Heart Conditions (The Breakup Doctor Series Book 3) by Phoebe Fox

hear anymore. And I wasn’t going to help him salve his conscience by letting him apologize and wheedle and excuse his actions. All I needed, I realized as Jake took a really impressive poo in the grass bordering Estero Boulevard, was to tell Michael how I felt. What I thought of him and what he had done.
    I unrolled a baggie from the holder on Jake’s leash and leaned over with it to pick up his mess. The most eloquent possible statement of my feelings would be to bring it over to Michael’s table and leave it in his lap.
    But my days of unbalanced broad gestures—another grim legacy of the Michael fallout—were finally behind me. I’d simply say what I needed to say and leave.
    Jake didn’t seem to pick up on my state of mind, nearly pulling my arm from the socket as we neared Michael in his efforts to offer him his most unreserved affection.
    “Hey, big guy! Well, you’re not so vicious after all, are you?” Michael said, car-washing the dog’s huge head as Jake buried it in the vee of his legs.
    “I gave him his stand-down command,” I lied stiffly. “No need for a lawsuit.”
    “What’s his name?”
    “Spike.” I pulled Jake back harder than I needed to.
    Michael looked up at me with the grass-colored eyes I’d gazed adoringly into so many times.
    “Thank you for coming, Brook,” he said softly. “It’s more than I deserve.”
    “I’m not staying. I just came to tell you some things.”
    “None of it can be worse than what I’ve said to myself. But first will you let me tell you one thing?” he asked. “Not because I need it for my own peace of mind…although I do. But because you deserve to hear it. Please?”
    I had loved this man so deeply that there were times it actually physically hurt my chest. He stood in front of me now with a nakedly pleading expression, those verdant eyes I knew so well meeting mine directly, intensely. Whatever had happened between us at the end, what we once shared was real.
    “Fine,” I clipped out. “I’ll listen.” I took a seat on the bench across the nicked wooden table from him, pulling Jake in close beside me, and Michael settled onto his bench.
    We sat in silence for a long moment, just looking at each other in a gaze that went on long enough to become painfully intimate. But he did not look away, and neither did I.
    Finally he nodded once, cleared his throat, and then he spoke.
    “Walking out on you was the best thing I ever did.”

six

      
    For a moment I sat there, sure I’d misheard him.
    But within a flash the words sank in, and brought up a surge of rage so strong and long-held I shook with it. He’d conned me into letting him talk first so he could gloat ? I shot to my feet.
    “You repulsive son of a bitch,” I said, my voice trembling with fury. “How dare you say that to me.” I shoved my way out from where I was sandwiched between the table and bench, Jake scrambling out of my path, and rounded the end to stand over Michael like an avenging Fury. “I may not have been perfect, and I may have done a lot of things wrong. But I loved you. I gave you everything I could, and maybe it wasn’t enough for you, but that was the best I had at the time. And you weren’t perfect either, you selfish piece of garbage.”
    Michael was leaning back from my unmasked venom, his eyes stricken, but the words were fountaining out of me like pea soup out of Linda Blair, and I couldn’t stop.
    “But I loved you for who you were, imperfections and all, because people are flawed ,” I bit out. “We’re messy, and we can be assholes, but you know what? We grow . And love means growing with someone, encouraging every little seedling and nurturing that and cheering it on, not stomping out the first tendrils because they aren’t perfectly formed. Love is a living thing, not stagnant. And you were a shallow child who couldn’t see that, wasn’t willing to trust it—and didn’t have the courage to tell me that you couldn’t handle it.”
    My