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“I had brain surgery, and within nine months my doctors gave me the all clear. But you have to remember that at the time I genuinely thought I was going to die. The odds were not in my favor. I canceled all thoughts of playing football and became a bit of a recluse.”  

“I could have been there for you,” I said. “You didn’t have to go through that alone.”  

“You were about to start college,” Jaxon said. “You had better things to do than spend your time with someone who was probably going to die soon anyway.”

I nearly threw up. His words felt like a punch to the gut. How little did Jaxon think of me that he assumed I would put studying before helping him with a life-threatening sickness?

“Fuck you,” I responded, raising my voice slightly. My choice of words was less elegant than I’d have liked. I didn’t know if I was actually mad with him right now or not, but the words escaped my mouth anyway. Jaxon hadn’t been expecting that reaction, and looked thoroughly bemused before finally laughing hard. “What’s funny?” I snapped. “I’m serious. You obviously don’t think very much of me if you think I would put Harvard before being with you when you need me.”

Jaxon forced himself to stop laughing, but the grin was still there on his face. I was about to yell at him again when he suddenly went serious.

“Sorry,” he said. “It’s not funny, except, well, it kind of is. I knew full well you would do anything to help me through the treatment, because that’s the kind of person you are. That’s why I didn’t tell you. And that’s why I betrayed you. That’s why I kissed Emilia that night.”

I’d never heard Jaxon utter her name. On the few occasions he had broached the topic of what happened he just referred to it as ‘that night’ or something equally generic. Just hearing her name muttered by his lips sent my heart plummeting and caused a wave of nausea to wash over me.  

“I don’t understand,” I said finally. “What does you cheating on me have to do with your illness?”  

“Please don’t say it like that,” Jaxon pleaded. “I didn’t cheat on you. Not really. You had to think that so that you’d move on from me, but that wasn’t how it went down.”

“I saw you,” I said. “I saw you kiss her. You had your hand on her leg. God knows what happened after that, but I saw enough to know you were cheating on me.”

“Nothing happened after the kiss,” Jaxon insisted. “As soon as you left the bar we stopped kissing.”

“Oh how kind of you,” I said sarcastically. “You’re just too generous for your own good sometimes.”

Jaxon rubbed the bridge of his nose with his thumb and forefinger while his other hand squeezed mine tightly. “I’m not doing a very good job explaining this,” he admitted. “I couldn’t tell you I was sick. You wouldn’t have gone to college and that would’ve messed up your entire life. You’d spent years working towards a place at a college like Harvard, and we’d only known each other for a few months. I couldn’t let you give that up for me.”

“I could have just deferred for a year,” I said. “I could have stayed with you while you got better and then gone to college once you had the all clear.”

“You’re forgetting something,” Jaxon said. “I didn’t think I was going to get the all clear. The doctors didn’t give me a good chance of surviving longer than six months. The odds of the treatment working was less than fifty percent. If the treatment hadn’t worked I could have dropped dead at any minute. That’s why I had to have you hate me. I couldn’t let you get any closer to me than you already had because I might have died and then you would have been devastated.”

“Don’t you think I would have been devastated anyway?” I asked. “I would have felt just as bad about it. Worse maybe, because I wouldn’t have been there with you.”

“You sound like Aaron,” Jaxon said. “He said much the same thing when I told him what I was planning to do.”

“So Aaron knew you were sick, but not me? I’m going to kill him the next time I see him.”  

“Don’t blame him,” Jaxon said. “It wasn’t fair of me to bring him into it, but I needed help to make sure the plan worked. I needed you to see me kissing someone, but I didn’t know anyone in town. Aaron hooked me up with Emilia. She knows too, by the way. For what it’s worth, she’s actually a lesbian, so I doubt she enjoyed the kiss any more than I did.”

Jaxon stopped talking. He opened his mouth a few times as if to speak, but it didn’t look like he had anything left to say. I probably should have had questions for him, but everything seemed astonishingly clear. I couldn’t say I agreed with what he had done, but I understood it. I think.

“Let me get this straight,” I said. “You found out you might die and you didn’t want me to get any closer to you, so you arranged with Aaron for me to see you kissing another woman. You then spent nine months going through treatment for a brain tumor without telling anyone. Is that about it?”

Jaxon nodded. “It all sounds rather straightforward when you put it like that.”  

“Why didn’t you tell me all this once you’d recovered?” I asked.

“I nearly did. But you had a boyfriend at the time. It didn’t seem right to just pop back into your life when you were happy with someone else.”  

I’d never been happy with any of my college boyfriends. I’d been content, but never happy. They’d been there for me on the rare occasions I took time away from studying, but I’d never felt a spark with them. Not like I had with Jaxon. It might sound callous, but I’d have dropped them in a second if Jaxon had come back into my life.

I pulled my hand out from under his. Jaxon’s hand fell to my thigh, but he quickly moved it away, no doubt assuming I was pissed with him. I looked up into his eyes and slowly, nervously, moved my head towards his. When my lips were inches from his, I leaned in and kissed him. The spark hit me instantly as I felt the intensity of his kiss for the first time in four years. It was every bit as good as I’d remembered.

When Jenny pressed her lips to mine, it took every ounce of strength I had not to pull her close to me and start tearing the clothes from her body. Perhaps she wanted that, but I couldn’t say for sure and didn’t want to take the risk.  

The kiss had come from nowhere. I’d told her everything there was to tell—except for the recent news from the hospital—and I’d half expected to walk out of her bedroom and never be allowed back in. This was the first time we’d really talked about what happened four years ago and I still found it hard to say the words aloud. I’d practiced telling her in front of a mirror and even then the words had to be forced out. Actually saying it to her face had been almost impossible.

Now she was kissing me. My heart raced as I placed a hand on her cheek and leaned in to her, returning the kiss with only a fraction of the furious passion I felt burning inside me at that moment.  

Our lips fought for supremacy and our tongues did battle as I squeezed her thigh while she grasped my bicep. I wanted to open her legs and throw her back on the bed, but I didn’t want to take advantage of her. Minutes ago I’d been telling her that I thought I was going to die. It was only normal for someone to get emotional under those circumstances. If I took the lead now she might hate me forever.  

Jenny’s hand left my bicep as her fingers took hold of a handful of my shirt. She leaned back, leaving me kissing the air, and then pulled me down as she fell back on the bed, legs parting as she landed. Okay, screw being patient, that was all the sign I needed.  

I fell on top of Jenny and started kissing her neck while my hand went down to her ass. She pressed her sex against my stiffening cock and groaned as I rubbed my erection against her. My hand was squeezing her thigh when I heard footsteps coming up the stairs.

“Jaxon?” Carrie yelled out. She’d probably been calling for me from downstairs; she didn’t go to the effort of leaving her office to come and get me unless she had to. I froze, but Jenny reacted quickly, pushing me off her and sitting up on the edge of the bed, desperately pressing the creases out of her blouse.  

I followed suit and moved up the bed a few feet to create a gap between us. Carrie burst into the room without knocking.  

“There you are,” she said, as if she’d been looking for me for hours instead of seconds. “I need your help with the computer.”

“You know, it’s generally considered polite to knock before you burst into someone’s bedroom,” I said with mock sincerity. “Anyway, don’t you have lackeys who work for the firm that can help you with computer problems. It’s a work computer after all.”  

“Most of them have left early for the day,” Carrie responded, apparently unaware that it was now approaching midnight which, for most people, did not constitute ‘leaving early.’ “And the twenty-four-hour staff are useless. Are you going to help or not?”  

I had no desire to help Mom when Jenny was on the bed horny and waiting for me to fuck her, but I also didn’t want Mom to get suspicious about Jenny and me.

“Fine,” I replied. “But if I can’t fix it in ten minutes then you’ll just have to deal with the minions at work.”  

When Mom had walked away I turned to face Jenny and mouthed ‘be back soon.’ She smiled and nodded, but I immediately feared she was having second thoughts about the whole thing. Giving her time to cool off and think things through was probably the right thing to do, but if it ended in me going to bed with a loaded gun then I wouldn’t feel all that positive about the decision.

I walked down to Mom’s study and immediately saw what was wrong with the computer. Nothing. The problem was the user.  

“You have a code PEBCAK error,” I said. PEBCAK—problem exists between chair and keyboard.  

“What’s that mean?”  

“Nevermind.”  

Mom didn’t seem to realize that there was a limit to how many tabs you should have open on a laptop that was intended for little more than responding to email and basic browsing. The firm provided all employees—including senior directors like Mom—with the same basic laptop for work use. I’d told her she’d be better off buying her own laptop, but apparently the firm didn’t want her using a personal one for security reasons.  

The computer had come to a grinding halt, so I closed the browser and reopened a fresh tab.

“I needed those tabs,” Mom complained.  

“I can bring them back up,” I said, navigating to the history page, “but you should limit how many you have open at any one time.”  

Mom pointed out the tabs she needed open and immediately resumed working without so much as a thank you. I muttered “you’re welcome” under my breath and headed for the door.

“Don’t even think about finishing what you started in there,” Mom said, not looking away from her laptop.

“Excuse me?” I asked. I’d forgotten that she nearly walked in on Jenny and I kissing, so I was genuinely confused at what she was talking about. At least that meant my shock should have sounded genuine.

“With Jenny,” Mom said calmly.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I lied. It was now fairly clear exactly what Mom was talking about.  

“Don’t treat me like an idiot Jaxon. How many times have I caught you with girls in your room? I know that look you have on your face when you’re about to get some.”

I closed the door in case Jenny’s father could hear, although the television was on loud enough that he probably wouldn’t hear a thing.  

“What I do or do not do with Jenny is none of your business,” I snarled. I couldn’t be bothered to deny it. I never confided anything to Mom, so if I got too defensive she would know she was right.

“Of course it’s my business. She’s my stepdaughter.”  

“Oh please. You’ve never treated her like a daughter. You’ve barely treated her like a human being. Mind you, that’s the same way you act towards me so I suppose you have a point.”

“Don’t play games with me, Jaxon. I want you to come back to New York and to play for New York United, but the last thing we want is a scandal.”

“Why do you care?” I asked. “You don’t work for the club. They’re just another client to you.”

“They happen to be a very lucrative client and I am close to the CEO. It would be embarrassing to say the least if I helped engineer your transfer only for you to shame the club by getting involved with your sister.”