Our Missing Hearts Audiobook Novels & Stories

he screamed. Hopelessness washed over me as I watched the tip of the blade get closer and closer. I squeezed my eyes shut, but the pain that I expected to feel never came. I opened my eyes, only to see James shielding me. The knife had pierced his heart through his back, and blood leaked endlessly from his lips. "I'm… filled with so much regret… Katherine. If I had… cherished you… perhaps we… could have grown old… together…" He reached out a hand, wanting to caress my cheek, but in the end, it fell bonelessly to his side before it reached me.

The Heartwood was the library, and the Remembering Heart was its librarian, its teacher, its comforting spirit. Eons flowed. The Remembering Heart watched over the flourishing multiverse. It saw new civilizations rise, make their own mistakes, and find their own wisdom. It never interfered. It only remembered, and when the moment was right, it would offer a fragment of feeling, a ghost of a memory, to guide a lost soul or comfort a grieving one.

His scent clings - rock dust, storm air, warmth that's just him. “You okay? What went wrong?” I step away, eyes scanning for injuries. “It spoke to me,” he murmurs, face pressed into my cloak. Not loud - just a whisper through fabric. The Heart felt lonely, it didn’t want me to leave. His gaze lifts, soft brown locking onto mine. There, inside those eyes: my reckless hope, Noah’s quiet strength. Staying wasn’t possible, so I told it that instead - I’d return. That I’d hear what it had to say

but a pre-recorded message Clara had left in the estate’s bedrock, a fail-safe for the daughter she knew would eventually break. "Hope," the projection said, its voice as warm as a summer afternoon in Port Trinity. "If you are seeing this, it means the Audit has reached the house. It means you chose the Key over the Heart. And I need you to know... I’m not angry. I’m just sorry." Hope reached out, her fingers passing through the light of her mother’s image. "Mom... I’m sorry. I’m so sorry."

I whispered, but my voice stayed stuck, buried under the weight of the ice. The third heartbeat answered from the void—louder, closer, and hungry for the remainder. It was coming for the heart. Leo’s eyes shut, the gold embers dying out completely. I pulled him tight, clutching him like a small, frozen coffin. His breathing stopped. I buried my face in his hair; I couldn't smell the scent of milk anymore, only the biting, frozen scent of ash. Only my own heartbeat remained, thudding lonely against the silent obsidian—a hollow, terrified vigil for a child who was already gone.

"Vera, I tried again and again. This is the closest I could get to her taste. She's with you now. I hope you've found each other." He dropped his head low, pressing his forehead against the cold concrete again and again. "I got the plot beside yours for Maddie. With you by her side, Maddie will never be alone. I'm not going to put myself anywhere near her. I know what I did, and I certainly don't deserve to rest beside her. Even in death, she wouldn't want to see me." I drifted behind him, watching as he walked away. A strange calm settled over me. In the distance, the wail of sirens grew closer.

Even when he physically removed her, she would stubbornly lean against his arm, tilting her head to steal a fleeting, desperate kiss… [End of Flashback] The memories crashed over him in a relentless tide. The very scenes that used to annoy him, the acts of devotion he had once dismissed as pathetic, now made his chest tighten with an inexplicable, agonizing ache. As the car slowly pulled into the villa, the silence inside was heavier than ever. Vittorio stepped out, the cool evening air doing nothing to settle the storm in his chest. Ignoring the waiting staff, he strode toward the front entrance, his heart pounding a frantic, unfamiliar rhythm against his ribs.

Outside the window, the city glittered on, indifferent as ever to the small, enormous thing that had just happened in an office on the fortieth floor — but for the first time since a coffee shop shift and a stranger's desperate offer had first collided our two lives together, neither Damien nor I needed the city, or the company, or anyone else's approval, to know exactly what we'd found. Later that evening, we stood together on the penthouse terrace, the same view that had once felt like a stranger's fortune and now felt like home. I thought about everything it had taken to arrive at this particular quiet — my father's hand steady around a coffee cup again, Priya's laughter still echoing som

Extending my finger, I pointed at my chest, where my heart was beating. "Listen," I began. "This is the brand-new heart. Right now, it beats perfectly, strongly, and healthily." Clara froze. She looked up at me in a daze as the smile on my lips slowly vanished, and my gaze turned ice-cold. "But it's a shame. The Austin Duncan who loved you with all his heart, whose world shattered over a single word from you… died on that highway three years ago. Right now, there isn't any place for you in my heart."

“So completely void of anything human that it’s almost frightening. Do you even hear yourself when you speak? Do you even see what you do to people?” My chest tightened painfully. “Or are you just that used to breaking them that you don’t even notice anymore?” I could swear I saw a slight crack in his demeanor. "You sat there with that dead, blank face like none of it touches you, because nothing ever gets through to you, does it? Nothing. Because whatever is supposed to be in here—" I pressed my finger against his chest, "—you don't have it. You don't have a single functioning piece of it. Your heart is hard and cold and completely, totally dead, and I feel sorry for you. I genuinely feel s