Page 220 of Broken Brothers

Maybe accepting the coffee date was fine. Maybe just meeting for that one hour would have been bad, but it wouldn’t have been terrible. But to spend all day with her? After I had said the night before that I needed to ask Layla to be my girlfriend after everything with the funeral blew over?

This was the worst part of me rising up and taking control. The insecure side of Chance that needed the validation of women to make up for his past had risen up and taken control of me. If I were more secure, I would have enjoyed my hour with Sarah, wished her well, and told her we could be friends. But no. I had let my personal weaknesses take over me so that I could “make up” for being the twelve year old rejected for not being a true Hunt.

The fucked up part of it was there was no actual making up for it. I couldn’t go back in time and make the younger Chance happy. That was my past, and I couldn’t change it, I couldn’t avenge it, I couldn’t make up for it. I could only learn from it.

I was just thankful that I’d managed to avoid doing anything too horrible. I swore that I would have that conversation with Layla before I saw Sarah. Because if I saw Sarah and I hadn’t defined things perfectly, then my insecure side was going to define things—and I didn’t think I’d like that very much.

I just hoped that Layla still felt the same way I did.

88

NINE YEARS BEFORE

New Year’s Eve, in the Hunt household, was often a time that everyone celebrated—but for very different reasons.

For Edwin, he kept talking about all of the money he was going to make in the new year. He would always talk about how he was going to buy this company, make this amount of money, or make the billionaire’s list. The new year wasn’t a time for reflecting on personal goals, but for creating financial ones.

For Mrs. Hunt, it seemed like the kind of time in which she wanted everyone to grow. She spoke about her goals for Edwin, her goals for Morgan and I, but very rarely goals for herself. I would ask her why she did this, but she would brush it off, saying something to the effect of “if your father is happy, I’m happy.” I never bothered to correct her by saying that I didn’t consider Edwin my father anymore than I considered anyone else in my adopted family, well, family. If I did, they’d just wind up leaving me anyways.

For Morgan, it was about the girls in our class he’d get. When he got especially mean, he’d tell me he was going to get Sarah Hill to make me jealous—that was the easiest way to ensure thatwe’d fight with fists and go for each other’s throats with gusto. But otherwise, he was mostly just like the rest of the guys our age.

For me?

I didn’t really make goals. I especially didn’t make goals having to deal with other people.

Life, to me, was just a series of failures with the occasional surprise success. Every relationship I’d had so far had ended poorly; every class I did well in, Morgan did better; and even within my own family, my parents and Morgan loved each other more than any of them loved me.

With an hour to go before New Year’s Day, then, I found myself, as usual, sitting on a corner chair in silence, listening to the Hunts talk about the same thing they did every year. I wanted desperately to get up and leave; I wanted to retreat to my room, maybe play some video games, and dream of the day when I was older and able to escape the grip of the Hunts.

“Chance?”

I looked up in surprise to see Mrs. Hunt approaching. She sat beside me. I had trouble looking her in the eye; I didn’t really feel like engaging right now.

“How are you, sweetie?”

I rolled my eyes. She didn’t really care how I felt.

“I’m fine,” I said.

It was a lie, but it was a lie that would hopefully end the conversation. Even someone as nice as Mrs. Hunt was bound to prefer hanging out with her husband or her real son than me. It was just obvious.

“Chance,” she said. “You don’t have to tell me everything if you don’t want to. But I did want to tell you my resolution for you.”

“OK,” I said.

Great, like I need to learn what some old lady wants to do for me. I’m sure this will be of the greatest interest and something that I won’t care about in the slightest. Damnit.

“I want to see if you’d like to connect with your real parents,” she said.

“Why?” I said, scowling at her.

I could see the hurt in her eyes. She didn’t understand. Why would I ever want to see the two people who had left me behind? And for good, at that?

“I just… I thought you’d want to see them while you still could,” she said.

“What, are they like my grandparents?” I said, being stupidly insulting and caustic.

“No, but you never know, Chance,” she said. “You never know how long someone’s going to be around. You should take the opportunity while you can.”