Ten Months Ago
Kurt Lundquist paused in the doorway of the hospital room. It always took a minute to steel himself before going in to visit Jasper. As the big brother, it was his job to be brave and cheerful and bring the dirty jokes, stupid comics and violent video games to the sad fourteen-year-old. Bringing stuff was no problem. His contract with the Cajun Rage hockey team brought him buckets of cash. All of it worthless, as far as he was concerned, because it couldn’t buy a cure for Jasper.
Bringing a good attitude? That was about as easy as checking one of those twats from the New York Spartans and skating away without blood all over your jersey. Because Kurt stood a solid six—four, bench-pressed four hundred and twenty pounds, could sprint the length of the ice without raising his heart rate—but he couldn’t fight that fucker cancer.
A gurney coming straight at him sent Kurt ducking into the room before he was ready. Shit. He might be as tough as they come, but he felt the wetness in the corners of his eyes. Hopefully Jasper wouldn’t notice.
Hell, the kid didn’t even look up. His bald head was bent over the tray table, crumpled-up paper scattered across the covers. “What’d you bring me, bro?”
“How’d you know it was me? Your Spidey sense?” Kurt teased. He swiped the back of his hand across his eyes.
“Dude, I’m over Spider-Man. I told you that sticky mucus coming out of his palms is just gross. I like Thor now.”
“Why? You like his girlie cape?”
Still scribbling, Jasper said, “He’s invincible to Earth stuff. I figure he can’t catch any of our diseases. That’s a cool superpower.”
Jesus, the kid broke his heart. “Yeah. Yeah, it is.”
“So, what’d you bring me? Candy? Chili cheese fries? Swedish meatballs?”
“No. You know you’d just puke all that stuff up in about seven seconds. I brought you something better.” Kurt dug in the plastic bag from the Halloween store and pulled out a wig. It was the same brown as the Lundquist brothers’ hair, but a long, pirate version with a couple of dreads and some beads braided into a front piece.
Jasper finally looked up. Surprise flashed across his too-thin, too-pale face, followed by the same delight he wore every Christmas morning. “That’s badass.” He tried to put it on, but his IV tubing got tangled in the long hair. Kurt gently centered it on his head. Then he tweaked his little brother’s nose, just like everything was normal.
It wasn’t.
It hadn’t been since Jasper broke his leg playing hockey last season and the doctors discovered the bone was riddled with cancer. Two surgeries, one amputation, three rounds of chemo later and the only thing left was to try to make him smile as much as possible before time ran out.
“Did you meet your new nurse today? The one who’ll help you out when you go home?” That was easier to say than to call her a hospice nurse. Someone who’d ease him through to the end.
“Yeah. She’s hot.”
Kurt barked out a laugh. “I’m guessing she’s about a decade too old for you.”
“You’re old, and I still have fun with you.”
“Thanks, squirt.” The kid was right back at it, paper to pen. “Hey, I can’t stay too long. Practice starts in an hour. How about you talk to me? What are you working on so hard?”
“My bucket list.”
“Your what?”
“Oh, right. I mean, your bucket list. For the Cup.”
None of that made sense. “Jasper, what’s this all about? I’m not dying. Not for a very long time.”
“No, but I am.”
The cold fist of reality slammed into Kurt’s gut. “Who told you that?” Because there’d been a family powwow with the doctors, and the majority decision had been to keep that news from his brother. They all thought Jasper was too fragile to handle it. Kurt didn’t agree. The kid was strong enough to handle anything. But he’d never go against their wishes.
“I figured it out. I’m going home. Nobody will say when the next round of chemo starts. Nobody says I’m in remission. That hot nurse, Lisette, is for my hospice care.”
“Jasper—”
“I don’t want to talk about it. Not now. I can’t control that I’m dying, but I can control what happens after I do. I want you to win the Cup.”
Kurt fisted his hands below the bed rail, where Jasper wouldn’t see. “You know it’s not up to me. The whole team would have to win it, after taking down essentially thirty-two other teams. Hockey doesn’t give you the Cup because you ask nicely. You have to earn it through sweat and blood and killer moves on the ice.”
“The Rajuns made it to the conference finals last season. That makes this next season the one where you win it all. For me.”
Throat thick with all the emotion he wouldn’t let out, Kurt said, “Jasper, I swear I’ll try my hardest. There are no guarantees in hockey, though.”
“You’ll do it, bro. I know you will. And when you do, you’ll get your day with the Cup.” He pulled on the beaded piece of hair. “Bet you’ll score a ton of chicks with the Cup.”
“I do all right as is, Jasper.”
“Okay, then, I’d finally score. I’m desperate. I couldn’t get to first base with Lisa, two doors down. And she’s bald from chemo. I mean, I rock the bald look, but chicks? Not so much.” For a minute, he sounded like a normal, opinionated teenager. Then he must’ve walked back through what he said, because he frowned. “I mean, if I was still around, I’d use it to score with chicks. But I won’t be. So I’m making a list, a bucket list, of everything I want you to do with it.”
He’d hold it together. For now. Then skate hard enough in practice to make his legs ache and his lungs burn. And then, he’d go home and drink from the same bottle of single malt Scotch he’d cracked open the night they got Jasper’s diagnosis.
“What’ve you got so far?”
Jasper tossed a crumpled paper over his shoulder, hitting the IV bag. “Stupid stuff. Eat Trix out of it.”
“Only the best cereal in the world. That’s not stupid.”
Jasper pawed through the slips of paper. “Take it to my high school. Let my whole hockey team take a picture with it.”
“You want me to let your stinky-ass friends get their fingerprints all over my shining, silver Cup?”
“Yeah. I do.” Jasper’s light blue eyes, identical to his own, stared him down.
“What else? Take it to the beach in Biloxi and use it as an ice bucket?”
“It’d be cool if you could take it to the college I want to—wanted to go to.”
Kurt ignored the slip of the tongue. “You got one picked out already? Someplace with a killer hockey program?”
“No.”
“Let’s start there.” He moved the list aside—pretty fucking much the saddest piece of paper he’d ever touched—and started a new one. “The University of Wisconsin’s great. They’ve got a couple of nice lakes to hang out on.”
“Their mascot’s a badger. I wanna be something more fierce. Like the Cajun Rage’s angry crawfish.”
“I’ve heard of choosing a school for partying, or for pretty girls, but never by the mascot.” He lifted the heavy history textbooks the kid actually read for fun from the nightstand. Grabbed the tablet beneath and opened the browser. “I think UC Santa Cruz has a banana slug. Is that gross enough for you?”
Jasper dissolved into giggles. There. He’d done his job for the day. Made the kid laugh and forget—if only for a second—that they were planning for a future he wouldn’t get to have.
And Kurt didn’t want to think about what kind of a future he’d have without Jasper in it.