The Echo of His Heart
The hospital administrator’s words hung in the air, each one a hammer blow to the foundation of my life. For a long moment, I said nothing, the frantic thumping of his heart on the other end of the line the only sound in my silent world.
“I see,” I finally managed to say, my voice a hollow echo of itself.
The moment I hung up, the bedroom door flew open. Julian stormed in, his face a mask of raw panic I had never seen before. He grabbed my hand, his grip like iron, and started pulling me toward the door without a single word of explanation.
“You’re coming with me!”
He dragged me, stumbling, out to his car. The engine roared to life, and we peeled out onto the street, a streak of silver and fury. We blew through red lights, the city blurring into a kaleidoscope of meaningless color. The only sounds were the scream of the wind and the percussive *thump-thump-thump* of his fingers drumming impatiently on the steering wheel, a frantic rhythm that mirrored the chaos in his eyes.
My mind, strangely numb, drifted back through the years. I remembered the chase, the relentless, all-consuming pursuit of Julian Thorne. I had become a society laughingstock, the woman who’d debased herself to marry him. And through it all—the sterile ceremony, the wedding photos where his smile never reached his eyes, even our first night as husband and wife—he had been a ghost. A cool, detached presence, incapable of this kind of white-hot emotion.
There was only one person who could ignite such a fire in him. And it wasn’t me.
Minutes later, the car screeched to a halt in front of a hospital. A sick sense of déjà vu washed over me. It turned out his childhood sweetheart, the ghost he’d never exorcised, Isabelle Vance, had been in a car accident. She was losing blood, and she needed a rare type.
My type.
A nurse, her face as frantic as Julian’s, rushed toward us. “We need to get you to the lab, now!” She tried to pull me along, but I planted my feet, my gaze locking on my husband.
“Julian,” I said, my voice surprisingly steady. “I’ll do it. But first, you have to answer a question for me.”
His face tightened with impatience. “Clara, whatever you think about Isabelle and me, I’ll explain later.”
I shook my head, a slow, deliberate motion. “It’s not about that.”
I didn’t care about his relationship with Isabelle. After all, he was never the one I loved.
There has only ever been one man I loved.
Leo.
He died saving me, caught in a multi-car pile-up that should have taken us both. His last wish was to donate his organs. And I, desperate to feel his heart beat just one more time, had moved heaven and earth to find the recipient.
That search led me to him. Julian Thorne. The powerful, enigmatic CEO of Thorne Industries.
So began my new crusade. Everyone in our circle thought I was madly in love with him, a pathetic social climber clinging to a man who clearly didn't want her. They weren't entirely wrong about the pathetic part. But they were wrong about the love.
I knew about Isabelle, of course. His first and only love. They were the golden couple everyone assumed would end up together, until she’d broken his heart with a devastating, "Let's just be friends forever," and fled to Europe. She’d dated a string of men, plastering their glamorous life all over social media, while Julian waited, a stoic sentinel guarding a flame only he could see. He’d only agreed to marry me in a fit of pique, the day after she posted a picture of a new diamond on her finger. A spiteful, petty act. And I had gratefully accepted the crumbs.
“Just one question,” I said, my voice cutting through the hospital’s sterile hum. “The heart transplant you had four years ago. What was the donor’s name?”
Julian frowned, confused by the question but too desperate to argue. Isabelle’s life was on the line.
“I only know his last name,” he clipped out. “It was Chen.”
*Chen*. A world away from Leo’s name.
So, the call was right. It was all a mistake. My life, these past four years, a lie built on a phantom connection.
“Thank you. I understand now,” I nodded, turning to follow the nurse. A strange calm settled over me.
As I reached the door of the donation room, his voice, laced with a sudden, inexplicable anxiety, stopped me. “Why did you ask that?”
I paused but didn't turn around. My expression remained placid, as if we were discussing the weather.
“Just confirming something.”
*Confirming that I don’t need you anymore.*
The needle slid into my vein. As my blood, the very life force he needed for *her*, began to flow into the collection bag, I pulled out my phone with my free hand. I opened a text to my lawyer.
*Get the divorce papers ready. I want out.*
After they took what felt like half the blood in my body, my head spun. I stumbled out of the room, leaning against the cool wall for support, and saw him. Julian was by Isabelle’s side as they wheeled her out of surgery. He was clutching her hand, his head bent low, murmuring words I couldn’t hear but whose meaning was written in the tender curve of his spine, the worshipful gaze in his eyes.
He never once looked up. Never wondered if his wife, who had a history of anemia, was okay. It was as if I didn’t exist.
So I left.
Back at the sterile, silent mansion he called home, I went straight to the kitchen. My face in the reflection of the polished chrome refrigerator was a pale, ghostly mask. I needed something to replenish my strength. I decided to make a hot, sweet honey-and-lemon tea, the way Leo used to.
I’d just poured the steaming liquid into a mug when a wave of dizziness washed over me. My grip failed. The mug crashed to the marble floor, shattering into a dozen pieces.
And just like that, I, the woman who had endured years of public humiliation and private neglect without shedding a tear, felt my eyes burn.
“Leo…” I whispered to the empty room, my voice cracking. “I really can’t do anything right without you.”
The dark, sticky liquid pooled at my feet, and the memory hit me with the force of a physical blow.
Back then, I had the perfect love. Back then, Leo was still alive.
I always had terrible circulation, and my period would leave me doubled over in pain. Every single month, without fail, Leo would brew me a special ginger tea with brown sugar, blowing on each spoonful until it was the perfect temperature before feeding it to me. Sometimes I’d be bratty, a hormonal mess, and he’d just pull me into his lap, his large, warm hands pressing against my stomach. “This way, the pain can’t get in,” he’d say.
When I was irritable and lashed out, he’d sit beside me and take it, letting me punch his arm or yell until I was spent. Then he’d gently take my hands, blow on my knuckles, and ask with genuine concern, “Did you hurt yourself?”
I knelt, carefully picking up the sharp, porcelain shards. A searing pain shot through my fingertip. I’d sliced it open. I don’t know if it was the sting of the glass or something else, but the tears finally came, fat and hot, splashing onto the floor and mixing with the spilled tea.
“How could I have been so blind?” I sobbed, the words tearing from my throat. “You loved me so much, Leo. Your heart would have beat for me. Julian’s… his was always so cold, so quiet.”
I threw the last of the pieces into the trash and managed a watery, broken laugh. “But it’s okay. We’ll be together again soon.”
The next day, Julian still hadn’t come home. After a shower, I went to see my lawyer. A freshly printed divorce agreement sat on the polished mahogany desk between us.
“Ms. Thorne,” he said gently, “once both parties have signed, there’s a mandatory one-month cooling-off period, and then the divorce will be finalized.”
I thought of Julian, who hadn’t even bothered to call. “Can I sign for him?”
“Absolutely not, Ms. Thorne! That would be illegal,” the lawyer insisted, shaking his head vehemently.
“He wants this divorce too,” I pressed, my voice desperate. “He’s just… busy. I can sign on his behalf. Here, I’ll call him right now and you can hear for yourself.”
I pulled out my phone and dialed Julian’s number. After an eternity of ringing, he finally picked up. I didn’t waste time with pleasantries.
“I need to discuss something with you…”
“I’m busy,” he cut me off, his voice flat and devoid of emotion. “Just handle it. I don’t need to be consulted.”
Before I could reply, another voice bled through the line—a sickly sweet coo I recognized instantly. “Julian, the medicine is so bitter… Do I have to drink it?”
As the line went dead, I could just make out Julian’s reply, laced with a tenderness he had never once shown me. “Yes, you do. How else are you going to get better?”
I looked at the lawyer, my expression blank. He’d heard enough. With a reluctant sigh, he nodded his assent. I let out a breath I hadn’t realized I was holding and, with a steady hand, forged my husband’s signature on the line next to my own.
Walking out of the law firm, I took out my phone again. I booked a one-way flight to Port Blossom, for one month from today.
* * *
It was a week before Julian came home.
He slipped into the room in the dead of night, carrying the chill of the outside air with him. I was half-asleep and barely registered his presence until the mattress dipped beside me and his arm instinctively wrapped around my waist, pulling me against him.
My eyes flew open. I shoved him away, scrambling to the far edge of the bed.
Julian, stunned by the first real rejection I had ever given him, propped himself up on an elbow. A deep frown creased his forehead. “What’s wrong with you? Don’t you need to listen to my heartbeat to fall asleep?”
For three years, it was the one and only thing I had ever asked of him. Right after we were married, with nothing to show for it but a piece of paper, I had curled up against his chest, my ear pressed to his heart.
He’d asked me why.
I’d looked up at him, the moonlight catching the tears in my eyes, my voice thick with a love he thought was for him. “Because I love the sound of your heart,” I’d whispered. “Can I fall asleep listening to it every night?”
Perhaps it was the raw adoration in my eyes that night, so potent it was impossible to deny. Miraculously, he had agreed. And it had become our ritual. Every night he was home, I would nestle into his arms, my head finding its familiar place over his heart.
But tonight, after a moment’s hesitation, I just shook my head.
“Not anymore.”
I turned my back to him. In the pale moonlight filtering through the window, I could feel his gaze on my curled-up form. A strange, unsettling feeling crept into the space between us.
It was the first time I hadn't clung to him, hadn't sought his reluctant comfort. He’d never wanted my affection, so he should have been pleased. Relieved, even. But as he lay there in the dark, an unfamiliar emptiness echoed in his chest.
*It’s just habit,* he probably told himself. *I’m just used to her being there.*
The next morning, I slept late. When I came downstairs, I was surprised to find Julian still there, sitting at the breakfast table. The words slipped out before I could stop them. “Aren’t you going to the hospital to see Isabelle today?”
His expression, which had been tense, suddenly softened. A wave of relief washed over his face. So that was it. He thought I was just jealous.
“Isabelle is just a friend, Clara,” he said, with a patience he rarely afforded me. “She just got back in the country and then the accident happened. I was just looking out for her. She’s been discharged now.”
He paused, then added, as if offering an olive branch, “You wanted me to take you to see the sunset from the overlook, didn’t you? I haven’t been around much. As an apology, let’s go today.”
“No, thank you.”
Now that I knew the truth, now that the divorce was in motion, there was no point in continuing this charade. But my refusal only seemed to cement his theory. Convinced he was making a grand, romantic gesture, he ignored my protest and had the car brought around.
I didn’t argue further. I just sat in silence as we drove out of the city and up the winding mountain road. We had just reached the summit, the sky beginning to blush with the colors of evening, when his phone rang.
The name on the screen flashed for a brief second, but it was enough. *Isabelle*.
I couldn’t hear her side of the conversation, but after he hung up, he hesitated for only a moment before getting back in the car.
“I’ll be right back to get you,” he said, leaving me alone on the mountaintop.
He never came back.
I waited as the sun dipped below the horizon, painting the sky in fiery strokes of orange and purple before fading to a bruised indigo. There was no cell service, no way to call a cab. I just stood there until the last bit of light was gone, then I started walking.
The road was steep, and even though it was paved, by the time I reached the base of the mountain, my feet were rubbed raw, blisters forming on my heels. I finally got a signal and was about to call an Uber when a text message lit up my screen. It was from one of Julian’s inner circle, a man named Derek.
*Emergency. Get to Nocturne. Now.*
Julian’s friends despised me. To them, I was the desperate woman who had trapped their friend, the unworthy replacement for their sainted Isabelle. They never contacted me. For them to reach out now, it had to be serious. My first thought wasn’t for Julian’s safety, but for my divorce. If something happened to him now, it would complicate everything.
I hailed the first cab I saw and gave the driver the address for the exclusive downtown club.
I found the private room number they’d sent and pushed open the door. The moment I stepped inside, my foot caught on a tripwire. I pitched forward, my head cracking hard against the edge of a low-slung table. Stars exploded behind my eyes. I reached up to my forehead and my fingers came away sticky and wet.
Before I could even process the pain, the door slammed shut and a bucket of ice-cold water was dumped over my head.
*“Hahaha! Look at her! Like a drowned rat!”*
*“More like a wet dog, man. A pathetic, wet dog!”*
The room erupted in jeering laughter. The air conditioning blasted down on my soaked clothes, and I started to shiver uncontrollably. Water dripped from my hair into my eyes, blurring the faces of my tormentors. It was all just a cruel joke. I wiped my face with the back of my hand, my expression remaining a cold, blank mask.
My lack of reaction seemed to bore them. One of them, a smug-looking man named Nash, pulled out his phone. “Hey, doormat,” he sneered. “Just wanted to let you know, the queen is back.”
He held the phone in front of my face. It was a live feed from another room in the club. Julian was kneeling on the floor, gently massaging Isabelle’s ankle, his expression softer and more loving than I had ever seen it.
“See that?” Nash gloated. “Julian ditched you on that mountain for her welcome home party. Isabelle just twisted her ankle a little, and he carried her out of the game like she was made of glass. Has he ever looked at you like that? Has he ever touched you with that much care? Just give up. Do everyone a favor and get out of the way before he throws you out with the trash.”
I struggled to my feet, ignoring the throbbing in my head and the sting in my feet. I looked at the circle of sneering faces, my voice low and even, cutting through their laughter like a shard of ice.
“You can relax. I’ll make way.” I met Nash’s gaze, my eyes dark and empty. “Because I don't love him either.”
First, search for and download the MotoNovel app from Google. Then, open the app and use the code "264754" to read the entire book.
MotoNovel
Novellia
Bookworm« Previous Post
His Mistress Killed My Mother
Next Post »
My House, My Rules