Chapter 76
“ W hen 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 walked out 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?
There wasn’t anything I could do to change their mind, though. I had to find someone else. Even with Sarah, if we wound up together, it was going to be as if it was a brand new person. The Sarah Hill I had fallen for wouldn’t be the same Sarah Hill in a decade’s time.
But I began to realize that just because it hadn’t worked out in my favor with Sarah didn’t necessarily mean that it wouldn’t work out with someone else.
In fact, the more I thought about it, the more I began to think that I just needed to give things a chance.
My name wasn’t Chase, it was Chance. I lived off of the opportunity to have a chance and seize it.
Life would give me a second opportunity, and a third, and a fourth, and so on until I finally got it right. Maybe it would be with Sarah all over again. Maybe it would be with a different girl. Maybe it would be with a different girl a second time. Who knew?
I just knew that there was a such thing as second and third and fourth chances, not just in life and in classes but in romance. It was a comforting thought, and one that might have colored how I really felt in the moment.
But you know what, damnit? I really believed I was named Chance for a reason. I really believed that I would get such chances until I proved myself right.
I just hope whoever I get the best opportunity with is the one I take the most advantage of.