I told him how I’d been born with a congenital heart defect, and after defying all the doctors’ predictions and living beyond my first year of life, I spent my entire childhood battling illness, infection, tests, weakness, germs, fear, needles, pain. Doctors were always telling my parents to prepare for the worst, but even at my lowest points, I’d bounced back every time, sometimes even stronger than the last.
“But,” I continued, “last year was different. Something inside me had changed irreparably, and for the first time in my life, I knew the doctors were right. My heart was finally giving out, and no amount of machinery or medication could keep it beating. I was at a client’s holiday party in SoHo when I passed out and hit my head, and when I woke up, I was in the hospital, connected to dozens of tubes and machines. I didn’t even have the strength to lift my head off the pillow, to tell them I was still there, to say my goodbyes. My parents held my hands as the doctor’s news settled over the room like a cold, dark shadow, and then everything went black.”
“Holy shit, Maddie.”
“When I finally came to again,” I said, “I thought I was dead. I opened my eyes and all I saw was a bright, white light. I thought I was supposed to follow it—that’s what everyone says, right?” I laughed. “But it turns out it was just my window. There was a storm in New York City, snow blowing all sideways and crazy like it is tonight. It was Christmas day. They wouldn’t let my family in yet, but the doctors and nurses were there. They said I’d flatlined three times, but they brought me back, and now it looked like I was here to stay. The surgeon told me I had a new scar for my collection, and underneath it, the heart of a seventeen-year-old girl beating inside my chest.”
I grabbed Hawke’s hand and slid it inside my shirt, pressing it to my bare chest. To my scar and the wild heart beating beneath it. “I guess I was just… I don’t know. Afraid to let you see it. Afraid of what you’d think.”
Hawke didn’t say anything at first, just sat with me, warm hand pressed to my bare skin, his eyes full of emotion.
When he finally spoke, it was barely a whisper. “Do you really think you’re any less beautiful to me—any less incredible—because of a scar?”
“No, not like that. It’s…” I closed my eyes, trying to find a way to explain it. To put my jumbled thoughts into words. “You were right, all that stuff you said before. Ilovethe way you touch me. The things you do to me. The way you make me feel. When I’m with you, when you’re touching me like that, you don’t hold back. I feeleverything. And I guess I just…” I blew out a breath, my heart ramping up again, that old fear rising inside. “You’re this strong, amazing, super-powerful wolf shifter who can stand naked in the middle of a blizzard without getting so much as chapped lips, and I’m… I’m a human woman who needs someone else’s heart and a dozen pills a day just to stay alive. I guess I was scared you’d see my scar and think I was sick or weak—like I wouldn’t be able to handle the way you’ve been touching me. And then you’d stop touching me altogether, which—”
Hawke fisted my hair and claimed me with a bruising kiss, so wild and ferocious it hurt. When he finally pulled away, my lips were swollen, and both of us were panting.
“Madison Lockwood, you are the strongest, most fierce, most stubborn, most passionate, most incredible, craziest, most pain-in-the-ass woman I’ve ever met.Nothingcould change my mind about that.” He pressed his hand flat against my chest again, his eyes blazing in the firelight. “You have someone else’s heart beating in your chest, and you’re fuckingalivebecause of it. You’reherebecause of it. You survived.That’swhat this scar means—survival. Not sickness. Not weakness. Survival. So wear it like a fucking badge of honor, because that’s what it is.”
Keeping his gaze locked on mine, Hawke ran his fingers along the thick red ridge bisecting my chest, marking the greatbeforeandafterof my life. Before, I couldn’t walk up a flight of stairs without stopping to rest. I couldn’t hike with my family in the Colorado summers. I couldn’t play hide-and-seek with my nieces or go whitewater rafting or meet my friends anywhere in New York without flagging down a taxi, even if it was just three blocks away.
But after?
After, I could breathe again. After, I could run. I could hike. I could live.
I could love.
Hawke was right—my scarwasa badge of honor.
In that moment, sitting in his lap, my hands warm on his broad shoulders, I smiled for the girl whose heart now beat in my chest, and I wondered if she’d ever been in love. If this very heart had ever beat so wildly, so passionately for another person.
I hoped it had. I sensed it knew what it was doing. That it wouldn’t let me down.
I thought again of the North star. The bright light in the storm. My Christmas wish.
I’d been given another second chance tonight—with my life. With Hawke.
Now, all I had to do was reach out and take it.
