Love and Hate Are Gone, My Heart Is Empty

At twenty-three, saving Cora Henson cost me a brutal blow to the head, and I lost my sight.

After that she became my human cane, refusing to let go of my hand no matter where we went.

But on our wedding day, Cora suddenly told me,

Emmet Mason, per the schedule, you have to wait for me up at the front. You'll need to go in on your own first.

"All the guests are watching. Be brave. Don't embarrass me, all right?"

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

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

The next second, I froze at what I saw.

No reception. No guests.

No Cora, either.

Just an empty, abandoned factory.

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

"Cora, Emmet knows you so well. What if he figures out you ran out on the wedding?"

Cora's voice was careless.

"As long as you don't let him hold your hand, and you play the audio I recorded ahead of time, a blind man like him could never tell."

"Allan gave me a son. I promised him a wedding."

Allan Delgado. Her male secretary.

On the screen, she stood in a wedding gown, nestled against Allan.

Behind them was the dreamy blue-themed wedding scene, the one I'd loved most.

So it turned out that at the end of this wedding, no one had ever been waiting.

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

...

The old speakers were still playing the wedding march.

It echoed, hollow, through the empty factory.

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

Because she thought I couldn't see, Cora hadn't even bothered to get me a decent suit.

Some old model dug up from who knows where, the hem yellowed and fraying, now smeared with blood, like a rag someone had thrown out.

The custom suit on Allan, though, the one worth a million, I was seeing it for the first time, and yet it wasn't unfamiliar at all.

Cora had described it to me countless times.

"Emmet, I ordered the gown in your favorite dark navy. I can't wait to see you wear it when you marry me. You'll be the most handsome groom there is."

But the truth was, her groom had been someone else all along.

As if only just realizing I was standing behind the concrete pillar, Cora's two friends jumped.

"EmEmmet? We were just talking to Cora about something private. Did you hear anything?"

Maybe I wanted to see just how far Cora would carry the lie.

I kept up the empty, unseeing look and shook my head, dazed.

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

On the other end of the call, Cora let out a breath.

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

I clenched my fist and asked, unwilling to let it go,

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

Before Cora could answer, Allan looped his arm through hers with a wounded look, signaling that the ceremony was about to begin.

Cora pressed her lips together.

"Emmet, you can't depend on me for everything. You have to learn to be on your own sometime."

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

Slowly I let go of her hand, my palm ice-cold.

In the end, she chose Allan after all.

On the way to the hospital, I leaned back in the rear seat with my eyes closed, resting.

One of them got bored and switched on the entertainment screen in the passenger seat, watching the live stream of Cora and Allan's wedding.

The one driving quickly warned her under her breath,

"Turn it off. Emmet's still sitting right there in back. What if he notices? Don't cause trouble for Cora!"

The other turned to glance at me and curled her lip.

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

"Honestly, if you ask me, Emmet's Cora's biggest headache. So he saved her once, so what? He didn't die. Five years of Cora looking after him should be plenty, and now she still has to spare his feelings, has to hide her own wedding from him."

"With who Cora is now, who'd actually want to marry a blind man? It's just embarrassing. Allan suits her much better. They're a perfect match."

"This wedding today is way grander than that proposal back at the start of the year on White Valentine's. Cora really does adore Allan."

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

On Valentine's Day, Cora hadn't come home.

She said something came up at work and she had to stay late, and told me to go to bed early.

At the time I just touched the blisters on my hand and said nothing, only told her not to work too hard.

It was from when I'd been trying to make her a special dish, learning from Cornelia, our housekeeper.

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

I opened my eyes and looked quietly at the screen up front.

Cora slid a wedding ring onto Allan's ring finger, saying something to him with feeling.

Allan wept, moved to tears, and she rose on her toes and gently kissed them away.

I looked down at my own empty palm.

At twenty-three, when Cora and I were out on a date at the mall,

the billboard overhead suddenly came down. On instinct I shoved her clear and took the hit to my head myself, and that was how I lost my sight.

When I woke, Cora was keeping watch at my bedside, holding my hand, trembling.

I touched her face and found it wet with tears.

Cora said that from then on she'd be my cane and my eyes, that she'd hold my hand everywhere we went, so afraid I might fall.

Later she threw herself into building her company, saying she'd give me the best life, the grandest wedding.

Now she was finally able to do it.

Only it was to marry another man.

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 wanted to go check whether Cora needed a hand with anything.

After they patched up the wound, I waited alone, from daylight into the dark.

Cora never showed.

Close to eleven, she finally called.

"Emmet, there's a client staying over in the next city. He came all this way for nothing, and I feel terrible 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."

And with that, she hung up.

She didn't ask about my wound. She didn't ask whether I'd eaten.

There was only the veiled reproach in her voice, as if I were the one who'd become a nuisance.

On her feed, the two who had just left posted one video after another.

Time to crash the wedding suite for our Cora and the groom~

A husband's tears, a wife's weak spot. One cry from the groom, and Cora drops everything, including going to the hospital to pick up a certain deadweight. Hahaha.

So that was the real reason Cora wouldn't come.

The earlier clips were all of her and Allan playing their little intimacy games.

I watched them sitting on our marriage bed, leaning in mouth to mouth to bite the apple hanging between them.

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

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

He pulled her tight against him, then flinched as if something had dug into him.

"What's this?"

Cora fished out a protective charm, snapped the cord, and tossed it carelessly into the trash.

"Nothing. Cheap junk off some street stall."

"Did it hurt you? Here, let me rub it."

My heart felt clenched in a fist, until even breathing hurt.

That charm was from a time Cora had been sick, and hadn't gotten better for a long while.

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 it.

Because I couldn't see, I lost my footing halfway and tumbled down, nearly killed.

When Cora found out, she was furious and heartbroken all at once, holding me tight in the aftershock of fear.

"Emmet, you don't have 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 cherish it with my life."

And now she'd thrown it out like garbage.

I opened the last video. Someone, uneasy, was asking:

"But Emmet can't see. Leaving him alone at the hospital, won't something happen to him?"

"Tch, it'd be better if something did. Then Cora would finally be free. What can Emmet do besides drag other people down? Not like the groom, who's Cora's right hand at the company and gave her a big, healthy son on top of it. Now that's a good spouse."

"Cora, be honest. These five years with Emmet, do you regret them?"

Cora paused.

"Emmet was my boyfriend back then. Taking care of him, I've never regretted that."

Hearing that, something in me stirred.

Then Allan's expression shifted, and he smiled with a pointed edge.

"Right. He did save Cora's life, after all. She should be responsible for him her whole life."

But Cora's face went cold in an instant, and she let out a scornful laugh.

"I've fought tooth and nail to build a life in Pearlport, all so he could live well. And that's still not enough?"

"I really should take care of him. But now and then I do wish he hadn't saved me that day, or just... maybe then I wouldn't be this exhausted, watching his feelings at every turn."

Allan wrapped his arms around her, playing wounded.

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

"Just having a wedding is enough for me. At least in other people's eyes, no one can call our child a bastard. As for registering the marriage, I won't dare hope for that."

Cora kissed him, aching for him, as though she'd made up her mind.

"It's only a marriage certificate. I'll give it to you."

"But what about Emmet..."

"Some other day I'll fake one to fool him. He can't see. He won't find out."

I couldn't make out anything after that.

I curled up on the hospital bed with a hand over my chest, where it felt like a hole had been torn open, cold wind whistling through.

What Cora meant was that she wished I'd just been crushed dead by that billboard, and then none of this would be such a hassle.

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

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

"Are you happy being a groom? Is Cora good to you?"

Hearing her care, I couldn't hold it back any longer and broke into sobs.

"Sis, she married someone else. She has a child with him. She's been hoping I'd died sooner."

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

When I was thirteen, my mother died of an illness.

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

To keep me clear of the family's power struggles, my sister quietly sent me away from Harborview to study in Pearlport.

I was too young to understand. I thought she saw me as dead weight, that she'd thrown me away.

Out of that resentment, I never once admitted who I was to anyone outside.

Then my father died too, and my sister became the new head of the family. She was busy cutting down the other branches' influence, with even less time for me.

At college I met Cora. She made me feel cared for, like I mattered to someone, and I fell in headfirst.

But because I'd been hurt saving her, my sister refused to accept us being together, no matter what. We had a violent fight over it.

I never went back to Harborview.

Even so, my sister still worried I wasn't living well.

So from the moment Cora started her company, she quietly funneled our family's resources her way.

Through third parties she brought in funding, lined up projects, planted elite talent, and looked the other way about all of it.

She said, "A young Mason heir. His future wife can't be anything less. She shouldn't drag my brother down."

The absurd part was that everyone outside thought I was the one dragging Cora down. Even she believed it.

My ID and a few other important things were still at the wedding suite.

The next day, I didn't wait for Cora to come get me. I hailed a cab and went home myself.

The moment I walked in, I saw Allan Delgado standing in front of the full-length mirror in a cream, hand-embroidered suit.

"Cora, do I look good?"

Cora had her arms around his waist, doting on him.

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

My eyes darkened. My mother had made that suit for me with her own hands before she died.

Through her pain she'd imagined the man I'd grow into, and cut it to my father's build when he was young.

She wanted me to wear it after my own wedding, when I brought my wife home for a family holiday dinner. It was the last gift she ever gave me.

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

"That's my suit. Take it off."

The words came out flat and sudden, and startled them both.

Cora spoke first, surprised. "Emmet, how did you get here by your"

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

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

Her face was a tangle of things. Pure happiness was not one of them.

I looked at her, and let the sarcasm show. "Yesterday. Right when you dumped me in that abandoned factory and married another man. Disappointed, aren't you?"

For a moment Cora had nothing to say.

It was Allan who came toward me, eyes rimmed red.

"Emmet, don't blame Cora. She just has too strong a sense of responsibility. She didn't want people talking about me and the baby. Once you two register the marriage, you'll still be the real man of the house."

"I haven't been back to my hometown in a long time. My parents heard I'd had a wedding and told us to come home for a family dinner. The baby's a year old now. He should meet his grandparents."

"Cora only had me wear this suit because I didn't have anything decent on hand. I'll give it back right now"

He made a show of taking it off, tears spilling down his face in strings.

As if he were the one being humiliated.

Cora pressed his hands still and turned to me, displeased.

"Your parents are long dead. Where else do you have a home to go to, besides here with me? He may as well wear it. No sense letting it sit there wasted."

"Since you can see now, we might as well be plain about it. Allan and I have a son. There's no way I'm leaving the two of them out in the cold."

"But that doesn't mean I'm throwing you away, Emmet. From now on you and Allan get along. He goes out to the social functions with me, and you stay home and mind the child. You never fit in at those kinds of events anyway."

I couldn't spare the energy to argue with her ridiculous words, or the faint disgust threading her tone.

One thought kept circling in my head.

Their child was a year old?

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

Cora and I once had a daughter.

She'd worried she wouldn't look good in a wedding dress while pregnant, so we'd decided to hold the wedding after the baby was born.

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

I was destroyed by it. If Cora hadn't stayed at my side, I might have thrown myself off the roof.

So all that time she was playing the devoted partner in front of me, she was cheating?

No wonder in those weeks she was always saying she had to work late at the office, or sleeping in the study.

She'd been afraid I'd find out she was carrying another man's child.

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

Something dropped in my chest.

I got there before either of them.

The scene inside froze me where I stood.

The crib that had once belonged only to my daughter now held Cora and Allan's child.

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

Every picture had been swapped out for shots of the three of them together, mother, father, and son.

I looked at them, lost.

"Where are the photos of my daughter?"

Allan pressed his lips together and said quietly,

"Cora asked me and the baby to move in, but back home there's a saying. You can't hang photos of the dead in a bedroom. If they're already up, you have to burn them all, or the child gets 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. Emmet, we're both fathers. You can understand that, can't you?"

My eyes went to the trash can in the corner.

All that was left inside were the curled, charred scraps of the burned photographs.

"Baby, Daddy never even got to see your face"

I sank down unsteadily and touched them with my fingertip, and they crumbled into ash.

Someone had broken a beer bottle the night before, and the glass was mixed in with the rest. It sliced my finger open.

Cora's brow creased as she yanked me back to my feet.

"Emmet, get a grip. They're just a few photos. Do you really have to act like the whole world's wronged you?"

"Allan was thinking of the baby too. The dead have to make way for the living."

"Fine, I'll have someone reach out to the photographer from back then, see if he still has the negatives."

She said it as if it were nothing.

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

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

And the ones stored on Cora's phone had been wiped when her device malfunctioned.

Through all those sightless days, I had traced my daughter's brows and eyes over and over with careful fingers.

Dreaming 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.

Cora glanced at my finger, still bleeding.

"I'll get the antiseptic and a bandage. Don't let it get infected."

The moment she stepped out, Allan lifted a small ceramic portrait with a smile.

"Emmet, don't be so upset. Look, there's still this one. I dug it off your daughter's headstone myself."

On the little black-and-white photo was the face I had outlined countless times.

A bad feeling rose in my chest.

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

Allan smiled, letting the words hang.

"My precious son's been crying every night lately. He's not sick, so Cora brought in a master to take a look."

"He said little children are frail, that they draw in unclean things easily, that the boy needed to wear something charged with strong yang energy. Better still if a blood relative had worn it. Then the energy wouldn't reject him."

"Shame neither Cora nor I had anything like that. Lucky for us, your daughter's birth chart was pure yang, so Cora made the call and had her ashes made into two bracelets for my son. At least a dead-weight leech like you turned out to be good for something."

He dropped the ceramic portrait into my pocket and studied my expression.

"Emmet, aren't you sorry you got your sight back?"

"Otherwise you could've stayed a stupid, happy idiot, living in that pretty dream where you thought Cora actually loved you."

My mind went white. I stared at Allan.

The rage got away from me, and I struck him across the face. "The two of you are animals!"

I started toward the crib to pull the bracelet off.

But Allan suddenly shrieked, "Emmet, whatever your problem is, take it out on me. Don't hurt my baby!"

The next second a figure rushed in and slapped me hard.

The diamond ring on the ring finger cut my cheek, and blood ran down in a thin line.

Allan clutched the baby and hid behind Cora, sobbing.

"Cora, Emmet's furious that you're holding a wedding with me. He hit me, and he tried to strangle our son too."

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

Cora looked at me, her eyes full of disappointment.

"Emmet, when did you turn this cruel?"

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

I pointed at the bracelet on the baby boy's wrist and roared, my eyes bloodshot,

"You're the cruel ones. Do you dare say what that's made of?!"

Cora froze, 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 wished you blind for life. At least you were kinder then."

She took the baby, hooked her arm through Allan's, and looked at me without feeling.

"I'm going back to Allan's hometown with him. 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 a proper apology to him. Otherwise you can forget about signing the marriage papers."

Hah. She still thought I cared about that fake certificate?

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

Cornelia Lambert's face was pained; she tried to clean the wound for me, but I declined gently.

"Cornelia, I'm leaving. Please tell Cora for me that she and I are finished."

With that, I walked out the door without a backward glance.

At the Pearlport harbor docks, a private yacht had been waiting for me for some time.

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

I turned and looked at the blazing lights of Pearlport.

At thirteen, I had come here full of confusion and fear.

Later I met Cora, and I poured every bit of a young man's feeling and romance into this place, dreaming of building a family with her and a lifetime of happiness.

Now I was leaving, and all that was left was a chest full of hatred.

Cora, enjoy these next few days.

We'll see each other again soon.

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