Page 130 of Broken Brothers

“I’m sorry,” I said, but it felt incomplete. Then again, I’m pretty sure anything I said would have felt incomplete. What magic words could make up for a business that Claire had started and elevated to millions of dollars. “I’m sorry, Claire. It’s my—”

“No, Chance, it’s OK,” Claire said. If ever anyone could have looked sincere with those words in this moment, it was her; but even then, it didn’t feel right. “I just… I had hoped you coming here would help me right the ship.”

The implication was obvious.I’m not good enough to do so.

“But I think for what we’ve gotten ourselves into, we shouldn’t be together like this. Best case scenario we have some ideas, worst case scenario we have sex and it devolves from there…”

“Yeah, tell me about it,” I said. “I want to make it up to you however I can, though. Investments, advice, I—”

“Chance,” she said with a sad smile that was followed by a long hug. When she pulled me, she kissed me on the cheek.

Nothing had felt more intimate from her than that, but nothing could have also been more telling than that. Nothing said “we’re done” more than a kiss on the cheek after regularly having sex with someone.

“I’ll take your advice from afar. But we need some distance separating us. OK?”

I felt defeated.

Edwin Hunt had won.

He hadn’t won so much in the breaking apart of me and Claire. That was bound to happen sooner or later. But he had won in destroying a part of MCH.

He had won in ruining the life of someone I cared about.

And for all that I had planned, for all that I had had Morgan do, for all of the ideas I had generated, none of it had come to fruition.

“OK,” I said glumly.

She led me back to the door. I took one step out, turned around, and looked in her eyes.

I’m not sure what the saddest part was—that I knew Claire and I had changed permanently, or that she looked OK with it without any sort of hesitation.

“Goodbye, Chance.”

53

“GOD FUCKING DAMNIT!”

As soon as I got outside her apartment and out of earshot of Claire McLendon, I laid into the nearest trash can I could find, punching it so hard I knocked it to the ground, creating an indentation with my knuckles and what was sure to be a giant bruise in the morning.

Oh, my hand hurt like hell. In fact, I dared to say that it might have even been broken.

But that was nothing compared to the unfathomable rage I felt toward Edwin Hunt at that moment. I had it in my right mind to head over to Hunt Industries, procure an elevator to the top, and wait until the old man got in and beat his ass to a fucking pulp.

It was one thing to come after me. It was another thing to go after Morgan, as cowardly as that was. But it was an entirely fucking different thing to go after an innocent girl who did nothing more than make an investment deal with a guy she had an attraction to. How fucking dare he.

I felt like the Hulk about to bust out and let loose on anything and everything I saw. If I could have, I would have found thenearest taxi cab and smashed the hood in until it looked more like a Slip n Side.

“FUCK!”

I kicked another trash can. This time, it felt like I stubbed my toe. I cursed even more, slumped against the wall, and cursed the name of Edwin Hunt.

A couple of people looked at me, but my scowl toward them eliminated any possibility of small talk. I didn’t want to speak to a damn soul in this world. I just wanted to scream.

And, I soon remembered, not only had this night cost me Claire McLendon, it had cost me Layla Taylor. Maybe that was for the best, but goddamnit, I wanted it on my terms.

Eventually, I picked myself up, if for no other reason than that I didn’t want to spend the cold night on the streets of Manhattan. But under better conditions, I might have just remained in the streets until my anger ran out or I passed out, neither of which seemed particularly likely.

I felt my phone buzz and saw that Sarah had messaged me on Facebook, but even this didn’t arouse me as much as it had before. She called me handsome, again, but I wasn’t in the mood. She’d be in town in a week anyways, and I could blow off some steam with her before moving on with the rest of my life.