“Exactly,” he said.
He sighed and looked to the door.
“You want another drink, don’t you?” I said.
“After this week, I want another bar,” Morgan said. “You want in?”
I didn’t think it would be awkward if I returned. Claire had not yet emerged, which suggested to me she was either thinking about what had happened, ordered another drink, or had somehow passed by without either of us noticing. The last idea seemed the most impossible, but it wasn’t totally impossible.
“I’m good,” I said.
The truth was, if Claire and I were to do something, we had to keep it private and completely between us. Not even Morgan could know, at least not this early. Maybe eventually, but eventually was a long, long time away.
And I knew if I went back in there with Morgan, not only would Claire wonder why I had returned, for the amount she drank, it was unlikely she would keep quiet either.
“OK,” Morgan said. “Hey, I love you man.”
It was an odd admission from a man who didn’t look drunk, but then I realized he wasn’t drunk. He was just too tired and too exhausted to be anything other than completely honest.
“I know that you may think I started MCH to help you, and I did a bit,” Morgan said. “But your work is helping me so much, too. Dad is just beating me down, and you could have just as easily said fuck it, do your own thing and figure it out. But you have already secured Rising Sun and put us at least in a fighting position with Virtual Realty. More than that, you don’t mock me for my spot. I know men are supposed to fight, but sometimes, I just don’t want to fucking hear it. But you get it, and for that, I am so appreciative.”
“Dude,” I said, genuinely touched.
I went over and hugged him. Strange as it sounded, I needed that just as much as Morgan probably did.
I needed to know that not everyone close to me wanted to use me or fuck me over. Morgan was always the one I trusted unconditionally, but it was nice to be reminded of our commitment and trust to each other. It was nice to know that we didn’t have to look behind each other’s backs for knives that would wind up stabbing each other. We might fight and argue, but we would never destroy the other person for personal gain.
“I think you should probably call it a night too,” I said, patting his arm firmly. “You like tired as shit.”
“You don’t say,” Morgan said. “All right. If you insist.”
“I do,” I said. “Let’s spend this weekend doing as little as possible. OK? We’ll reconvene Monday and figure out next steps once you finish work.”
“Alright,” Morgan said.
We hugged one more time. I had a strange feeling, out of nowhere, that I was being watched, but when I looked around, I didn’t see anyone. Perhaps my paranoia had a point, given that my rejection of Edwin Hunt was not that far removed, but we had also not raised our voices so loudly as to bring attention to ourselves.
With one more firm handshake, the two of us went back to our respective apartments, perhaps a little more confused about events but certainly starting to make a little more sense of them.
Chapter Eleven
When I awoke the next morning, as I had almost come to expect from my daily life, I now had two messages from the two usual suspects.
Claire McLendon.
And Layla Taylor.
Strangely, my interactions with Claire had left me more sympathetic and open to Layla. Perhaps having a new love interest had made it a little easier to forgive the previous one, or maybe realizing how hard it was to reject the opportunities power of sex gave made me more sympathetic to her. Either way, it wasn’t like I was about to go and do something stupid.
I did, however, decide to do something I would have considered stupid just a couple of weeks before.
I agreed to meet Layla for coffee later that day.
This time, though, unlike with Claire, where it felt like something of a desperate cry for social attention that I could only barely repel, Layla just felt like a way to calm myself when I thought of her name. There was no way I was ever going back to her—I was pretty sure—but at least if we let the fire between us simmer down a bit, when we hung out, things wouldn’t be so tense. I wouldn’t burn with rage or eye rolls every time I saw her texts or heard her name.
I just hoped she felt the same way about me.
Which... was unlikely. No one texted with this much frequency. No one that liked someone else, that was.
But at this point, I was just acting selfishly. At least it was a relatively healthy kind of selfish and not a screw-you-over selfishness.
Meanwhile, when I read Claire’s text, I couldn’t help but feel some sort of strong emotions to her.
“I don’t regret what happened last night,” she wrote. “I am feeling all sorts of confused after the past couple of weeks. I will never drag you into something you don’t want to do, Chance, but know I am not looking for anything serious. Whatever you want to do, we will do.”
The offer was quite enticing, but I still wasn’t quite ready to pull the trigger. I had a feeling I would eventually, but I had to make sure I was in the right frame of mind. I was like Morgan—I was almost desperate to see MCH take off, and I feared taking advantage of information Claire provided to allow us to negotiate a better deal.
Then, just before I got off the couch, I got a call from a New York number I did not recognize.
At first, I just ignored it, putting it on the coffee table as I got up to get a glass of water.
But then, the number rang again. I tried again to ignore it, this time actively pressing the ignore button. I turned on the TV...
And then the fucking number called me again.
Maybe someone was calling me from someone else’s phone for an emergency. Who would know my number by heart? Morgan. Mrs. Hunt. Maybe some random friend from college? The fact that they were calling three times negated the likelihood of it being a spam caller, so I picked up the phone about five seconds into the third ring.
“Chance Hunt,” I said.
At first, nothing came through.
Then, in what can only be described as someone sounding like a muffled, anonymous TV source, a man in a deep voice began talking.
“We heard you last night, Chance,” the voice said. “We know your secrets.”
I was being watched last night. Fuck.
But they haven’t said anything yet. You don’t know what they’re referring to. They may be full of shit. Let’s not say anything that could spill the beans.
“I’m sorry, I think you have the wrong number,” I said, deliberately playing dumb.
“We know exactly who you are, Chance Hunt,” the voice said. “You fucked with the wrong people.”
“OK, this is a little creepy, but—”
“We saw you with the girl.”
Oh, shit.
Don’t say anything. Play dumb. They don’t know your relationship with Claire. They’re just trying to scare you.
And by they... I mean Edwin Hunt’s people. No one else is trying to do this to me.
Fucking dick. Fine. You want to play hardball? Morgan and I are going to fire your ass the second we take over the board.
“We know what you are doing with her.”
“Is that so,” I said. I was tired of playing dumb. I was going to play really dumb. “Did you like it when I made out with her?”
“Don’t fuck with us, Chance Hun—”
“Did you like it when we got all PDA? Ewww, right? Was it gross, were you—”
“I said do not fuck with us, Chance!”
“It was like, really ewwy and gooey, am I right?”
“Fucking prick! Listen to me, you—”
“Oh, wait, my girlfriend is calling me. Try not to be jealous, little boy trying to sound like Darth Vader. See ya!”
“You fucking—”
I hung up before I heard the rest of his words. The point had been made and I’d gotten a good laugh, but it was und
eniable that Edwin Hunt was now resorting to fucking goons to try and intimidate me. On one level, I could laugh that Edwin Hunt was now having to use bush league tactics to try and scare me, and not only had it failed miserably, I had effectively trolled said goons so much that it had pushed them to losing their mind.
But the flip side was I knew this wouldn’t end anytime soon.
Which begged the question... what did Edwin Hunt want to get out of this?
Did he want to know what I was doing? Did he want to pressure me into coming back to him and asking for a job? Did he want me to just feel fear all the time?
As vicious as a man as Edwin Hunt could be, I never saw him as an evil or cruel one. He had his reasons for doing things, and they almost always came back to making money. And by almost always, I basically mean always. He wasn’t doing what he was unless he either suspected I was stealing business from him in the form of investments, or he was convinced I needed to join him for the sake of profitability in the firm.
If Morgan had cracked, the former was likely. If he hadn’t, then it was probably the latter.
I felt tempted to text Morgan right then and there, but leaving nothing to chance, I left the question for in-person contact. Better to ask him alone and without hackable technology than to text him and have it blow up in my face.
Instead, I got ready to see Layla, throwing on casual but not ridiculously dismissive clothing. Jeans, a V-neck t-shirt, and a light sweater for the fall season seemed appropriate—enough to make it clear I put effort into getting ready but not so much that it would have signaled the wrong thing. It wasn’t hard to think about what the wrong thing was.
When I saw her at Joe’s Coffee, she looked like she went for the exact same appearance—enough to make it clear that she cared about this meeting, but not wanting to give the wrong impression.
“Hey,” I said as I took a seat. “How are you?”
“Hey Chance,” she said.
The way she looked reminded me of Morgan—beaten down, looking physically relatively the same as before, but her eyes carrying a heavy weight that she had only recently consumed.
“You look like hell, what happened?”
She just gave the soft, somewhat pitiful laugh that I used to give myself after breakups.
“What happened is my uncle stopped pretending to be who he is,” she said. “After everything happened, I thought that helping him getting this deal would increase my standing in the family company. Instead, it’s just given me more work without any type of promotion, any type of benefit.”
I had so many questions for her, and unlike last time, when I tried to push her away, I sought to understand her better. Was this treading on dangerous waters? Possibly. I could certainly see how the ripples might play out over time, churning the seas in a way that was not wise.
But I trusted myself.
Probably a stupid move. But too late now.
“You sound like your family has a little bit of Hunt in you,” I said.
“Tell me about it,” she said, groaning. “Anyways, I’m sorry—”
“No, let’s not start with that whole spiel again, don’t be redundant,” I said with a polite hand wave. “What’s going on with your uncle? Why is he such a massive asshole?”
She sat there in silence for a long time, alternating between looking at me and looking up to the sky. I had struck some sort of nerve that, I now realized, was about to unearth some probable dark, harsh secrets I wouldn’t have wanted to know.
“At first, we told you he was my father for the sake of making it look like a family business in which I was trying to learn,” she said. “Which, I guess, in the strictest sense of the sentence, is true. I am considered family, and I was trying to learn.”
The fact that she used the words “am considered” made me begin to suspect something about Layla.
“But the fact of the matter was, that was never Craig’s intent, not even close. He saw how his interns and junior associates looked at me, and instead of feeling disgust, he decided to use me.”
“As a distraction so whoever worked with him would give in easier,” I said. “Just so happened the plan worked even better than expected.”
“For leverage, exactly,” she said. “The truth is, I never wanted to hurt you. I know that’s really easy to say now, but...”
She looked around the room, suspecting that people were watching her. Unfortunately, she was probably more right than she knew, given Edwin Hunt’s newest obsession with tracking me and seeing what I was doing.
“You have to understand, Chance, I’m not a full Taylor.”
I knew it.
“Adopted?”
She glumly nodded.
“Part of the reason I felt so drawn to you and felt so disgusted with you is I know what it’s like to feel like an outsider in your own family,” she continued. “My adoptive father died when I was fourteen, but Craig was no fool. He saw how smart I was and how much of an asset I could be to the family business. So he adopted me. But while I don’t know anything about Edwin Hunt, I can tell you that Craig is something akin to a sociopath.”
I shuddered. I didn’t see Edwin Hunt quite in that light, but he wasn’t far removed from it.
“Craig had no problem basically whoring me out. He had no regard for what I wanted and my feelings. In a weird way, this benefited me at times. It got me a Princeton education and it got me the six-figure job I held now. But the flip side of it is because Craig got me these things, I feel trapped. I feel like I owe him for life. If I were to ever try and escape, there would be no way out.”
“So, it’s safe to say that Craig had you manipulate me so that I would tell you details of the deal, and then Craig could use those to negotiate with my adoptive father and fuck me over.”
I wish I hadn’t said such words out loud, but we’d been there such a short time and I didn’t see anyone of too great a suspicion that I felt I’d gotten away with it. For now.
“More or less,” Layla said. “So now you know. It doesn’t excuse what I did. I should have had the guts to stand up and say I wasn’t going to screw you over. If I’d been a stronger woman...”
She began to sniffle, displaying emotions similar to what I had seen at our random encounter in the streets. Part of me... yeah, I had to say, part of me wanted to comfort her.
But I didn’t see her like that anymore, at least that’s what I told myself. And she hadn’t been a stronger woman. She had failed to stand up to her ruthless uncle, while I had stood up to Edwin Hunt. And she was older by a couple of years, so it’s not like she had no choice in the matter. It’s not like she was less mature than me.
“I’m sorry, Chance.”
I simply said thank you and let silence fill the air.
“What do you want moving forward?”
I hadn’t expected the question and it forced me to stumble on my words.
“I, uhh, moving, what do you mean?”
“Between us.”
The idea that there would be anything between us... no, that was a little ridiculous. That smacked a little bit of wishful thinking on Layla’s part.
“Peace and civility,” I said.
“Nothing more?”
I should have expected this conversation for how much Layla messaged me. I should have known this was coming. Actually, I had, but I hadn’t given it the proper thought and respect it deserved.
“Layla, I appreciate you providing me the context that you have. I’m sorry that your uncle is a fucking nightmare. I’m sorry that you felt compelled to do those things. But the bottom line is, you did.”
“I know,” she said. I could tell she was trying to fight her emotions and mirror my stoic, composed state. “But do you remember what I asked you in the bedroom?”
I knew where she was going with this. I didn’t want to acknowledge it, even though I knew full well what she was referencing.
“Chance.”
“I know what you’re talking about,” I said.
“No, Chance, say it.”
For the first time since she had shattered my heart and my dreams, she looked forceful in her demands. Fine.
“I promised you I would love you no matter what.”
Layla nodded, a single tear falling down her cheek.
“I’ve only told you part of the story, Chance, but all you need to know is that hearing you say that meant more to my life than anything since my adoptive father died,” she said. “Are you going to tell me you didn’t mean it?”
“Of course I meant it,” I said before I could reconsider.
But even upon reconsideration, I knew that what I had felt in the moment was true, or at least I believed it was true. But could I call it love if already I was making out with someone else and on the verge of going over there for more? Could I call it love if I had called her all the things I had after the gala and then refused to see her as anything other than a manipulative, evil woman? Could I call it love for where we stood now?
“Then why can’t we have that going forward?”
The immediate answer was weak. I was going to say “just because.”
The longer answer required some thought, but even then, the longer I sat and thought about it, the more it would seem like I was giving the question more merit than it deserved. I didn’t bother hiding my frustration when I groaned and put my hand on the table.
“It’s not that easy, Layla,” I said.
I thought about mentioning that I was seeing someone else, but one, I didn’t want to drive a knife into her, and two, that just wasn’t true. I was seeing Claire as much as I was seeing a casual hookup from college. It was far from official, far from exclusive, and far from even having happened.
“I can’t just flip a switch and go back to that, not after everything that happened.”
“But would it be?”
Honestly...
It wouldn’t be impossible.
The more I learn about you, Layla, the more I begin to reconsider everything that has happened.
“That’s a question for later,” I said.
I was getting nervous. Layla was pushing around my already flimsy defenses and making them even weaker. I didn’t know what I wanted with Layla, in part because the reasons and rationale I gave myself were often based on emotional responses to situations. I didn’t know if I really hated her guts. I didn’t know if I considered her untrustworthy.
Bruised (Hunt Brothers Saga) Page 9