Book me the first flight to Brisbane.
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Chapter Thirty-One
Jax
The respite care room was quiet this time of night—beeps from the monitor, the soft whir of the IV pump, the occasional cough from down the hall. Nan had been moved here three days ago, after the fall in the kitchen at home. She’d insisted she was fine, but her legs had buckled like paper, and Jax had caught her just before she hit the tile. The doctors had been blunt: She needs round-the-clock care now. Pain management. Monitoring. You can’t do this alone at home anymore.
He’d argued—furious, desperate. He was her carer. He’d taken the time off from the team, he would skip the start of the new season, told Marcus and the sponsors it was family. Personal. Indefinite. They’d understood—or pretended to. But the fall had changed everything. She was too weak now. The cancer too advanced, spreading through her bones, her lungs, her everything. So here they were—in this beige room with its hospital bed, IV stand, and a vase of wilted geraniums from the neighbour Mrs. Davies.
Nan slept now—chest rising and falling in shallow breaths, skin pale against the white sheets, hair fanned out on the pillow like she was just napping after a long day in the garden. But it wasn’t a nap. It was morphine keeping the pain at bay, her body shutting down a little more each day. Six to twelve months, the doctors had said back in March. It had been almost nine. The end was near. He could feel it in the way her hand felt colder when he held it, the way her eyes took longer to focus when she woke, the way her laughter had faded to small smiles that didn’t reach her eyes.
He sat in the vinyl armchair by the window—elbows on his knees, staring at the floor tiles until the pattern blurred—and remembered.
Remembered the first time cancer had taken someone he loved.
He was eleven when Mum got the diagnosis—breast cancer, caught late. She’d been tired for months, brushing it off as “just the long hours at the shop,” but the lump had grown fast. Chemo started almost immediately. Jax remembered the smell of the hospital ward—bleach and stale coffee—and the way Mum’s hair started falling out in clumps on her pillow. She’d laughed about it at first, bought bright silk scarves and tied them like a pirate queen, told him she looked “adventurous.” Dad had been there every single appointment—holding her hand during the infusions, rubbing her back when the nausea rolled in waves, whispering things that made her smile even when her lips were cracked and dry.
Jax had tried to be strong. He’d kept going to school, kept racing karts on weekends, kept pretending everything was normal. But at night he’d hear Dad crying in the bathroom—quiet, choked sounds that made Jax’s chest hurt in a way he couldn’t name. Mum fought hard—radiation, more chemo, a mastectomy she called “just a little redecorating.” For a while it looked like shemight win. She came home, planted new roses in the garden, danced with Jax in the kitchen to old rock songs on the radio. She’d hug him too tight and say, “Drive fast, but drive smart, champion. Always smart.”
Then the cancer came back. Aggressive. It was in her lungs, her spine. The doctors stopped talking about cure and started talking about comfort. Mum faded fast after that—cheeks hollow, skin grey, voice too weak to sing him to sleep like she used to. The last night, in the hospital room that smelled like antiseptic and dying lilies, she’d reached for his hand with fingers thin as twigs. “I love you, Jaxon,” she’d whispered. “Keep driving. Make us proud.” Her eyes had fluttered closed. The machines slowed, then stopped. Dad had collapsed beside the bed, face buried in the sheets, shoulders shaking in silent sobs.
Dad unravelled after that. Quietly. Completely. He stopped going to work at the garage. Stopped shaving. Stopped eating anything more than a few bites of toast. He’d sit in Mum’s garden chair for hours, staring at the roses she’d planted, not moving even when the sun burned his neck red. Jax tried to talk to him—small, awkward attempts—but Dad just looked through him like he was already a ghost.
Eighteen months after Mum died, Dad was gone too. Lung cancer—caught too late, the kind that came fromyears of cigarettes he’d sworn he’d quit after Jax was born. The doctors said it had probably been growing quietly for years. Dad hadn’t told anyone he was coughing blood. He’d just kept fading until one morning he didn’t wake up. Jax found him in bed, cold, peaceful in a way that felt like betrayal. Nan had arrived that afternoon—face ashen, eyes red from the long drive—but she’d pulled him into a hug that smelled like lavender and home, whispered, “I’ve got you, love. I’ve got you now. We’ll be alright.”
She’d taken him in without hesitation. Sold her small flat near the coast, used every cent of the insurance and her savings to buy a small central Brisbane flat with the spare room she painted blue because “boys like blue, don’t they?” She quit her part-time library job to be there full-time. Mornings she made porridge with honey the way Mum used to, even though she hated cooking and burned it half the time. Nights when Jax woke screaming from nightmares—of hospital beeps, of Mum’s thin hand slipping from his, of Dad’s empty bed—she’d sit on the edge of his mattress, hand rubbing slow circles on his back, telling stories about his parents: Mum climbing trees as a young girl and coming home with scraped knees, always laughing; Dad’s terrible dad jokes that made Mum roll her eyes but secretly smile.
She drove him to karting practice every weekend—three hours each way in her old Holden, thermos of tea in the cup holder, cheering louder than any parent in the stands when he won his first real trophy, a cheap plastic thing she polished and displayed on the mantel like it was made of gold. On bad days—when sixteen-year-old rage boiled over and he slammed doors, shouted that he hated her, skipped school to sneak off to the track with stolen beer—she never raised her voice. She’d wait him out, then sit him down with tea and say, “Anger won’t bring them back, love. But racing might make them proud. Use it. Don’t let it use you.”
The good days came back slowly. Christmas mornings with too many presents under the tree even when money was tight from her pension and his karting fees. Bridge club nights where she’d come home with chocolates for “her champion,” winking like it was a secret. The day he signed his first junior formula contract at seventeen—she’d cried then, quiet tears, and said, “Your parents would be so proud, Jaxon. So proud.”
She’d given him everything—love, stability, a future. And now she was fading, breath by breath, while he sat helpless, watching.
The end was near. The doctors had said as much last week: Prepare yourself. Make her comfortable. Say what you need to say.
He hadn’t said it all yet. Couldn’t find the words.
The door opened softly behind him.
He looked up—expecting the nurse on her next round, clipboard in hand, soft shoes squeaking on the linoleum.
It wasn’t the nurse.
It was Aria.
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Aria
He looked so broken.
Jax sat in the armchair by the window—elbows on his knees, shoulders hunched forward like the weight of the world was pressing him down. His face was drawn, pale under the harsh light, eyes red-rimmed and shadowed with exhaustion that went deeper than sleep could fix. Hair unkempt, longer than she remembered, stubble dark on his jaw, clothes hanging loose like he’d forgotten to eat for weeks. The man who’d won the world championship looked like he’d lost everything.
Nan was so still in the bed—small and fragile under the white sheets, skin pale and translucent, IV line snaking from her arm to the stand beside her. The woman who’d been all energy at Christmas—baking scones in her cozy kitchen, telling stories about Jax’s childhood with a twinkle in her eye, laughing athis terrible jokes—reduced to this. Chest rising and falling in shallow breaths, hair fanned on the pillow, face slack with morphine sleep.
Aria’s chest ached—sharp, sudden—like the air had been sucked out.
