Chapter 75
“ S o yeah, he definitely took away all of your employees. But with our funding, you can hire new ones. You don’t have to worry anymore.”
I sat a few days later in Joe’s Latte with Claire, who still looked beaten down and stressed by everything that had happened over the prior few weeks.
But when I gave her the recording to play, including the line about Rising Sun, she simply sat back, stunned.
It looked almost like the words she had heard had paralyzed her, left her too confused to even say anything.
But slowly—very slowly, at that—she came out, an expression of hope on her face.
“You’re sure?” she said, tears starting to form in her eyes.
“I’m sure,” I said. “Edwin isn’t going to interfere anymore. I wouldn’t try and bring back the ones you had before, just because they’ll demand more money, but… yeah, Claire. You don’t have to worry. You can just focus on your business.”
I had never seen such happier tears in my life.
She was thanking me as the tears streamed down her face.
I realized then that just as Morgan and Layla had kept their promises, so had I for the sake of Claire.
That wasn’t meant to congratulate myself or pat myself on the back, but it did remind me that not every promise was empty and that not every promise was meant to be broken.
“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.”