HUNTER

 

I STEEL MYSELF WITH A deep breath before I walk into the house. Everything is the same—the flooring, the furniture, the curtains. It looks like time stopped the day of the accident and has never moved on.

It’s hard for me to breathe.

It’s difficult for me to think of anything other than how, already, I need to get the hell out of the house with its walls lined with images of a life Jonah and I never got to live together. Because that life—that future we always talked about—never happened.

Reminders of that life we used to have are plastered on every surface as if to remind us all how perfect it used to be.

As if to forget the accident ever happened.

“Hunter? Is that you?” My mom’s voice calls out from where she no doubt is sitting with him in his room.

I’ve offered to buy them a new house a million times, even put deposits down on a few. I explained how much easier it would be having a custom suite built for Jonah and his needs. How it would make their life—and his—so much easier, how it would give him some autonomy when he already feels trapped, but after numerous rejections of the offers, I gave up. They’d preferred to stay here where they can be reminded daily of the ghosts of that day and the butterfly effect I created.

“She’s in Jonah’s bedroom,” my father mutters from his La-Z-Boy where he folds his newspaper with a crisp snap and reveals the blood pressure cuff on his arm. His eyes move from the newspaper in his hand to the television on the wall beside me, but he never looks at me. “Sloppy game tonight, son. Your skill fell by the wayside to your aggression. You need to work on keeping both at the same time.”

“Yes, sir.” I choke over the words and the resentment they cause. I played a damn good game by any player’s standards, and as much as I know it, I also know he’s nowhere near finished.

Just like the nights he kept me on the ice way past midnight. My body would be exhausted, my fingers numb, my stomach growling, but dammit, I was nowhere near good enough.

I wasn’t Jonah.

And the way he looks at the picture of Jonah in front of him tells me just that: he sees everything Jonah could have been and more. He sees everything I caused. He sees everything I’ll never be.

“You’re weak on your left side, you know that? You were beat every damn time. You’re not checking your shoulder enough like Jonah did, and it’s getting you in trouble. You’re partying too much. It doesn’t seem like you’re practicing on your shot and that’s for mornings. You’re out drinking and hungover. It’s showing.”

“Yes, sir.” I nod—my feet shifting and lips pursing—and take the ridicule without talking back, because whatever I say doesn’t matter. It won’t be heard. His head is too preoccupied with another star forward, the one lying paralyzed in the next room, who I’ll always be compared to.

I take the criticism, I accept the disdain, because I know my dad is hanging on by a thread. I know this is the only way he can cope with the dreams that were killed that day and the future that was robbed from us.

But it doesn’t prevent my resentment from festering. It doesn’t prevent my hands from fisting.

“There was a ticket there for you, you know. I didn’t see you in the box. I thought maybe you’d like to come.”

He nods, his eyes never leaving the television. “You know I like to watch my hockey from home.”

Not with Jonah, you didn’t. You were at every damn game up against the glass cheering and yelling.

In the fifteen years since the accident, you’ve sat and pushed me, but criticized and judged and disapproved from afar.

I swallow over the rejection that tears into me like it does every time, and let it settle in a place where someday I’ll deal with it. Maybe. “Your health? It’s okay?”

Forced words in a strained relationship.

“Yes. I can’t be going anywhere, now can I? Jonah needs me too much.”

So do I, Dad. So do I.

But that’s irrelevant—I’m irrelevant—because Jonah does. Only one son survived that night and in my parents’ eyes, it wasn’t me.

I need a dad too, but not according to the man in front of me.

If only I had truly died that night. Anything but a walking ghost who once had a family who loved him.

“Of course.” I stare at him for a beat. The blue of the television casts an odd glow on his skin, and I wonder if he really loves this life he lives, or if he’s merely going through the motions.

“Maybe I’ll see you in the stands at the next game?” I ask like I always do. My, I love you, Dad, and still need you as a father plea that never seems to be heard.

“Maybe.” The lone word is all he says. All I want is for him to tell me to stay and sit with him, but I take off down the hallway toward Jonah’s room.

The old, oversized den we used to sit in for hours playing Nintendo as boys and then later making out with girls as teenagers, looks like a hospital room now. My mom has tried to dress it up, but there’s no hiding the reality.

The quiet hum of the television hides my footsteps as I stand there and take it all in. There’s a bed on the far side of the room with a lift that hangs on a boom off to one side that helps my mom get Jonah in and out of bed.

The room is decorated in light colors that do nothing to disguise the medical equipment dotting its perimeter. A wheelchair is parked against one wall while on the opposing one a curio cabinet showcases his old trophies like shrines to an era gone by.

Like reminders to Jonah every single day of what he’s missing out on in this shitty deal fate handed him.

My mom’s back is to me as she fiddles with something beneath the hospital bed, her soft talking a constant, soothing sound she somehow adopted after the accident—almost as if one of us were a little boy complaining about an upset stomach, not a quadriplegic depending on her for his every need.

The last thing I look at in the room is my brother. I’m petrified almost as much as I am desperate to see him. It’s been several months but it feels way too long since I have, and every part of me misses everything about him in a way I’ve never been able to express or understand.

It’s the twin thing. The connection that’s inherent.

I bite back my gasp when I finally look. He’s withered away to nothing now, the shape of his body beneath the sheets barely noticeable. His lungs rise and fall with the help of the ventilator fastened by the trach tube at his throat, and the sound of the machine fills the room in a steady rhythm. His face is pale and his eyes are closed, but there’s a small smile on his lips in reaction to something my mom has said.

My chest fucking caves in like it does every time I see him. Guilt and sorrow and anger and so many other damn emotions ride a roller coaster through me until they strangle all the words I normally say.

I feel awkward, as if I’m invading his privacy, while at the same time feeling at home and comfortable with the one person I know better than anyone.

Or used to.

“Hi guys,” I say and walk toward them. My mom gasps, her startled smile following right after.

“There you are. You were so busy today I wasn’t sure if we were going to see you before you moved on to the next city.”

“I’d never miss the chance to see him.” I accept the arms she wraps around me, and I fucking hate that I hold her tighter a little longer so I can keep the tears welling in my eyes hidden behind my closed lids. I don’t want him to see how I see him. I don’t want him to know how bad he’s gotten.

And yet, I feel like he already knows. How can he not?

“It’s been too long.” Her words are barely audible.

I breathe her in. She smells of citrus and vanilla, but she feels so very frail and incredibly strong simultaneously. “I missed you too,” I murmur as she pulls away and puts her hands on my cheeks to look at me.

Tears glisten in her eyes but she blinks them away with the sadness that falls momentarily over her countenance.

“Jonah, look who’s here.”

“You don’t need to announce me. I’m not a guest,” I tell her as I step to the bed and meet my brother’s eyes.

He garbles something unintelligible that I know is a greeting, his attempt at pronunciation seeming worse than the sounds he was making last week when I spoke with him. Even with the speaking valve . . . It feels like everything is on a constant decline.

“Yeah, yeah.” I lean down and give him a pseudo hug and rest my forehead against his for a moment, almost as if I’m recharging my twin meter. He’s the same but so very different. “You’re still the better looking one,” I say as I stand back up with my jaw clenched to fight the helplessness I feel.

He gives a partial laugh that ends in a coughing fit. My mom pushes me out of the way as she pulls him up so he doesn’t choke.

“You sanitized?” she asks, her voice going into panic mode over me bringing germs into his room.

“Yes,” I mumble, feeling inept as I step back and let her help him in ways I can’t. Ways that have changed and evolved over the fifteen years he’s been a prisoner in his broken body and mind.

“Just rest, Jonah. You’re fine now,” she says after fixing something on his ventilator. He draws in a deep breath and calms.

“Rrrr,” he says for my name with the next struggle of breath.

“Yeah?” I lean down closer so he doesn’t have to fight so hard to be heard, and grab his hand even when I know he can’t feel it.

But I can.

And I need this connection with him more than anything right now.

“Good.” He takes a second and closes his eyes as if each word is a battle to be won. “Gm.”

My smile is soft and sincere and hides the emotions clogging in my throat. Our eyes hold—one twin to another, two halves of a whole—and I know his is the only praise I need. His is the one who matters the most.

“I miss you, J.”

Tears well in his eyes and slip from the corner to the pillow beneath his head. I hate that he can’t wipe them away. I hate that it’d kill him if I did it for him. He may be paralyzed, but I’m still his little brother by four minutes and two seconds and even like this, he holds tight to that tiny bit of pride.

“He’s exhausted, Hunter,” my mom says as she steps up and adjusts his pillow for him. “His sleeping pills are kicking in and he needs to get to sleep. It’s way past his—”

“Yes. Fine.” I don’t need to be reminded of the Ambien he takes nightly to combat the anxiety that’s caused him to have nightmares in the past few months.

The anxiety I wonder is because he fears he’s dying.

She steps in front of me to fuss some more while I struggle with what to say like I always do, caught in that need to pretend like everything is normal when nothing is.

It’s so very different when we’re face to face.

On the phone, I feel like I’m filling him in on the world outside of this damn prison cell—almost as if I’m letting him live vicariously through me.

But when we’re face to identical face, it’s brutal.

Face to face, I can see his reactions and feel the guilt. If I talk about hockey, I feel like the asshole who’s talking about the one thing he loved more than me. If I talk about women, his other favorite love, then it’s a stark reminder of the things he’ll never get to feel again. And if I talk about trivial bullshit to fill the air, he knows I’m at a loss of what to say to him—my twin—and isn’t that worse?

So when my mom clears out of the way, I sit there with him and hold his hand he can’t feel and connect without words he can’t speak, but still feel a sense of peace. Nothing can rob the two of us of that. Except of course, death.

His exhaustion from leaving the house and going to the game is evident in the bags under his eyes, and it’s not long before he succumbs to it. His eyes fall heavy and the muscles in his face relax as I whisper to him that I love him.

But even with him asleep, I don’t look away. I can’t. All I keep thinking is how I packed my schedule today to avoid this emotional bullshit and how wrong I was to do so. This is my brother. He deserves better from me . . . and I should be able to deal with my parents, because this time with him is what matters most.

How many moments like this will I get? How many more times will I be able to tell him I love him face to face? How many more times will I be able to find my calm with him?

Not enough. And yet my pride has kept me away.

As if guilt didn’t rule my life already.

Fuck.

I close my eyes and shake my head, knowing I fucked up. Knowing I should have figured he’d be worn out from the game, and that I’d get so little time with him.

“Love you, J,” I whisper as he settles into slumber. “Love you more than you know.” I can’t take my eyes off him. I need to memorize the lines on his face. The same ones we should share. But where I have laugh lines and crow’s feet from the sun, his are less pronounced or not even there. Mine show a life lived and his show a life lost. So I visually trace the lines he does have, over and over, needing to map them. Needing to commit them to memory.

The problem is, the longer I sit here, the calm Jonah gives me is slowly eaten away by resentment.

At my parents. At the world. At fucking God and fate and everything in between, because why is he there and I’m here?

Knowing he’s completely asleep, I turn to face my mom. She’s sitting in a chair at the foot of his bed, her eyes focused on the television show that’s on but that I can barely hear.

“You didn’t show up before the game like you were supposed to today. I had everything set up for him.”

“Hunter.” My name is an apologetic sigh that snaps my anger like a livewire.

“I had plans to empty the arena so I could push him on the ice. So I could let him skate again—”

“He’s too sick now to let him—”

“He can’t get much sicker, Mom.” I stand and move to abate the anger.

Or try to.

There’s no abating shit right now.

“Let him have whatever fucking joy he can. Christ.” I shove a hand through my hair and turn my back on the damn case of trophies.

“Oh, you know Jonah,” she says with a wave of her hand, as if we’re talking about the weather outside. She stands and moves to the seat I just vacated. She takes her time tucking his arms beneath the covers so he doesn’t get cold. “He has his routines and when we step outside of the routine too much it’s hard, and he gets upset—”

“Upset?” I chuckle without an ounce of humor. “Robbing him of the experience would make him upset.” I look out the window to the streetlight’s orange glow and try to compose myself. “Next time, I’ll just pick him up and take him myself.”

“No, you won’t.” Defiance edges her tone and does nothing to soften the tight smile she gives me. “We’re his guardians and will do what we think is best for him.”

All I can do is stare at her and her subtle but stinging rebuke and wonder if she hears her own words. If she realizes she may have lost two sons that day, because she gave up on me too. She devoted her life to him, forgetting that I need her too, just in different ways.

My chest aches in a way it never has before. “Maybe I wanted you there early, Mom. Maybe I wanted you to stay after. Maybe I wanted you or Dad to see—” My voice breaks and I fucking hate that it does. “You know what? Fuck it. Just fuck it.”

“He has to come first. He needed his medication and I had to get him back and—”

“I know.” It’s futile. I lost the right to need anything from them the night of the accident.

“We need to keep our voices down. He needs his rest,” she says, trying to usher me out of the room.

“I wanted to see him tonight, Mom. And you and Dad.” I turn to face her in this house that no longer feels like home to me. “I don’t get the time to have with him and you didn’t come early like you said you would. You didn’t let him meet the guys. You didn’t—”

“You just don’t understand how things are, Hunter.” And there it is. My name is spoken with so much derision that I don’t think she hears it anymore.

“Yeah, I do. You see me and you see who he could have been. You look in my eyes and know everything changed—your life, his life, my—”

“You don’t get to feel sorry for yourself,” she bites out, and again, I’m reminded why I kept busy all day with publicity stints for the team. Why I hope every time I come home things might change and then hurt when I realize they never will.

“What about you, Mom? You’ve fired every nurse I’ve hired to come in here and help you out.”

“No one will take care of my son but me.”

“You need to get out more. Go back to teaching or something.” Maybe I say the words I know will cause a fight like every other time so I have a reason to leave. Maybe I poke the sleeping bear so I can find my way out of this house. So I can breathe again.

“We’ve had this discussion a million times. You may have run away . . . but we didn’t.”

“Ran away?” I cough the words out. “Is that what you called it? Pushing me to be everything Jonah was supposed to be? Letting me know every damn chance you had that I would never be him. That I would never be enough.” I clench my fists and resist the urge to punch the wall. “Look at me.” I throw my hands out to my side, my voice rising. “I’m one of the best goddamn NHL players on the ice right now and neither of you can see it. Neither of you can acknowledge I’ve lived up to every one of your fucking goals. And yet, it’s still not enough. It’s still not Jonah.”

“Hunter.” My father’s voice comes as a low warning from the other room. His constant aversion of anything about to show.

“Honey.” My mom repeats the tepid warning in her placating tone. “Don’t upset your father. His heart . . . it’s fragile.”

“It seems everything is fragile in this house,” I grit out, running a hand through my hair and blowing out an unsatisfying sigh.

Nothing fucking changes.

“It’s been a long day,” she murmurs.

“Got it. I know. You’re tired. He’s tired. It’s been a long night, and I should get going because I’m upsetting the balance here.” I walk back toward my brother and look at him one last time before leaving. She turns the lamp off so the light from the open door paints a swath across his cheek.

All I can do is stare at him. At his face that was once the mirror image of mine. At the hands tucked away that I used to play catch with. At the memories I hold closer than anything in the world while hating them all too. At the person I’ve tried the hardest to become.

And wonder, for the millionth time if I’d have been better off being the one in the bed instead of being the one who lives with the guilt for putting him there.