Perfect Storm

Chapter 21

"C...cancer?" Ryan could not have looked more stunned than if I had grown another head.

"Yes, cancer. Just like my mother." I replied. This really wasn't how I wanted to tell him, but then again, who am I kidding? I never planned on telling him in the first place. Things just kind of went in an unexpected direction.

"Bree...damn...I..." He had that look of sympathy on his face that I despised every time I had to tell someone that I had cancer, and it sent a range of emotions throughout my body, the first of them being anger.

"These..." I pointed to my breasts. "Fake. Right down to the tattooed nipples. And this here..." I placed my hand over my lower stomach. "Scarred, empty and barren. Life will never grow here. Nearly everything that made me a woman has been carved out of my body and tossed out with the medical waste. And this..." I pulled down the neckline of my shirt exposing my tattoo. "This is to cover up the scar that held the port where they pumped chemo into my body. Poison to kill poison I guess. Speaking of chemo, that's what happened to my hair." I didn't intend to come out sounding so bitter, but then again, why shouldn't I be bitter? Cancer had robbed so much from me.

"I am so sorry Bree...I..."

"I don't want your damn pity Ryan." I snapped, because I knew what was coming. I knew that look.

He looked as if I had just slapped him, and I immediately felt remorse. He didn't cause this. This damn cancer had hurt him too, only he didn't know it at the time.

"Ry..." I started to say.

"Why didn't you tell me?" He cut me off. "I would have supported you. I would have held your hand through it all. I would have dropped everything to take care of you." He sounded angry, but more hurt than anything.

"I know you would have Ryan. That's why I didn't tell you. You would have put your entire life on hold for me. I didn't know what my future was going to hold. Hell, I still don't know." My anger had completely dissipated, and now I felt nothing but regret, remorse and sorrow. Just thinking about what could have been.

"You're damn right I would have. That's what you do when you love someone Bree. You take care of them. Through good and bad times, not just when things are easy." His blue eyes peered into mine, so full of hurt and sadness that I had put there. Was I selfish for wanting him back knowing that I could not give him the life and the family that he deserved? Did I really want to put him through all of the uncertainty? Could I even make him happy?

"You don't understand Ryan. I watched my mother die. It was a long, agonizingly slow, painful death. I saw the toll her illness took on my father. The light in his eyes had dimmed, and I watched it go completely out the moment she took her last breath. A part of him died that night with her. I could never put anyone through that. I couldn't put you through that." I fought back the tears threatening to flow. Opening up on all of this had left me feeling so raw and exposed. I had to make him understand that I was just trying to spare him from that pain.

But he shook his head, unmoved by my reasoning. "But you gave me no choice, Bree. No options. You never gave me the chance to decide what I wanted to do. What I was willing to do. You mattered more to me than anything else in my life. You still do."

He was right, I knew that, but I couldn't let it go. "There are things in your life that you want that I cannot give you." The first tear fell, and another immediately followed.

"I only want you." His voice and his eyes simultaneously pleading with me.

I knew it was going to be hard telling him, but I didn't expect to feel this gutted all over again. He was saying all the right things, everything I fully expected him to say, but he still didn't fully understand the impact of time bomb ticking away inside of me. I brushed away my tears and strengthened my resolve. "It's not that simple Ryan. I had fucking cancer. Do you understand what that means?"