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“She’s not my sister,” I snarled.  

“Whatever. Just stay away from her. You can stick your dick in any other women that takes your fancy, just not her.”

I stormed out of the room and took the stairs two at a time, before heading straight back into Jenny’s room. I didn’t care that Mom knew—she wasn’t going to tell anyone—but Jenny would care and that would put a real dampener on any fun we might have been about to have. I couldn’t tell Jenny, but that meant we would need to tread carefully.  

I found Jenny sat on the bed in the same spot she’d been when I left the room, but she didn’t look excited any more. She’d been crying. Had she overheard the conversation I’d just had with Mom? Maybe she’d had second thoughts about the whole thing? It wouldn’t be the first time. Four years ago, Jenny had taken a lot of convincing about how the whole stepbrother and stepsister thing should not stop us getting together. I’d won that argument four years ago, and I was confident I could win it again.

“Are you okay?” I asked, sitting down next to her on the bed like I had done before we’d kissed. That felt like a lifetime ago now, not just a mere ten minutes or however long it had been. So much had changed when I told her the truth and when she followed that up by kissing me. The world felt so different now.  

She nodded and wiped tears from her eyes, before blowing her nose lightly into a tissue.

“Then why are you crying? I don’t usually make women cry by kissing them.”  

She smiled at my weak attempt to lighten the mood. “It’s not that.”

“What is it then? I’ve told you all my secrets, so it’s only fair that you’re open with me now.”

“You haven’t told me everything,” she said.

“I told you everything about what happened four years ago,” I replied.

“But you haven’t told me about what’s happening now. You told Aaron that you were going to leave me again like you did four years ago. And I saw you. In the hospital. You went into the Neuro-Oncology Ward. You’re sick again, aren’t you?”

Shit. I’d intended to tell her about that as well, but all my good intentions went out the window the second she kissed me. Four years ago, I’d pretended to cheat on Jenny so that she wouldn’t have to watch me die, but now history was repeating itself, and I had no choice but to let Jenny in on my secret.

“It’s come back,” I said. “The tumor. I’ve been having regular scans since the first one, because there’s always a chance it could return. The operation had been a success and my doctors were optimistic, but the latest scan wasn’t positive.”

“But they can treat it again?” Jenny asked hopefully. “They cured it before, so it’s just a case of doing the same thing again, right?”

I shook my head. “No. Well, maybe. They don’t know. I’ve been trying not to think about it too much, because there isn’t much to say for sure at the moment. All I know is that they have found something troubling and the doctor told me the same thing he told me before; I could die from this if I don’t get treated soon and even then…”

I trailed off in much the same way the doctor had when he’d explained the situation to me. I knew the drill by know. I had a ticking time bomb in my head and I might die. But I might not, and with Jenny around I truly felt like I had something to live for. Soccer had never been life or death for me, not like it was for some players. For me, soccer was a means to an end. A very luxurious end, but an end none the less.  

“You have to tell your mom,” Jenny said softly. “I know you two don’t get on, but she has a right to know.”

“I will, eventually. I need to tell Dad anyway, and he will insist on telling Mom too. That’s going to be tough. No father wants to outlive his child. He’s going to feel completely helpless.”

“Did you tell him the first time?” Jenny asked. She couldn’t look me in the eyes and I knew she hadn’t truly accepted the news. It would take a while to sink in.

I nodded. “Yes, but only after I had the all clear from my doctors. I needed someone to talk to and in many ways I’m closer to my dad than I am to any of my friends. I don’t tell him all the sordid details of my sex life, but he knows more about my life than most.”

“He’s a busy man. I doubt he has time to listen to
all
the sordid details of your sex life.”  

“Very funny,” I replied with a grin. “I’m not that bad.” Jenny forced a smile, but it quickly disappeared. “I’ll have to tell my club as well, and obviously there is no way for the transfer to go through now.”  

“That means we won’t be able to spend as much time together.”

We shouldn’t be spending any more time together anyway, but I couldn’t help myself. The same facts applied now as they did four years ago, but whereas four years ago I’d convinced myself to do what I thought was the right thing, today I couldn’t make that same decision.  

“Good point,” I agreed. “Maybe I won’t tell them just yet. They’ll want to do a comprehensive medical exam at some point, but I can string them along for a bit. Well, Daisy can anyway. She’s good at that. I’m her best client and she might not have me for much longer.”

“Don’t talk like that,” Jenny said sternly. “I don’t want to hear you talking about dying all the time, okay? You’re going to get through this just like you did last time, so you can cut out all that bullshit about this being the end.”

I opened my mouth to argue, but then closed it again and just nodded my head. Jenny was clever enough to know that positive talk was not enough to fight this, but she was also right to insist that I don’t bring it up all the time. Other than following my doctor’s orders, there wasn’t much I could do to help my chances, but dwelling on the negatives all the time wasn’t going to help and it wasn’t fair to Jenny either.

I heard the sound of glasses clinking together downstairs as Sheridan stacked the dishwasher like he did every night before coming to bed. My bedroom door had been left open so if he came upstairs now he would know I was in here with Jenny.  

“You’d better leave,” Jenny said, coming to the same conclusion I had. “What do we do now?”

“I still need a little persuading before deciding on whether New York United is the right place for me to continue my career. How about you arrange for me to take a tour of the facilities tomorrow?”

Jenny smiled. Her eyes were still red from where she had been crying, but that smile never failed to light up her face. I’d fallen for her the very first time she’d looked at me like that.  

“Sounds like a good plan,” she replied. “Come by the office tomorrow morning around ten.”

“I’ll be there.”  

I carefully opened the door to her bedroom and, not hearing anyone come up the stairs, snuck down the hall and into my bedroom. The similarities with four years ago were impossible to ignore, but now we had arranged another date—albeit an informal one—and this time I wouldn’t push her away. If I only had a limited amount of time left, then I wanted to spend as much of it as possible with Jenny.

-*-

Being able to walk around a busy city like New York without being recognized every ten seconds was more unnerving than I’d expected it to be. I couldn’t do anything in Liverpool without being spotted, either by fans of my club or fans of its local rival. Needless to say the reaction to seeing me depended entirely on who they supported.  

Even outside of Liverpool, I was spotted almost instantly in any major city I visited in England or most of Europe. I even had a degree of notoriety in Asia now, although that was more because I had inadvertently dated a famous Malaysian model for a few months, rather than for my modest success on the soccer field to date.  

Daisy had screamed at me down the phone when I’d told her the model and me were splitting up. Apparently Asia was a huge market for soccer players now and the potential for sponsorship deals was huge. I was throwing away millions by ditching the model. Daisy could be really odd at times. She made no secret of her desire for me, but she was happy for me to date other people if it brought in the big bucks.

New York United must have had my picture up on the staff room walls, because every employee in that building recognized me and they treated me like royalty from the second I walked inside. The receptionist offered me all manner of drinks from tea to coffee to something stronger—despite it being ten in the morning—but fortunately Jenny came down to meet me and led me out of the office and back into the streets of New York where I could go back to being relatively inconspicuous.

“When I told my boss what we were doing this morning he insisted I use one of the club’s limos to escort you to the ground.”

“That’s really not necessary,” I said. I rarely used limos back in the UK. When you owned a fleet of cars as good as mine, driving tended to be more of a pleasure than a chore, but limos did have their uses in the evening. Certain women just couldn’t resist the allure of a limo with champagne flowing, and the thrill of having sex while being able to watch people walking past.  

“Yeah, I figured you’d rather keep this low key for the time being, so I said we’d just take a taxi,” Jenny said. “I know Daisy wants things to be high-profile to a certain extent, but it would be best if we weren’t seen together all the time.”

“You worry too much,” I said. “No-one will give it a second thought. I’m just getting a tour of the grounds from an employee. Worst case scenario, they will find out you happen to be my stepsister.”

“No, the worst case scenario is they spot the way I look at you, and realize there is something going on between us.”

“Well you’re just going to have to control that look of lust and desire in your eyes while we’re out in public,” I joked.  

Jenny smiled, but only after looking around to make sure no one had heard. New Yorkers rarely paid much attention to other people’s conversations. Unless you walked into them they wouldn’t even acknowledge your existence.  

We hopped in a taxi and took the short ride to the stadium. I’d heard rumors of how much it cost to build the stadium, but I was still blown away when we pulled up outside. A fair chunk of the money must have gone towards purchasing the land in such a central location, but even so, the stadium was on par with many of the newer ones in Europe. It was better than the stadium I currently played in, which was over one hundred years old at this point.

The staff at the stadium were expecting us, so it only took a few minutes to get through security.

“Where do you want to start?” Jenny asked. “I’m not sure what you care about most. The changing rooms? Fitness center? Medical cent...”  

She trailed off and looked down at her feet as she no doubt remembered that this tour was not real, and that because of my tumor I would not have a chance to complete this signing.

“The changing rooms aren’t that important,” I said, “and the fitness centers in stadiums are rarely used because most of that will be done on a separate training complex. There are only two spots I really care about. The view the fans have and the feeling of walking out onto the pitch.”

“Okay, we’ll start with the stands,” Jenny said, as she pulled a piece of paper out of her purse and unfolded it.

“Is that a map of the stadium?” I asked, laughing slightly.

“Hey, I haven’t been here before either,” Jenny said. “I’m as new to all this as you.”

“Follow me,” I said, heading towards the nearest set of stairs that led out to the terraces. We emerged behind one of the goals, about halfway up the stand.  

In England, the most highly sought after seats were those nearest the designated section for the away fans. The atmosphere around that section tended to be electric, as the two sets of fans competed to insult each other through the medium of ‘songs’ and to generally make things as uncomfortable as possible for the opposing team.

There weren’t as many away fans in the US because of the huge distances most teams had to travel to play games, so away fans just tended to mingle in with the home fans. That would never fly in Europe; there would be huge fights and riots within minutes.  

I sat down on one of the seats and took in the view. The stadium had a retractable roof and everywhere you looked provided a reminder of how much had been spent to build it, from the comfortable chairs to the food stands that looked like they actually served food people wanted to eat.  

Comparisons to stadiums in Europe were perhaps a little unfair. This stadium seated no more than forty thousand people, probably less, whereas the new stadiums in Europe tended to be much bigger.  

At least this was a purpose-built soccer stadium. I hated the ones where a football field—or worse, a ballpark—was converted temporarily into a soccer field for a few games. You could always still see the original lines on the field and it just never felt right. Soccer might not be that huge in the US, but New York United was certainly taking steps to change that. I had to remind myself that I wouldn’t be moving here anyway, no matter how nice the facilities might be.

“Let’s sit down for a bit,” I said to Jenny. She looked somewhat awkward standing by the seats and I wondered whether she had ever been to a sporting event at all, let alone a soccer game.

“The field is larger than I expected,” Jenny said as she sat down. We were in the shade, but it was another humid day in New York and Jenny looked hot already.

“Yeah, soccer fields tend to be bigger than football fields and that throws people at first. This is not as big as the one I play on back in England, but it’s a decent size nonetheless.”

“Isn’t there a fixed size for the fields?” Jenny asked.

I shook my head. “No, not really. They need to be within certain dimensions, but there’s quite a lot of variety. When my club plays against some of the smaller teams in cup competitions, we end up playing on some rough pitches which are more mud than grass. In fact, the first club I played for in England played on a bad pitch. The stadium only seated ten thousand, and it was half empty most of the time.”

“I remember you said you played in England for three years. I suppose before going there you had the brain surgery, which is why you weren’t there the entire four-year period.”