I put my hand to his chest, over his heart. I can feel it beating. I let my hand fall away. His heart is mine, just mine. I believe it now. Mine to protect and care for, mine to break.

So much of love is chance. There’s something scary and wonderful about that. If Kitty had never sent those letters, if I hadn’t gone to the hot tub that night, it might’ve been him and Gen. But she did send those letters, and I did go out there. It could have happened lots of ways. But this is the way it happened. This is the path we took. This is our story.

I know now that I don’t want to love or be loved in half measures. I want it all, and to have it all, you have to risk it all.

So I take Peter’s hand; I put it on my heart. I tell him, “You have to take good care of this, because it’s yours.”

He looks at me in such a way that I know for sure—he’s never looked at another girl quite like this.

And then I’m in his arms, and we’re hugging and kissing, and we’re both shaking, because we both know—this is the night we become real.

“Real isn’t how you are made,” said the Skin Horse. “It’s a thing that happens to you.”

“Does it hurt?” asked the Rabbit.

“Sometimes,” said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. “When you are Real you don’t mind being hurt.”

—MARGERY WILLIAMS