My heart stops.
Not only are her bare breasts on full display a few inches away from my face, but so is the large scar between them.
Down the center of her chest, running from her collarbones to just below her breasts, is a long, pale pink scar that looks to be a number of years old.
Leaning forward, I press my lips to the center of the scar, dragging my lips down to the end of the line before kissing the path up to the top. I look up at her through my lashes, my eyes asking a million questions.
She grabs my face, planting a soft kiss on my lips.
My hands on her hips travel up her waist, to her ribs, and round her shoulders before gently resting on her neck. “Baby,” I breathe, throat tight as a tornado of thoughts swirl around in my head.
She looks at me, eyes vulnerable. “When I was born,” she starts off shakily, her eyes drifting down to the pad of her finger that’s tracing my collarbone to distract herself. “I had a heart complication. The first few weeks of my life, I had multiple surgeries on my heart to get it working properly. I was fine for a while, my problems were manageable, but when I turned ten my heart became unrepairable.”
Tears pool in her eyes and she tips her head back to keep them at bay. She grabs her shirt, next to us on the bed, and uses the sleeve to wipe her eyes before draping the fabric over her bare chest, hugging it to her.
“At ten years old I had to have a heart transplant,” she continues. “I was put on the waiting list, and just when I thought I was never going to get a heart in time, one showed up at the last minute that was a match. The heart they brought in was Cora’s daughter’s. Her daughter was walking home from school that day and got struck by a car.”
Tears pour down her cheeks and my chest grows uncomfortably tight.
“They brought her to the hospital and pronounced her brain dead. Cora was absolutely devastated, as any parent would be, but as a nurse she knew she had to act fast and make the toughest decision of her life. She knew her daughter wasn’t going to come back, so she decided to donate her organs to other dying kids who could be saved, and give them a fighting chance. She didn’t want any kid to go through what her daughter went through, or any parent to go through what she went through.”
Her tone changes halfway through her last sentence, sounding hard, cynical.
“When I woke up from surgery”—she swallows thickly—“the only person by my bedside was Cora. My parents, they were gone.”
I jerk my head back, utterly confused. “What?”
She wipes away more tears falling from her eyes. “Stan and Monica, they’re not my real parents. They’re my adoptive parents,” she confesses, throwing me for a loop. “My real parents split during the transplant. They claimed it was too much and that they would never be able to afford all my hospital bills.”
Anger bubbles inside my chest. “They can’t do that,” I argue, not knowing how any parent could just up and leave a kid who just came off of the operating table.
A small, bitter laugh escapes the back of her throat. “They did. After I recovered from surgery I was placed in foster care, but no one wanted a kid with my medical history. Cora wanted to adopt me herself, but she knew she didn’t have the funds or the time with her job to take care of me like someone else could. But she always stuck by my side, her daughter a piece of me, and finally I found Stan and Monica. As transplant recipients themselves, they understood and accepted me with open arms.”
A genuine but sad smile makes its way onto her lips. “They adopted me when I was thirteen, and I moved to Georgia with them. Cora came along with me,” she explains. “She feels like her daughter is a large piece of me that she can’t let go of quite yet.”
Oh this girl. My sweet, strong, beautiful girl. I don’t know how I didn’t figure it out sooner. Never in a million years would I have guessed she’d grown up the way she did. That our stories could ever compare.
I grab her face in my hands, bringing her lips to mine in a desperate kiss. I kiss her fervently, conveying just how much I adore her.
“You are so, so strong,” I praise her, placing stray kisses along her neck and shoulders. “I don’t know how you did it,” I confess. Not once has she ever given the slightest hint about her shocking past. Despite all the misfortune, she came out on top, seemingly unaffected.
Now it’s her turn to grab my face, looking me in the eyes. “I didn’t become a prisoner to my past,” she says, voice packed with meaning, her message directed to me. “An unfortunate past isn’t a life sentence.”
I feel as though she just punched me in the gut, knocking some sense into me. I never looked at it that way. I was always so focused on being such a miserable, angry kid because my mother was such a shitty parent that I never cared to give anyone else a chance. I was so consumed by my past that I forgot to enjoy the present half of the time.
So completely in awe and mesmerized by her, I reclaim her lips with mine, kissing her with everything I have. I trail my hands all over her body, not missing a single beautiful inch.
If I could, I would flip her over right now and worship every inch of her body, not leaving a single part of her untouched. I want her to feel beautiful, desired, loved.Whole. Because she is so far from broken.
I won’t make love to her right now, though. I’m not sure if I’d even be able to properly with all my injuries, but that doesn’t mean I can’t hold her close and profess my unyielding love for her.
Tenderly, I grab the shirt draped over her chest and remove it, throwing it to the side and exposing her to me once again. I admire her for a moment before leaning back in and pressing my lips to her damaged skin, my hands running up and down her back, sending a shiver down her spine.
She threads her hands through my hair, letting out a small sigh of appreciation.
“So damn beautiful,” I murmur against her skin, kissing every available inch. “I love you,” I breathe against her lips.
She smiles into the kiss. “I love you too.”
