Purposefully Accidental

Chapter Thirty-Three

It's as hard as taking off a band-aid—the few moments before you decide that you're brave enough to rip it off your skin. The words are on the tip of my tongue, but I can't bring myself to say them.

Jonah finds my hand and intertwines his fingers with mine. I squeeze, maybe a little too hard, to find the strength. He waits patiently.

"This scar," I start, already choking on my own words. I clear my throat and try again. "This scar's from three years ago. I had a—a surgery. To remove a tumor."

It's hard to keep looking at Jonah as I'm telling him this. It's terrible to see the the way his face rearranges, to witness the way he's processing my words. But once I'm saying it, I can't stop.

"Cancerous tumor," I say. "Yeah. I had cancer. Ovarian cancer. I had surgery and a few rounds of chemo after. They took out one of my ovaries—one with the tumor. Made sure it hasn't spread anywhere else in my body."

The most terrible feeling develops in my gut as I observe every single twitch of muscle on his face, as his chest begins to heave once my words finally dawn on him. I can't go through this again. I can't bear to watch the emotions that will cross his face: from surprise to shock to pity and eventually disgust.

But his face stops at shock, and then the shock bleeds into horror. His voice breaks when he says my name. "Hannah..."

"I'm good. I'm clear now. I was lucky, it didn't spread." I attempt a smile. Hoping to erase that look on his face, I try to downplay it, "It only took a few months to recover, and it's like I never had cancer."

His lips are trembling, and I feel so fucking awful. This is why I didn't want him to know.

"But you," he starts, "three years ago... your brother..." He trails off, his breaths shaky. He has no idea what to say, and I don't blame him.

I'm nodding at him, and the thin smile on my face has begun to dissolve. I bite my lips, trying to catch a sob. "Y-yeah. I was diagnosed just a couple months before he died. I guess it just wasn't my best year."

I have never wanted to ever see Jonah look so sad. I'm crying now, and it's not because of my own pain. It's because his face is an open book now, like he no longer has the energy to put up his guards. Raw devastation colors his eyes, and I don't know how to make it go away.

I hold his face, rubbing away his tears with my thumb as I tell him the quick, condensed details of my illness. The type of my cancer, what my doctors treated me with, and how long it took until I was declared in remission. Cancer free, for now—and hopefully forever.

He keeps shaking in my arms, no matter how many times I tell him that I'm okay now.

I wish I could take my words back, if only to take away his pain.

"I'm sorry," I finally say to him. It's probably lost in the sounds of his choked sobs, but I keep repeating it. I shouldn't have told him.

He takes a shaky breath, and unexpectedly, he asks me, "When you told me in New York that you were glad you didn't say yes, that you were glad we weren't together. Were you—" He stops and swallows, and I swear he looks a little green in the face. "Did you mean—were you saying that because—" He shakes his head. Then he pulls up from the bed, looking away from me.

He's sitting up now, and I watch his shoulders shake.

"When you said you were a fucking mess," he carries on, "those were your exact words—you can't mean—you were not talking about your cancer, right?"

I don't understand what he's trying to say. "What are you—"

"Did you think that I wouldn't want to be with you, when you were sick?" he cuts me off in a broken voice. "That I was better off without you, because you had cancer?"