Chapter 20
A week went by in which, for some bizarre reason, I chose to stay at Burnson Investments.
The honest reason was probably I had no desire to face the outside world and I needed something to do to fill my days, even if that meant getting ridiculed by John Burnson repeatedly. At least I wouldn’t have to think about the prior Thursday night and Leyla.
How had it gone so wrong? How had I missed the signs?
Every part of me told me to stop dwelling on it. It was unhealthy for me to think about the past.
But when this created a fresh wound that had not yet settled into a scar, I couldn’t ignore it. I had to care for it and tender to it until it had healed, if not disappeared entirely. I just had to be careful that the wound didn’t turn into a scab.
I fucking hated admitting it, but I couldn’t help but think of the good times with Layla.
Our first hookup at the bar. Watching Netflix with tacos.
Talking about how I loved her. Every time I tried to imagine her as a lying, deceitful bitch, I came back to the fact that she was probably under enormous pressure to make her uncle…
father… whatever he was happy. It didn’t excuse her actions, not in the least, but…
Honestly, I wanted to hear from her again. I wanted a sober, rational explanation for what the hell had transpired over the last couple of months. I had a strange feeling I would get it. I didn’t think she was about to disappear from my life completely.
But boy… it would hurt like hell having that conversation. I wasn’t sure I wanted to have that conversation for what all it would entail.
The only silver lining that all of this produced was that Morgan and I began to tighten our relationship.
Work had brushed it aside to some degree, and our age had also begun to separate us as Morgan would become the heir of Hunt Industries while I would do my own thing, but something about this, I could tell, had shook Morgan to the core.
Maybe he would compel his father to renege on the deal; unlikely, but given how often we texted and how sincere he seemed in making it right for me, it was at least not impossible.
But work, despite being better than the alternative, still sucked horribly. Every day, Burnson came in, dressed me down, and reminded me how awful of a businessman I was. I held it in pretty well for a while.
If, of course, you accounted for the fact that time moved extremely slowly during this period, so a week really did feel like “a while.”
By the end of the week, though, I was ready to snap.
I had moved past from “quietly accepting Burnson’s critiques as being better than the alternative” to “silently stewing as the unattended anger began to fester.” I could handle a few days of being his and the office’s bitch, but there was something else of crucial importance.
My internship technically ended today, and while I would have happily extended it had my world not come crashing down for a little bit, there was no way this was lasting any longer.
Trying to do my duty, I brought his morning cup of coffee into his office.
“Promise me you didn’t get this coffee from Hunt Industries,” he said, barely looking up.
I snapped.
I grabbed the mug and slammed it on the wall.
“I should have for how little fucking work you’ve done here.”
This is career suicide. This is so fucking stupid.
But fuck it. I’ve already killed my career. Might as well send a message on the way out.
“All you ever do is go play golf. I’ll bet you have a tee time set up on your calendar already, or at least time you can sneak out to play golf.
Maybe if you kept an eye on us once in a while, you wouldn’t have had to pass off something like this to your so called ‘intern.’ Maybe you would’ve done diligence and kept in touch with the Taylors. Instead, we all got fucked.”
“Chance Hunt, if you think—”
But I stopped.
“Chance Givens. I’m going by my birth name now.
But you won’t have to worry about that, John.
Today’s the last day of my internship, and if you think I’m coming back even if you gave me a seven figure salary, you’re out of your mind.
I busted my ass to get a deal done with no support from anyone here.
Yes, I made some mistakes, but I’m 22 and an intern, what the hell did you think was going to happen? ”
The look on John Burnson’s face was priceless. No one had ever spoken to him like this as best as I could tell. But no one had also ever lost so much as I had—no one was so willing to attack him as I was.
“I know I’m cutting myself off from the world of finance forever with this, but I don’t give a fuck,” I said. “I’ll make my billions elsewhere. Here, you want to seem me make a deal? Watch!”
Without another word, I grabbed my coat, walked out the door, headed to my office, grabbed the few essentials I had, and stormed out of the office and onto the streets of New York.
I didn’t know where I would go or what I would do. I felt incredibly alone and isolated from the world. I had not just burned all my bridges, I had nuked them.
But I had one thing I didn’t have before.
Freedom.
And what I would do with that, only time would tell.
Six Months Prior
Graduation seemed almost too close for comfort. I had an internship lined up with Burnson Investments despite Morgan begging me to come to Hunt Industries. No matter how much I told him I didn’t want to do it, though, he never listened. Nor, for that matter, did he ever get it.
At least he was a great guy to be around. And at least he recognized working for his dad would suck.
“You know, you could just not go to Hunt Industries,” I said after Morgan bitched for about the hundredth time that day, having wrapped up all of his finals, our graduations now officially requiring nothing more than the ceremonies.
“You do have a choice. We live in a country of free will, ya know.”
Morgan just laughed sarcastically at that statement. It was a nice little dance that we did—I would remind him he had a choice, he would say I’m crazy, I would say he was crazy, and we were like 12 year olds again, mocking each other and calling each other names without really meaning it.
“And now how the fuck is that supposed to work, ya fool?” he said.
“Just imagine me telling my dad that everything he had worked for over the last twenty-two years with me had suddenly devolved into… nothingness. He’d have to find a business heir elsewhere.
Oh, sorry Pops! Yeah I’d be banned from the family faster than the old man would kick out a clown at a business meeting. ”
I laughed, but there was something to Morgan’s answer that made me think about something in a way I had not yet to that point.
For all my life, I’d criticized Morgan as naive and unaware as to how 99.99 percent of the population lived. I told him there was just no way I could easily follow in his footsteps like magic.
But I had never considered the reverse—maybe I could never understand the pressures and tough challenges that Morgan faced.
I could never know what it was like to expect to follow in the footsteps of Edwin Hunt.
I could never know what it meant to be in your father’s shadow for your entire life, even after Edwin Hunt would pass away.
It was a thought that shook me a little bit. It also surprised me I had never considered this before just now.
… But that didn’t mean I wasn’t going to give him shit for it all the same.
“Sucks to be you,” I said with a smirk. “Guess I’ll just make my own money with my name.”
“Hah!” Morgan chuckled. “Well, I suppose if anyone could do it… it would almost be you. But no one is as good as Morgan Hunt.”
“At getting their ass kicked, maybe,” I said. “You have money and I don’t, that’s the only difference.”
“The only?” Morgan said. “You know how much I would kill to do without the family business that money wouldn’t matter in? Travel, romance, learning… the list is endless. What about for you?”
What about for me?
Well, I’d like to heal my heart someday.
I’d like to find myself, to understand myself, and not feel so defined by the name Hunt.
And I’d like to be successful on my own terms.
But out loud, for now, there was only one way to define it.
“Simple,” I said. “Make money. That’s my dream. Every last bit of it.”