Vivi, don't blame Logan. He just has too strong a sense of responsibility. He didn't want people gossiping about me and the baby, that's all. Once you and he register the marriage, you'll be the real Mrs. Henson."

"I haven't been back to my hometown in so long. When my parents heard we'd had a wedding, they told us to come home for the after-wedding dinner. The baby's already a year old. She should meet her grandparents."

"Logan saw I didn't have anything decent to wear at the moment, so he let me put on this gown. I'll give it right back to you"

She made a show of starting to take it off, and the tears fell in strings down her face.

As if she were the one being humiliated.

Logan pressed his hand over hers and turned to me, displeased. "Your parents are long dead. Where would you go home to, if not to my side? She may as well wear it. No sense letting it sit there going to waste."

"Since you've seen it all now, we might as well lay it out plainly. Debbie gave me a son. There's no way I'm leaving her and the child to fend for themselves."

"But that doesn't mean I'm abandoning you, Vivi. From now on, you and Debbie get along. She'll handle the social side with me, and you'll take care of the child at home. You were never suited to those occasions anyway."

I couldn't spare a thought for how absurd his words were, or the faint distaste under his tone.

One thought kept circling in my head.

Their child was a year old?

Then the time Debbie got pregnant was exactly when my own daughter died.

Logan and I once had a daughter too.

I'd worried a wedding dress wouldn't look good over a pregnancy, so we decided to hold the ceremony after the baby was born.

But she died of a congenital heart defect before she even turned one.

It broke me completely. If Logan hadn't stayed by my side, I probably would have jumped off a building.

So all that time he was playing the devoted man in front of me, he was cheating?

Before I could speak, a baby's cry broke out from the nursery.

My heart lurched.

I rushed in ahead of them both.

The scene inside left me frozen where I stood.

In the crib that had once belonged only to my daughter now lay Logan and Debbie's child.

And the photo wall I had built for my daughter piece by piece, with Audrey's help.

It had all been replaced with pictures of the three of them, their little family.

I turned to them, lost. "Where are the photos of my daughter?"

Debbie pressed her lips together and said in a small voice,

"Logan asked me and the baby to move in, but back where I'm from there's a saying: you can't hang photos of the dead in a bedroom. If they're already up, they all have to be burned, or the child will have nightmares."

"I was worried about the baby, and I didn't want to disturb your rest at the hospital, so I burned the photos first. Vivi, we're both mothers. You can understand that, can't you?"

My eyes went to the trash can in the corner.

Nothing was left inside but the curled, charred scraps of burned photographs.

"Baby, Mommy never even got to see your face..."

I stumbled down into a crouch, and the moment my fingertip touched them, they crumbled to ash.

Someone had smashed a beer bottle last night, and the shards were mixed in. They sliced my finger open.

Logan frowned and hauled me up.

"Vivienne, act normal. They're just a few photos. Do you really have to put on this act like the whole world's wronged you?"

"Debbie was only thinking of the child. The dead have to make way for the living."

"If it matters that much, I'll have someone get in touch with the photographer from back then and see if he still has the negatives."

He said it as if it were nothing.

As if he'd forgotten that the elderly photographer had retired and gone traveling the world not long after taking our daughter's photos.

He'd even sold off his equipment online. There was no telling if the negatives still existed.

And the ones stored on Logan's phone had been wiped clean when his device malfunctioned once.

In all those years I couldn't see, I traced my daughter's brow and eyes over and over with careful fingers.

Imagining that one day I'd get my sight back and see her sweet little face with my own eyes.

Even that small hope, they had destroyed.

Logan glanced at my still-bleeding finger.

"I'll go get some iodine and a bandage. Don't let it get infected."

The moment he stepped out, Debbie smiled and held up a small ceramic photo.

"Vivi, don't be sad. See, there's still one left. I dug it off your daughter's headstone myself, just for you."

On the tiny black-and-white photo was the little face I had drawn from memory more times than I could count.

A terrible feeling rose in me.

"What did you do to my daughter's grave?!"

Debbie's smile turned knowing.

"My precious boy has been crying at night lately, and he isn't sick, so Logan called in a master to look into it."

"He said little children are frail and easily attract unclean things. He needs to wear an accessory rich in yang energy, and it's even better if a relative has worn it, because then the energy won't reject him."

"Sadly, neither Logan nor I had anything like that. Luckily your daughter's birth chart was pure yang, so Logan made the call and had her ashes made into two bracelets for my son. So the useless thing who wouldn't leave was good for something after all."

She dropped the ceramic photo into my pocket and studied my expression.

"Vivienne, don't you regret being able to see now?"

"Otherwise you could have gone on being a stupid, happy idiot, living in that pretty dream where you thought Logan really loved you."

My mind went white with a roar, and I stared at Debbie.

I couldn't hold back the rage. My hand flew up and I slapped her. "You two are animals!"

I started toward the crib, meaning to take the bracelet off him.

But Debbie suddenly shrieked, "Vivi, if you have a problem, take it out on me, not my baby!"

The next second a figure rushed in and struck me hard across the face.

Blood flooded my mouth at once and ran down from the corner of my lips.

Debbie clutched the baby and hid behind Logan, crying.

"Logan, Vivienne's furious that you're holding the wedding with me. She hit me, and she tried to strangle our son."

"Take us away from here. I don't want to stay anymore."

Logan looked at me, his eyes full of disappointment.

"Vivienne, when did you turn this vicious?"

"You lost your own child, so now you have to make someone else suffer that same loss?"

I pointed at the bracelet on the baby boy's wrist, my eyes bloodshot as I screamed,

"You're the vicious ones. Do you dare say what that thing is made of?!"

Logan froze for a moment, then looked away, uncomfortable.

"I have no idea what you're talking about."

"If I'd known getting your sight back would turn you into a lunatic who won't even spare a child, I'd have rather you stayed blind your whole life. At least then you were kinder than this."

He took the baby, slid an arm around Debbie's waist, and looked at me without any warmth.

"I'm going back to Debbie's hometown with her. We've got a flight to catch, so I won't hold this against you today."

"Sit at home and think about what you've done. When I'm back, I expect you to apologize to her properly, or you can forget about the marriage license."

Ha. He still thought I cared about that fake license?

After they left, I packed my bags and my documents.

Audrey couldn't bear to watch. She tried to press an egg to my face to bring the swelling down, but I gently refused.

"Audrey, I'm leaving. Do me a favor and tell Logan that he and I are over."

With that, I walked out without a moment's hesitation.

At the Pearl City harbor docks, a private yacht had been waiting a long while for me.

"Miss, the head of the family sent us to bring you home."

I turned and looked back at Pearl City, ablaze with lights.

At thirteen I had come here, lost and afraid.

Later I met Logan, and I poured every girlish dream and every bit of romance I had into this place, imagining the family we'd build, a lifetime of happiness together.

Now that I was leaving, all that remained was hatred.

Logan, enjoy these few days.

We'll see each other again soon.

And when we do, I'll have you kneel in front of me and repent for everything you've done.