Free What's Left of Me (Finally Unbroken Book 2) by Maria Macdonald Page B

thoughts back to me. I nod but say nothing, instead looking down at my clasped hands. “I hated her.” At his confession my eyes snap back to his. He nods, as though he needs to confirm what he just said. “I did. I hated her. She left me and I blamed her for it… for something she had no control over.” He sighs and opens his arms, laying them on the back of the sofa as he sits facing me. “Dick move, right? I just couldn’t see past the fact that I was the one suffering, I was the one in pain. It was all about me. I’m serious as shit when I say that if Amanda were here, she would have kicked me in my junk for behaving that way.” He smirks, but it drops from his face quickly as his eyebrows draw in. “The thing with Amanda and me, and I feel like a piece of shit for saying this, but over the time I’ve spent in rehab and when I opened up to a counsellor, it made me re-evaluate everything. I will never say I didn’t love Amanda, because I did, and to deny that would be disrespectful and would also make me a dick. But I wonder, would we have stayed together if she didn’t have cancer?” Ruben shoots up out of his seat so quickly that I jump at his movement. He strides to the window and looks up at the stars which are now covering the dark sky. “I hate myself for saying it, but Simpson…” he stops and looks at me, “…my counselor.” I nod and he turns back to the stars. “He said that if you took away the cancer would you still have been with Amanda. Yes. The answer was immediate. Then he asked, ‘If she didn’t have cancer, do you think you would have had a future? Could you see yourself with her forever?’”
    He brings his arm up and thumps the wall next to the window. “The honest answer is I don’t know. That was a shit storm to face. It gave me lots of hours in that fucking room with Simpson, and really tested my strength when it came to avoiding alcohol. Amanda and I never got together when we were teenagers, we had a chemistry, but never took it further. The minute I saw her again, before I knew about the illness, the chemistry was right there. I wonder if we would have always had a fast and hard relationship. That brief love that gives us a small taste of bigger things to come, the kind that teaches us the meaning of the word. One which had a time limit. We were both too alike. Impulsive, controlling, determined… and not always in a good way.”
    He smirks at me and the ball in the pit of my stomach starts unfurling. “We were so similar that I think we would have had an expiration date, no matter the cause. So I did love her, a part of me always will. I’ll never regret what I had with her, and her loss, it knocked me sideways. But I’m in a place now where I think of my past fondly, warm thoughts and feelings. Memories I can smile at rather than feel pain. I know how it feels when you pass that point, when you climb over that last hurdle, when you get to that place where you’re ready to move on.”
    I catch my breath as Ruben stares at me. I find myself wondering, even hoping, maybe he’s trying to tell me that he could see himself moving on with me. Then he knocks me back down, without even realizing it. “I want to help you get over that last hurdle, I can see you’re not past it. Give me a chance, then one day you can move forward in your life, meet someone, have a family of your own. Release yourself from your past.”
    I feel my stomach drop, but my body betrays me as I nod my head in agreement.
    “Okay,” I say quietly. I’m not sure if I just want to spend more time with Ruben, or if this is going to be the first step to the release I so desperately need. The freedom that for five years, I’ve denied myself.
    An alarm beeps in the kitchen, breaking the tension that I know, at least partly, is caused by me. Thoughts are running through my head one after another. I replay his words, the help he wants to give me, and the fact that it seems as though I’m not what he