Page 188 of Broken Brothers

“Chance…” she said through broken sobs. “Thank you. Seriously. Thank you. I don’t know… I don’t know how…”

“Don’t worry about how it all happened,” I said.

Even though I hated Edwin Hunt, even though nothing had changed, some secrets were just best kept within the family.

“Just focus on raising your business back up. OK? Listen, I have to go. I’m moving into a new apartment and I want to get set up. But you know that I’m always here to mentor you if you need. OK?”

Claire smiled, stood from the table, and embraced me, sobs still coming from her. I kissed her on the top of her head, squeezed her against me, and patted her back.

“You’re back in the game,” I said. “Now go start hiring some people.”

I gave her one more kiss on the forehead and then bounced out of the coffee shop, heading to Layla’s apartment.

Boy, did it feel good to give that one her chance back. You could say whatever you wanted about how Edwin and I were or about how Layla and I were, but Claire getting hurt had felt like the greatest injustice of all. She had simply taken an investment from me and had her multi-million dollar dream nearly ruined by Edwin. I held no illusions that she’d be able to find so many great employees overnight, but I also held no fears now that she’d be gone so quickly.

Now, I could really actually say there was just one dynamic to figure out.

When I got to the door of Layla’s, she was sitting at her kitchen table, sipping on a glass of wine. She looked a bit disconcerted.

“You OK?” I said.

She shrugged.

“I just hate to see you go,” she said. “What if you don’t come back?”

I asked for her to stand up. She did. I came over, put my hands on her hips, and kissed her.

“Don’t ask that question right now,” I said. “I’m still going to come over. You know why? Because now, we get to find out what we are for real. No more games. No more politics. No more secret plans. Just us.”

I knew those words weren’t the perfect comfort for Layla, most especially since the act of moving out after having had sex that one time had created a bond we couldn’t shake. We hadn’t even had sex since, just so overwhelmed and so busy with everything else that we couldn’t make the time.

But I suppose that was for the best.

“Think of it like this,” I said.

I looked out the window of her apartment to see the sun reaching its peak. It felt very appropriate for us—we, too, would soon reach our peak.

“It’s not that you’ll see this Chance again,” I said. “It’s that we can really see just each other, the real Chance and the real Layla, for the first time.”

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“When you’re older, this won’t follow you around. You’ll get the chance to be your own man. Just… just wait, OK?”

Sarah grabbed my arm when she said that, sending a shiver down my spine.

I can’t say that I fully agreed. The Hunt name would follow me around. That was unavoidable.

But she did make a point. I had to be my own man when the time came. That wouldn’t be now, that wouldn’t be next year, it probably wouldn’t even be for five years. But when that time came…

Chance Hunt would emerge, both with girls and in business, as a name distinct and separate from Hunt Industries. Who knew what that would do to my relationship with Morgan and the Hunts, but by then, it wouldn’t matter. I could not permanently shake it off, but I could shrug it off.

“OK,” I said, taking the small glimmer of hope for the future.

Sarah smiled gently, leaning forward to kiss me on the cheek. She quickly ducked out of the stairwell, and just as quickly as I had gotten a private moment with her, it was like she had walkedout the door. Of course, I understood that this wasn’t the end of me seeing her. I had, after all, many more years of schooling with her, possibly extending as far out as college if we wound up at the same place.

But the notion that I would ever see her again as anything other than a friend, for as long as we were under our parents’ roofs—or, in my case, under my adopted parents’ roof—had vanished. I bowed my head, let my feelings sink to their nadir, and trudged to class.

For the rest of the day, as I moped around my various honors courses, I didn’t really feel anything. Numb was an appropriate response for ninety-five percent of the day, but when I saw Sarah’s parents pick her up from the school, I felt an enormous amount of anger toward them. How dare they refuse me just because I was not a real Hunt?