Chapter 9
SIX YEARS AGO
M organ and I sat in our bedroom, rubbing our eyes and nursing our wounds.
Each of us sported a black eye and other battle wounds from the vicious fight that we had just had. We cursed each other out, swearing that we’d kill the other. Our fists were bloodied, our bodies bruised, and our egos ravaged.
And seconds later, we were chuckling at what in the hell had happened.
Between us lay a piece of paper containing a phone number from a girl, Elizabeth.
I recognized her phone number from the times that she had called me and told me all sorts of filthy things she was going to do when the house was empty.
I fucking loved having Elizabeth around, as she was every teenager’s dream—willing and able to do anything without any consequence or feelings of attachment.
It seemed perfect. And it was… until Morgan saw the piece of paper and asked me what I was doing with Kate’s phone number.
I had no idea who the hell Kate was, but I sure as fuck knew that it wasn’t her phone number, it was Elizabeth’s.
One thing led to another, we refused to give up the paper, and eventually, fists flew.
Thank God Mr. And Mrs. Hunt weren’t around to witness our altercation, mostly because I didn’t need Morgan getting another leg up in the family and I didn’t need to get knocked another peg down.
“Did we seriously just fight over a piece of paper,” I said, shrugging in disbelief.
“Sure seems that way, huh,” Morgan said. “Mom’s gonna be so mad. Dad’s just… whatever.”
I didn’t bother to say anything else. Even with my work on Tracy over the last couple of years, Morgan had won her heart and procured her between the sheets. But her father and our father had had a falling out, making Tracy’s appearance that much less frequent, if not soon all together eliminated.
I hated that Morgan had won that battle for the redhead’s love.
He won as always and, as usual, he didn’t understand why that would aggravate the hell out of me.
The privilege that boy had, I fucking swear…
but he was my brother all the same. As long as I had the last name Hunt and as long as Morgan treated me as a brother should, I knew some things guys just did not violate.
Mocking them for their lost love was not one of them.
“You know,” I said, a thought occurring to me with a laugh. “We could have just called the number and seen who it was.”
“Would’ve saved us some scars, huh,” Morgan said. “Yeah, sure.”
“I’ll call,” I said, preempting Morgan from doing anything. I needed some victories here and there.
I whipped out my phone, dialed the number, and listened to the ring tone.
“Hello, Chance,” Elizabeth’s sexy voice said on the other line. “I was thinking about you the other day.”
“I was thinking—”
“I’m sorry, Kate?”
“Morgan?”
The two of us looked at each other in shock. I looked back at the phone and saw that “Elizabeth” or “Kate” or whatever the hell her real name was had hung up. I looked back at Morgan, and we did the only thing we could think of.
We laughed our asses off.
That girl had played us like a fiddle, making us compete for her affection, going so far as to give us separate names. We didn’t even know we were competing with each other, though we both knew other guys were in the picture. Her flaw was not realizing we would speak so closely.
In some ways, it was kind of remarkable how effectively she had controlled us. I had very little choice but to admire her daring and audacity to control us. But, fortunately, we’d emerged on the other side.
“I told you, girls suck,” I said, laughing. “I told you that four years ago.”
“It’s hard to argue with that now,” Morgan said.
“Let’s make a deal. No matter what, we’ll never let a woman get between us. Ever. Deal?”
“I don’t think we’ll ever have a woman give fake names to two of us and then have us compete quite like this again, but I get what you’re saying. You’re my brother, Chance, and family matters more than anything else. Deal.”
We shook hands, a rather stark contrast to what we had used our hands for literally less than two minutes prior.
“I’m sorry for throwing a punch,” Morgan said. “My dad… he just fucked things up for me with Tracy.”
“It’s all good,” I said, and feeling unhinged, I said something that thankfully would not yet come back to bite me. “The old man’s kind of a douche anyways. Let’s just take over the company together in two years.”
We laughed once more, brothers and boys making up and bonding instead of conflicting. Truth be told, I hated the idea of taking over Hunt Industries. I still wanted to make my own name.
But having to share the name I had with Morgan was all right. It was just fine. It was one part of the Hunt name that I relished, one of the few such features.
Present Day
Once more, Layla seemed to have perfected the art of teasing me sexually and then disappearing for a period of time.
At least this time, she had made me come, it had only been a few days, not a whole week, since I’d seen her, and I knew what to expect.
I knew I’d see Layla again, if for no other reason than that her family business had deals it had to finish with Burnson Investments.
I looked at the clock and saw that it was 12 p.m. As usual, I would head out for my lunch break, but today brought something unusual—a meet-up with Morgan.
Ever since we had taken jobs after graduating from Columbia and he had gone back to Hunt Industries and I to Burnson Investments, our interaction had taken a backseat to work. We’d seen each other maybe twice in the last two months, a stark contrast to our upbringing.
Still, nevertheless, I loved Morgan and he loved me, not like a brother but as a brother, and so I had no qualms putting in something for him.
When I saw him at the sandwich shop, we exchanged hugs, quickly ordered our food, and got right down to our business discussions.
“Dad keeps pushing me to take a more active role in business negotiations,” Morgan said. “It’s like he wants to make me CEO by 25, which seems ludicrous, but the old man is getting up there in years.”
I could see that. Ever since we’d gone to college, something in Edwin Hunt’s sails had seemed to go out just a smidge. He could still talk with the best, but his accuracy and his sharpness had faded just a tad.
“Well, you know,” I said, hesitant to brag but willing to show that I had made a name for myself. “I actually have—”
I paused. Morgan had a bad habit of checking his phone while we talked, but he seemed to be doing it rather frequently even by his standards. He also was laughing quite a bit, making me wonder what was so funny as to distract from our conversation.
“Sorry, you were saying?” Morgan said.
“I said that I am actually working on a deal right now with a business. Didn’t think it would happen but I’m running the show on an eight-figure investment we might make.”
“Damn, Chance, look at you! That needs a toast.”
I couldn’t help myself.
“Here’s the best part,” I said.
But then I hesitated.
I remembered what had happened with Tracy. I remembered how we both had access to her because of her father negotiating with our family business and ultimately, Morgan had won. I would win… until Morgan showed up.
No matter what arena I played in, no matter what girl I dated, no matter what pursuit I sought, if Morgan came in, Morgan won. He won Tracy and he probably would have won the multi-named girl and maybe even Sarah if he had tried.
“What?” Morgan said, an eager smile on my face.
“Ahh, I can’t tell you yet,” I said, deflecting. “Sorry, I almost spilled something confidential.”
Which, in some ways, was technically true. I trusted Morgan not to spill the beans if I confessed about getting a handjob from under the table from Layla, but all it took was him telling one person “in confidence” and then having that one person make a chain reaching to Craig Taylor or Mr. Burnson.
“Well, I’d ask, but my father would probably want to know more and I don’t really feel like making more work for myself right now,” he said with a chuckle. “Speaking of my father, I wanted to ask you something.”
Whenever someone prefaced a conversation with this, I was always left a little uneasy. I didn’t like the idea of people “wanting to talk” or “having a question about something.” It almost always resulted in something negative and something that would make me feel worse.
But it was Morgan, so I allowed him to continue.
“My father wants to bring you back to Hunt Industries, would you—”
“Dude,” I said, with a half-chuckle. Of all the things that Morgan could have asked, that was by far the easiest one to deflect.
It required almost no thought on my end.
“How many times do I have to tell you? I have zero interest in joining the firm. I want to make my own name and my own fortunes, not be another cog in the Hunt game.”
“I know, I know,” Morgan said, clearly aware of what I was going to say. “But my father insisted I ask you.”
Now that’s surprising.
Edwin Hunt had more or less treated me like a couch in the living room for most of our lives—as something physically present he had to be aware of, but not something he would necessarily talk to.
Sure, on rare occasion, he would talk to me, but it almost exclusively happened when Morgan was there, and he never had the same depth of conversation with me as he did his biological son.
So what this meant… I didn’t know. The mystery did not change my desire to be independent of Hunt Industries, but it did make me want to know more.
“Well, I insist on reminding you that you know the answer,” I said with a laugh.
As I laughed, though, I looked out the window and saw something that told me I was either losing my mind or… well, probably just losing my mind.
Standing outside was Layla Taylor. She wasn’t watching me, but it was easy to see I would be in her line of vision, and she wasn’t moving in particular. I found myself caught gazing at her, wondering if she was a hallucination of someone I wanted to see or just actually there on pure coincidence.
“What are you looking at?”
Morgan’s words snapped me out of my delusion. I apologized and quickly turned back, saying that I thought I had seen someone that I knew but that they just looked like someone else. Morgan nodded, saying that was a rather common thing in New York City.
But I knew the truth. I knew that I had seen Layla.
But why? Why, of all places, would she be here?
I tried not to ponder the question too much, which of course meant I would soon be pondering it for days on end.
Shortly thereafter, Morgan and I stood, shook hands, and headed back to our respective offices.
For once, though, I almost felt like I might win.
I had a deal on the table, Morgan didn’t; I had the beautiful woman, the daughter of the CEO, Morgan didn’t; I felt somewhat happy where I was working, and Morgan didn’t.
It was just a question of how long that would last.