Borrowed Heartbeats

The first time he sa w her, she was walking through a garden of white lilies. She didn’t speak. Just smiled. Her eyes were soft, yet deeply sad. Like she was searching for something she had already lost. Then he woke up

Jake sat upright in bed, drenched in sweat, heart pounding like a runaway drum. He didn’t know her name. He’d never seen her before. But somehow… it felt like she knew him. Jake had been different ever since the transplant. A rare condition had left his heart barely functioning by the age of twenty-seven. The doctors said he got lucky. A perfect match. An anonymous donor, no questions asked.

But the dreams started three weeks later.

Always the same woman. Always the same eyes. He began sketching her face every morning after waking. His fingers seemed to remember the shape of her lips, the curve of her chin. Each stroke felt familiar, almost instinctive.

He told no one. How could he explain this growing obsession with someone who only existed in his sleep?

Claire’s mornings had become quiet since Daniel died. Her fiancé was everything soft and beautiful in the world. A school teacher who wrote poetry in the margins of receipts, who sang to her while folding laundry.

He was on his way to pick up flowers for their engagement shoot when the accident happened. A truck driver fell asleep at the wheel. The impact was instant.

His heart — the one that whispered sonnets in her ear — had gone to someone else.

She had signed the papers. She had said yes. Because Daniel always said, “If anything happens to me, give my heart away. Let it keep loving.”

But she never imagined it would hurt this much.

Claire didn’t know why she walked into the gallery that afternoon. She had been passing by, lost in her thoughts, when something pulled her inside. The place smelled of paint and rain. Soft jazz floated in the air. And there — on the far wall — hung a sketch of a woman’s face. Her face. She froze.It was her. Every detail exact. The eyes, the lips, even the scar near her brow from when she fell off a bike at twelve.

Below the sketch, a single title:

“Dream #6 – Unknown Woman”

By Jake Carter

Her legs weakened. Her breath vanished.She turned toward the artist’s table — and there he was.Jake saw her, and time stopped.The woman from his dreams stood before him in a pale green sweater, holding her breath.“You,” he whispered.Claire stepped closer. “Where did you… how do you know me?”“I… I don’t,” he stammered. “Only from dreams. Since my surgery. I see you every night.”

Claire's hands trembled.What surgery?” she asked. Heart transplant,” he said. “Three months ago.”Her lips parted, but no sound came out. She stepped back slightly, as if hit by invisible wind. My fiancé,” she whispered. “He… he was your donor.”

The world tilted.

They sat at a small table in the corner of the gallery, neither knowing how to begin.

Jake looked at her as if trying to piece himself back together.

“You were engaged to him?”

Claire nodded. “Daniel. He died in February. He had your blood type. He asked me to donate everything… especially his heart. He said it deserved to keep beating.”

Jake placed his hand over his chest, suddenly aware of the rhythm beneath his ribs.

“I think it remembers you,” he said softly.

Claire’s eyes filled with tears. “You dream of me because you carry the part of him that knew me best.”

Over the next few weeks, they saw each other often.

At first, it was quiet. Careful.

Coffee in the park. Silent walks through bookstores. Sometimes no words were needed. Just proximity. Just being near each other.

Jake started remembering things he couldn’t possibly know. A song Daniel used to sing. A cabin they had once stayed at. A phrase Claire used when upset: “I’m not mad, I’m just made of thunder right now.”

I’ve never heard that before,” he said one day, smiling.

Claire’s eyes welled up. “That was our phrase.”

They didn’t kiss.

Not yet.

But one night, after a long walk beneath golden streetlamps, he reached out and held her hand.

It fit perfectly.

The feelings came slowly, then all at once.

Jake couldn’t stop thinking about her laugh — how it lit up the space between silence. How her presence made the heart in his chest race and settle at the same time.

Claire, too, was torn.

Was it wrong to fall for the man who carried Daniel’s heart?

Was it even Jake she loved… or the echoes of her lost fiancé?

But then Jake kissed her.

Softly. Tenderly.

And her knees buckled.

It wasn’t Daniel’s kiss.

It was Jake’s.

And it felt like the beginning of something beautiful — not the ghost of something gone.

One night, Jake brought her to the cabin Daniel used to love.

They lit a fire. Drank tea. Watched snow fall like whispers.

Jake touched her cheek and whispered, “Do you ever wonder if he meant for us to find each other?”

Claire leaned in, her voice trembling. “Maybe love never really ends. Maybe it just finds a new home.”

They made love that night — slowly, as if afraid the moment might shatter. Their bodies tangled like vines. Their mouths wrote new stories on old pages. Every kiss was permission. Every touch, a promise.

And for the first time in years, Claire didn’t feel haunted.

She felt alive.

But life has a way of testing love.

Jake started feeling strange again.

Shortness of breath. Fainting spells. Racing heartbeats in the middle of the night.

Claire insisted on seeing his cardiologist.

After a dozen scans and nervous waiting, the doctor spoke.

“There’s a complication. His body may be rejecting the transplant.”

Claire went cold.

“No,” she whispered.

Jake held her hand. “It’s okay. We caught it early.”

But it wasn’t okay.

It got worse.

The rejection became more aggressive. His body turned against the very thing that saved him.

Against Daniel’s heart.

Against her second chance at love.

In the hospital room, days before surgery, Claire sat beside Jake, holding his pale hand.

“They say I might need a new transplant,” he whispered, voice raspy. “There’s a chance I… I won’t make it.”

She shook her head. “Don’t say that.”

He touched her lips. “If I go… remember this: you brought me back to life. You weren’t a chapter. You were the whole damn story.”

Tears spilled down her cheeks.

I can’t lose you too.”

He smiled faintly.

You never lost Daniel. You won't lose me either. Because love doesn’t die.”

The surgery happened on a rainy morning.

Claire waited for ten hours, pacing, praying, gripping an old note Daniel once wrote her:

If I can't hold your hand, I hope someone else will — someone who carries my heart. And I hope they love you even harder than I ever could."

The doctor came out.

He was smiling.

He made it.”

Jake’s recovery was slow, but steady.

The new heart wasn’t Daniel’s.

But it was his.

And when he looked at Claire from the hospital bed, weak but alive, she realized something:

Love wasn’t borrowed.

It wasn’t about a heartbeat.

It was about the soul that heard it — and loved it anyway.

Months later, Jake proposed to her in the same garden she first appeared in his dream.

There were lilies everywhere.

He placed a ring on her finger and said: “This time, I dream with open eyes.” Claire laughed, cried, and said yes. Not because he carried Daniel’s heart.But because he had won hers.