The Heart That Wasn’t Mine, the Life I Never Asked For Chapter 04

The Heart That Wasn’t Mine, the Life I Never Asked For Chapter 04

Three years. Countless nights where I had nearly done exactly that, grabbed a knife and cut out the heart myself.

But every time I picked up anything sharp, I thought of my mother. Stage-four cancer. Waiting for me.

I told myself: just a few more days. For her.

A few days became a few more.

Three years slipped by.

This time, I swallowed every instinct screaming inside me and gave in.

“Ethan. I’ll do it. I’ll give Jasmine the blood.”

Three full bags drained out of me.

Cold crept in from somewhere I couldn’t locate.

My body shook without my permission, a low ringing building in both ears.

I thought: this might be it.

Then I heard Jasmine’s voice, soft and genuinely startled.

“Mr. Shaw, Savannah’s not well. Can she really give this much blood?”

“The doctor told me it’s just my period coming early. You didn’t need to rush like this.”

Her words detonated in my skull.

I looked at Ethan. Tears burned down my face without warning. And then everything went dark.

When I came to, I was in a hospital room.

I could hear nurses talking in the hallway.

“It’s so romantic—”

“Shaw Group CEO proposes on a luxury yacht…”

I pulled myself upright and pushed the door open.

The hallway screen was replaying the footage. Ethan on one knee, eyes full of something I had never seen him look at me with.

And I remembered something Vivienne had whispered to me once, eyes bright with a secret she couldn’t keep.

“Savannah, my brother likes you.”

“He’s been asking me what kind of proposal you’d want.”

I’d told her: on a yacht.

Ethan had done it. Just not for me.

My heart lurched. My phone buzzed with a reminder from the hospital.

[Ms. Cole, your surgery window is approaching. Do you still wish to proceed?]

I walked away from the screen and typed back.

[Yes.]

The extraction went smoothly that afternoon.

When I woke up, the rhythm in my chest was different. Mechanical, steady, indifferent to whatever I felt.

A mechanical heart. No more seizing every time Ethan looked at me a certain way.

Tears slid down into my pillow.

My phone rang.

“Savannah. Three days from now is Vivienne’s anniversary. You remember what you’re supposed to do.”

Ethan’s voice. Flat. A reminder he’d delivered every year like clockwork.

I turned my head toward the cooler sitting on the nightstand, Vivienne’s heart packed in ice, and spoke quietly.

“I remember.”

Vivienne had loved extreme sports.

Every year on her anniversary, Ethan and his friends forced me to attempt something from her list.

Three years of it. Me, terrified every single time, teeth clenched, pushing through.

This year, I didn’t have to.

Because the heart was already on its way back to him.

I hung up and stayed in the hospital until the day of Vivienne’s anniversary.

Then I checked out and drove to Chicago’s most exclusive private cemetery.

I’d barely reached Vivienne’s grave when I heard Ethan’s friends laughing nearby.

“Shaw, this year’s challenge is gonna be insane. She’s going to wet herself.”

“You can’t go soft on us, man.”

“Me? Go soft?”

“On the person who killed Vivienne?”

“I want her dead. I want to rip Vivienne’s heart back out of her chest myself.”

Ethan’s voice. Contemptuous, unbothered.

My mechanical heart kept its even tempo.

I walked toward them, cooler in hand, until Ethan saw me.

He looked at me with his usual cold indifference and opened his mouth.

“Savannah. This year’s challenge—”

I held out the cooler and cut him off.

“Ethan. I won’t be doing the challenge this year.”

“Because I already had Vivienne’s heart removed.”

“I’m returning it to you now.”