Of Fractured Vows and Broken Hearts

Shane stood rigidly in place, his face livid, his fist clenched so tightly it creaked.

"Lily, your mother is still—"

Before he could finish, Fleur cut in with a bright, ringing voice.

"Shane, how could she possibly divorce you? She's just threatening you."

That single sentence set off a chain reaction.

Shane hated being threatened more than anything. Without another word, he went through the divorce formalities.

"Lily, if you want to make trouble, I'll play along! Thirty days of the cooling-off period—that's more than enough time for you to regret this and beg me!"

He didn't look at me again. Instead, he took Fleur by the hand and strode away.

Fleur, however, peeked over his shoulder and winked at me, her tone playful as she reminded me, "Today's Thursday. No need to wait for Shane tonight! Bye-bye!"

It was almost laughable. Though I was Shane's wife, I was only allowed to have him on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday nights.

Because Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday were Fleur's shifts at the divorce counter.

She said she absorbed too much negativity at work during the day, and living alone at night made her prone to dark thoughts.

I had fought and screamed about it before. To keep him, I had even stepped barefoot on shattered glass, sobbing and begging.

Shane hesitated for two seconds, then raised his hand and called an ambulance for me, saying helplessly, "Lily, why are you acting like Fleur now… She's immature. Are you immature too? Sigh, I really have no choice. I can't just watch something happen to her."

He was always helpless. Always had no choice. Always so righteously self-sacrificing.

Fortunately, I no longer wanted to hear it.

When I got home and washed the filth from my body, I predictably came down with a fever.

As I rummaged through drawers for fever medicine, my phone kept chiming nonstop. A string of trending local headlines popped up.

[Most Beautiful Registrar Bravely Exposes the 'Poison King's' True Colors]

[Lily Marshall Steals Someone Else's Man and Climbs to the Top!]

The comment section was exploding with outrage.

[Trash like this should've been called out a long time ago! Fleur did great! Does this count as a public service?]

[Lily Marshall? Oh, I know her. She's the famous 'campus bicycle' at Hallstone University—always stealing her upperclassmen's boyfriends. No idea how she got voted Most Beautiful Couple. Did she sleep with every judge?]

[Disgusting. AIDS and syphilis aren't punishment enough for her. Why is she still breathing—just to pollute the air?]

[The whole family's rotten. Her parents ended up in the hospital? That's called karma.]

Reading those vicious comments, I still couldn't stop myself from trembling.

The next second, my phone and my father's phone lit up at the same time.

"Dad, I finalized the divorce."

"Lily, come home. If the sky falls, I'll hold it up for you."

The tears came before I could stop them. In that moment, I felt completely at peace.

That night, I didn't bombard Shane with calls. I didn't torture myself by staring at the ambiguous photos Fleur sent me until dawn.

I lay down and fell into a heavy sleep.

I never expected Shane to stagger home drunk in the middle of the night.

Passing through the living room, he tripped over two suitcases, and his heart skipped a beat.

But he quickly noticed they were empty and light. A knowing smile tugged at his lips.

He thought it was just another act of mine to make him coax me.

He shoved open the bedroom door and collapsed onto me like a burning mountain.

"Lily, ten years after graduating from Hallstone University, you and I are still the most popular love fairy tale… Even today, an alum left a message asking when our little baby will be born."

My hand froze as I tried to push him away.

Back then, the love story between a third-year finance prodigy and a first-year literature beauty had been blazing and intense.

Shane had poured all the romance a student could muster into courting me, writing no fewer than ten thousand handwritten love letters.

He proposed the moment I graduated and transferred shares of his startup to me outright.

Those first five sweet years turned into endless bitterness the year Fleur returned from abroad with an entire box of letters.

Only then did I realize every love letter he had written me was a copy of the ones he had once written her—only the name had been changed.

With the current public opinion raging, his words about "having a baby" were hardly a blessing.

I blinked hard, forcing back the sting in my eyes, and let out a soft laugh.

"Shane, how do you even have the nerve to say that?"

He leaned closer in a daze, rubbing my cheeks over and over.

"Don't cry, don't cry. Haven't you always wanted a child? I actually—"

The bedroom door flew open. Fleur stormed in, her face twisted with jealousy.

"Shane! You promised me you wouldn't touch her!"