by TN King
The fact had hit him hard like a steel blow to his stomach. He’d been noble when he refused to take that lovely body of hers when she’d been more than willing to offer it that night of the ball. Him? Noble? His personality changes had been mounting. Caring for a woman… in love with her. Caught as Chance so teasingly called it. He wasn’t noble, nor heroic or good. The things he’d done in life and business to get ahead were far less than noble.
He was more like a hellacious tycoon who could make a deal with the devil himself and come out on top. And that was what he’d been doing ever since before college. Never caring at the destruction, he may have caused. The bottom line was all that ever mattered. Now, due to this strange metamorphism, he suddenly cared—too much. Some out of their homes, all for the mighty deal—the mighty buck. But it had never mattered before to him. In fact, he’d never thought of it in that way. It was what he did…what he was. Now, he didn’t like himself much and he didn’t know WHO he was suddenly.
Like if Ellie ever knew of his deals for Hunt, the deals that put many out of jobs. Would she ever look at him with that warmth and submission in her beautiful cerulean eyes?
Abruptly and so unexpectedly, the world he’d built had seemed to cave in beneath his feet. Gone within the flash of those heavenly blue eyes, with her innocent expression, that sweet smile. Her tinkling and genuine laugh echoing in his ears around the ruins of his former life. He couldn’t seem to equate them both together. The heartless mogul who’d left a trail of broken hearts across continents even, easily fucking those women and then leaving them with no further thought of them. Part of the deal.
He couldn’t now seem to find THE deal. He couldn’t seem to grasp the concept he had lived by… all he could see was kindness and a naïve look at the world once he really looked at the world through Ellie’s eyes. So trusting, so open.
He’d then driven from the airport, somewhat blindly, to his lake house. Getting straight out of his vehicle and heading towards the kitchen, or more specifically… the liquor cabinet there. He had some thinking to do. Thinking that led to drinking. Drinking that led to more drinking. He’d ended up drunk… and then he’d just stayed that way.
Caught, Chance had said amusedly. Only now, looking back at it, there was nothing amusing about it. It was terrifying. Terrifying and gut wrenching. He was scared for what felt like the first time in his life. At least, scared in the capacity that he suddenly found himself.
He’d never stepped down from anything before. No challenge, no business, no anything, and certainly no other person. And now he found himself running from small, sweet Ellie… He’d tried to call her then, however many days later that it had finally occurred to him for him to do so. He wasn’t sure how many it had been, how many days or hours, anything… it was a drunken haze of memories and interrupting thoughts. Only when he had called her, he couldn’t get through. None of the hundred times that he had tried. Which meant, he realized, that the phone had been turned off. Yes, he had gone and fucked it up good this time. Apparently, the second time was the charm after all.
He’d laughed hysterically at this phrase.
It seemed to him now that all of her, the perfect woman for him had taken the great Morgan Hunt down to his knees. Stripping him of the cold heartless foundation he’d been taught to build, brought up, and molded to adhere to.
Then he’d managed to convince himself that it was all for the best, after all, she deserved someone better than him… and he needed to not get caught up in such things. After that, though, had come the stages.
Guilt over having hurt her all over again…
Misery at the realization that her face and body, her sweetness as he often called her—were going to be removed entirely from his now pathetic, empty life…
Denial in facing the fact that he didn’t want to live his life without her…
Live normally, anyways.
He’d been in the throes of all of that, a drunken stupor stretched out and near upside down on his couch, when he heard the door. He didn’t remember ordering UberEats, but maybe he had… he was drunk enough to know that he might have. He didn’t even get up from the couch, barely lifting his head when a form appeared in the doorway. It took him a minute to realize that it was Chance, his towering frame staring at him speculatively for a few moments.
It only took a few moments though, laughter leaving Chance’s lips as he shook his head at Morgan in his drunken misery. “So she dumped you then?” he asked, flicking what Morgan thought might have been lint onto his face from his otherwise spotless expensive suit.
But Morgan remained unbothered, not even shifting to brush that lint off of him, just outright refusing to be baited. He wasn’t going to deal with it, his head not even rolling to look over at his supposed best friend. “Get out,” he muttered with a wave of his hand.
Chance sighed, throwing himself into the chair across from the couch without so much as a single acknowledgment to Morgan’s order. “Dammit Morgan. How in the fuck could you possibly have messed this up?” he asked in a kind of amazed shock.
This seemed to get Morgan’s attention, or at least more of it, his head lifting with a raise of his brows. “What?” he asked, a dazed and confused sort of stare skittering over to Chance with narrowed eyes. The fuck could he possibly mean by that?
“Man, I saw her. I saw you and you with her. What in the hell did you do that would get you here, to this point?” Chance asked, staring at Morgan in puzzlement.
“It’s none of your damn—” Morgan started, his voice fraught with tension and anger so thick that it choked the oxygen from him.
“It is!” Chance yelled, standing up from the couch and throwing a pillow at Morgan’s head in horror. “You had found it, man! You’d found all of it! That woman was the one for you! And you just fucking threw it away?” he hissed, outrage clear in every tensely held line of his body.
“I wussed out…” Morgan muttered, flipping the pillow off his face and ignoring the rest of his words. He knew that he’d fucked up, he didn’t need to hear it from someone like Chance, especially not in the way that Chance was accusing him. What the fuck did he know anyways?
“What?” Chance asked, sounding entirely too confused for just the one word.
“She didn’t dump me,” Morgan cried out in frustration, tossing another pillow at Chance without so much as looking up, still. “I ran,” he confessed without any inflection or tone added to the two words.
Chance’s hands dropped, his usually smooth forehead wrinkling in a rare show of utter confusion and wonderment as if he could somehow figure out exactly what would have made Morgan do something so monumentally stupid.
Not that there was anything there for him to read, Morgan didn’t even know how he’d managed to be so dumbass himself.
“You mean you just sent her… home?” he asked for clarification, his words slow as if he were tasting each one before using them. “And just… left it…at that?” He didn’t sound like he could believe that either, being so monumentally lost as to what he was hearing.
Morgan groaned, sitting up with way more effort than it should have taken. Like his torso weighed over a ton. He finally with much effort, swung his legs over the side of the couch, nodding shortly before allowing his head to fall into his hands. “God!” He cursed, pain lacing through the one word as he gripped his head in utter misery. “She is so beautiful, she doesn’t even look real. So fucking pure, with no angle, and no conceit. And she made me feel so powerful, but like it was the most natural thing in the world, you know? Like she fit me. Perfectly.” He sighed, breathing out with a disappointed air. She’d been all of those things and more, but he didn’t even have the words for the, and more. For how perfect for him she’d actually been.
“And you dumped that.” It wasn’t a question, more of a phrase that Chance breathed out as if he were utterly disgusted to even be in Morgan’s presence.
Morgan laughed, a mirthless sound while carelessly grabbing the bottle he
’d been drinking out of and lifting it to his lips with a long sigh. “Yep,” he answered his friend shortly, popping the ‘p’ before going to take another long swig of the stuff that could take him back on his mind numbing bender.
Chance leaned forward, extending his torso far enough to reach Morgan and yank the bottle out of his hand unforgivingly.
Morgan made some sort of noise, like a defeated, sad little roar as he stood ‒ swaying in place and nearly falling over onto his face as he reached ‒ trying to grab it right back out of Chance’s hands.
Again, Chance said nothing, throwing the bottle behind him and ignoring the rain of glass and sloshed liquid that came from it. Before Morgan could do more than make a pathetic noise over the destruction of his mind alliterating crutch— Chance tackled Morgan to the floor in a blinding rush of muscle and speed.
Morgan tried, even in his state, to put up some sort of fight. He swung wildly, missing every time as Chance deftly ducked his sluggish drunken fists. He finally gave up, muscles in his arms aching just from that much effort. What did he care? What did it matter? He’d already lost.
He waited for Chance to say something, anything, but he was met with nothing but silence as the man bent down and grabbed his heels. Grabbed his heels and begun dragging Morgan through the house, uncaring to the bumps and jostling that Morgan’s head was getting against the floor as he did so.
“Just go ahead and kick my ass. I don’t fuuuucking c-care!” Morgan yelled with a slur, his head hitting hard against the door jamb as Chance pulled him through. Kicking his ass would probably knock him out and then he wouldn’t have to deal with the depression and hurt lancing through him anymore. He almost wanted to beg Chance to do it. To put him out of his misery for a few short hours, without even needing the alcohol.
Chance gave no reply beyond a derisive snort, bending down and hefting Morgan up in his arms oddly, ignoring the questioning look that Morgan gave him as well, before throwing him. He tossed Morgan bodily, Morgan’s body flailing through the air before he landed… right in the icy cold water of the swimming pool, the water splashing up around the sudden intrusion of Morgan’s body like a tidal wave.
Gasping at the sudden temperature shock, Morgan flailed. Fighting his way against the oppressive weight of the water in search of air… before it hit him. That he was fighting. And he felt tired of fighting, tired of thinking, so he stopped. He stopped all movement, allowing the water to pull him under and under, until he stopped struggling at all and could sink all the way to the bottom. His ass scraped the cement beneath him, bubbles escaping his mouth and rising to the surface that he refused to fight for. Who fucking cared? He’d lost her for good this time…
Morgan’s lungs constricted, eyes swimming with a whole different array of colors that weren’t even in the pool, black specks disrupting the kaleidoscope intermittently and growing stronger. Good. Maybe it would all be black soon. He rested back, intending to blissfully close his eyes—but something tugged at him, against the tight collar of his shirt. Pulled with such force that he felt even more choked. Then the coughing and sputtering, resulting in even more water being pulled into his lungs. He felt weightless, pulled down and yet up at the same time, an external clash that didn’t make sense until his head suddenly broke the surface of the water.
He gasped, coughing and hacking as he spat out water.
Chance.
Apparently, he’d jumped in after him, his strong arm curled around Morgan’s torso as he swam, pulling the both of them towards the edge of the pool where the pool steps were. He was soaked and furious by the look on his face. “Dammit Morgan!” he yelled, struggling with Morgan’s body weight in the water, finally pulling them both over the steps. “What the fuck were you going to do?” Chance nearly screamed, pulling Morgan by his shoulders up those steps despite the lack of help he was receiving.
“Were you just going to let yourself drown!” he continued in a disgusted astonishment, throwing Morgan onto the concrete beside the pool’s edge. “What the fuck…” Chance breathed, pacing back and forth, scrubbing his hands through his wet locks of hair. “Fuck!” he cursed again, a violent eulogy to the first. He sounded desperate, manic almost, looking over to Morgan with crazed eyes.
Morgan just lay there, staring at Chance blankly from where he’d landed on his back, soaking the concrete beneath him with pool water and still coughing intermittently.
“Fucking look at yourself!” Chance spluttered, waving a hand down his face to try and rid it of water. “Get the fuck up and go get her back! Make that deal!”
“Nah, fuck it.” Morgan’s tone was dead, flat, devoid of emotion, like a hollow container only for the words in which he spoke. He spluttered, pushing more water out of his body, a weak attempt at breathing normally once more. “I-I already l-lost her,” he admitted dully.
Chance threw his hands up, water flinging off of his now ruined suit as he did so. “You were just going to sink to the bottom of that pool and die!” he shouted in disbelief, spittle flying off of his lips. “If you love her that much, you need to…” he trailed off, staring at his friend and shaking his head as if he’d only just realized how desolate of a situation it was. As if he were giving up and throwing in the towel on trying to convince Morgan of otherwise. “You know what? Nah. Nevermind. If you don’t want her, I can have her then, right?” he asked, pushing his wet hair back off of his forehead and shrugging as if it were no big deal. “If you really don’t care. Where did you say she was from again? Lower Philly right? Some diner I think you said… No matter, they have yellow pages now and the net can be faster. I will know all there is to know about the sweet Miss Ellie White in ten fucking minutes…”
Morgan rolled onto his side, slowly pushing up off of the concrete and stared at Chance. It was hard work, even getting his body to lift just to his knees. “You fucking wouldn’t,” he coughed out, only just a marginal bit more emotion in the words.
Chance grinned at him, a glaring flash of teeth as he peered down at his friend. “I fucking would!” He assured him darkly, not missing a beat. “I would even put her in that dress I bought… before I fucked her,” he promised, taking a half step closer to Morgan.
Morgan dropped his gaze, shaking his head again. He wouldn’t. “You’re bluffing,” he muttered, trying to shake the ideas Chance was putting in his head off. He wouldn’t. But silence reigned, Chance not saying anything else, and Morgan’s head lifted slowly back up to see what the hell else he could have been doing in the meantime.
Only in time to see Chance’s broad shoulders as he walked away from him, not even sparing another glance over his shoulders. “I can’t wait. I bet she gives damn good head with that sweet mouth of hers,” he mused aloud, his voice low pitched in that tone he used right before he got what it was he was after.
Morgan’s stomach bottomed out, anger and fear both coursing through him in monumental amounts. Fuck. “Okay!” he shouted, standing too quickly and nearly toppling over because of it. As it was, he stood on wobbly legs, waving back and forth as if from a breeze that wasn’t even there.
Chance steps slowed to a halt, pausing before he finally turned around to face Morgan again. “Okay, what?” he asked, one eyebrow lifting in skepticism.
“You’re right. I won’t… Fuck!” he shouted, nearly falling to his knees again just from the force of it all. From the emotions quaking within him. How was he supposed to do this? How was he supposed to make that right? “What the fuck?” he finally ground out, tears slipping down his cheeks in a lack of restraint that he’d never before allowed anyone to witness. “Why? Why can’t I just stop running from her?” he finally asked, his eyes lifting up to Chance even as the tears continued to fall from them.
Chance looked back at him, his face slowly morphing from that casual indifference to the upset that he’d been apparently hiding from Morgan all along. Worry and anxiety climbing on his features. “Dude, you know I wouldn’t have,” he admitted, shaking his head. “Not to you.” T
o anyone else, likely, but never to Morgan. “Dammit, I’m sorry,” he continued, stepping closer and pulling Morgan away from the edge of the pool, his hand slapping to the side of Morgan’s face as if to bring him some sort of clarity. “Get your shit together and go get her,” he told him seriously, holding him by the lapels of his suit. “Before someone like me does go after her. You love her. Start there. Work your way from that. Most of us never get to experience that Morgan… don’t fucking throw it away, or I will so kick your ass,” he promised, some hidden emotion laying triggered within the depths of his emerald eyes. Blatant and obvious for only a moment before he let go of Morgan.
Then his long time best friend turned his back on him for the second time that night, shaking his head and walking away. Only this time, he hadn’t turned back, he kept going, leaving Morgan to all of his thoughts again… with a new edge.
It was what had pulled Morgan back, honestly. He knew that if Chance hadn’t shown up that night he would have continued drinking, continuing trying to ease the pain without really doing anything about it, and he wouldn’t have been standing here now. Trying to make the deal of his life and get her back into his. He knew now that he really had no choice. The thought of her with anyone else had made him go nearly insane. The thought of a life without her had been so bleak and desolate he couldn’t even begin to actually imagine… and life without her really would be—well, Chance had said it best. He really would just sink to the bottom.
He’d never known love, never been in love. He hadn’t actually ever really believed in it. Not for himself, not really for anyone else. It was a myth. Some fairytale that had been made up to make life feel more romantic or bearable. He almost laughed at the very thought. Because it hadn’t done that for him. Love was a kind of glorious hell. He’d thought he could catch fire and hold it in his hands, but he’d never considered getting burned. Like somehow—he and he alone— could avoid that.