Page 201 of Off Limits: The Firsts

“Why? What happened?” I need to get out of here.

“Another bacterial infection in his lungs. His body, Hunter . . . it’s broken and can’t take much more. The doctors say his immune system is always on the defense and they were lucky to bring him back this time.” She emits a sound I never want to hear again.

It’s raw and abraded and sounds like her heart has been ripped from her chest.

“Mom. But he’s okay now, right? He’s resting and—”

“Yes. He is. He’s under observation and will come home tomorrow most likely.”

“Okay. Okay.” I repeat the words over and over, almost as much for me as for her. Almost as if I need to talk myself into believing that everything is going to be okay when I know at some point it’s not.

“Your father’s heart,” she murmurs almost in the same fashion as I just said okay.

Two people lost in the miserable grief and confusion we know is coming but want to deny.

“Yes, I know. His heart is okay?”

The same heart that went into cardiac arrest the night he found out about Jonah’s accident. The heart that never fully recovered, but that only sparked to life when he pulled me onto the ice so he could somehow do something—boss someone else around and drive them into the ground, make them be what he thought Jonah was going to be—to save himself.

And I let him. Night after night. Day after day. Hour after hour. I let him break me down on the ice to punish me for what I’d done—for ignoring Jonah’s request, for being the reason Jonah got behind the wheel drunk, for killing the innocent driver he hit. I cried and burned and prayed . . . with no idea if my brother would die that next day. My other half was gone. I was alone. In agony, I begged and bled and sucked it up because coaching me was the only thing keeping him going. Punishing me was the only way he knew how to manage the dreams he had for Jonah. Dreams he’d never had for me.

“I don’t know what to do,” she whispers. “What am I going to do?”

“I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

I find the exit just as I end the call and shove through the doors so they slam back with force.

I welcome the cool night air as it fills my lungs. As it burns my lungs and assaults my skin with its temperature and its indiscrimination. Taking huge gulps, I try to catch my breath from the thoughts that rob it.

Jonah’s time is running out.

I felt it tonight. I felt him tonight.

That’s why my game was off.

The other half to my whole was coding.

Struggling to breathe.

And I can’t fix him.

I can’t fix anyone.

Dekker

Dekker

The knock on my front door startles me. The papers on my lap from when I fell asleep on the couch flutter to the floor with the jolt of my body.

I’m in that just-woken-up, confused and freaked-out phase where I wonder who in the hell is knocking on my door at one in the morning.

Who the hell did the doorman let in on my list that would come at this time of night?

Chad? My sisters?

Oh my God. Something is wrong with my dad.

My pulse pounds wildly as I run to the door, every horrible scenario playing out in my mind in those thirty feet. It’s when I look in the peephole though that every part of me stops and freezes.