Flawed (Hunt Brothers Saga)

by Timothy S. Allen

  In fact, I pretty much decided right then and there I would never say anything with the power to humiliate or emotionally blackmail me with. Not that I ever considered Morgan capable of the latter, but I would still never say a word for quite some time, if ever.

  “So... what was that about?” Morgan finally asked.

  Damnit, he probably saw everything. Or at least the important stuff.

  I didn’t want to answer him for a multitude of reasons, especially with how emotional I was afraid the words would currently come out. I didn’t do emotion in front of Morgan—or anyone, really, except apparently Sarah—and I didn’t like talking about it, even if I felt things to a much greater degree than even I could admit to myself.

  I kicked at the rocks at my feet a few times, adding even more scuffing to those new shoes, and thinking with some satisfaction that now they’d have to be replaced. Maybe this time, Mr. Hunt’s stylist would provide me with something a little less eighteenth century schoolboy-esque, something a bit more modern, something a bit more... well, blending to suggest I belong but not so ostentatious as to draw attention.

  I wasn’t holding my breath in hope of it... Like my argument just now had proved... things weren’t likely to go my way.

  Be honest, and you get hurt.

  “Girls are fucking dumb.And money is fucking dumb,”

  Both of the things were dumb; combined, though? They were catastrophic. All that it had produced was a whole lot of heartbreak, a feeling of isolation, and a future in which I felt compelled to belong but knew I would never truly “belong.”

  “Okay....” Morgan drew out, the question obvious in his tone despite him not asking it.

  Why should he? He wouldn’t know or even be able to comprehend the problem that I was facing. Frankly, he was just a stupid billionaire twelve year old who’d never had to want for anything in his entire damned life. I didn’t either, at least in the sense of material things, but I knew my place in the family heirarchy, and it did not involve me getting to ask for things.

  I sniffed, rubbing my wrist beneath my eyes again as I tried not to glare at his brother. I knew it didn’t do any good. But damnit, I had to try.

  “I mean I still like girls... and I like money... soooo,” Morgan trailed off again, obviously trying to provide me with something to answer to, but also obviously at a loss for my problem. Really, truly, honestly doesn’t get it.

  “What the hell would you know about it?” I fired back, rolling my eyes and only just managing to stop myself short of continuing on in the same vein.

  It wasn’t, actually, Morgan’s fault that Sarah was a spoiled brat. Just like it wasn’t Morgan’s fault that any of that was happening.

  He just was the easiest, and most related target for me to lash out at for the moment. Wrong place, wrong time, brother. Not that Morgan was lashing back, just looking at him in that annoying way that he had... like he was just going to wait for me to talk.

  I loved him, I really did—not that I would admit it, though—but sometimes I just wanted to smack him for how naive and unaware he was.

  “I was dating Sarah,” I finally spat out, the words burning the back of my throat like sulphuric acid.

  But in retrospect, was I ever? We both had rich families, sure, but even ignoring my own status as an adopted sun, the Hills were much flashier and much less subtle about their wealth. I never found Mr. Hunt to be careful, per se, but Mr. Hill was in your face about it. And Sara had picked up right on it.

  Looking back on it, it was a surprise that she had even agreed to go into the woods with me. Perhaps, now that I thought about it, she really did like me. Maybe I was as much of an idiot as I had believed.

  Except... Sarah was notorious for turning all of the boys who chased her down. She was a teenage boy’s dream, all blonde hair and early blooming curves, with perfect skin and a pouty, red mouth. She wasn’t the first girl I’d ever kissed, but she was the dream of dreams.

  I hadn’t minded the secrecy of it all at first, especially as it had afforded them more alone time together. I was a lot of things, but first and foremost I was a red-blooded male, and the idea of spending time alone with Sarah had been just about all that I had wanted. I guess this is where I say I should be careful for what I wish for. Fucking stupid.

  I kicked another set of rocks and cursed under my breath, shoving my hands down deep into my pockets to keep from lashing out at Morgan or the tree. Yes, I was that frustrated. And yes, I was that frustrated at myself.

  “She let me...”

  I stopped, groaning and kicking even harder at the rocks at my feet. An annoyed sigh heaved up my chest. My hands dug deeper. Nothing could stop the shame and embarrassment I felt in that moment.

  “We met here every damned day,” I said. “Apparently she thought that I was a Hunt.”

  I hadn’t told her otherwise, and she had no reason for thinking otherwise. It wasn’t even like I could blame her for having thought that. I lived in their house, I attended a lot of functions with them, I’d been around for almost as long as Sarah would have been able to take notice of the house.

  Sarah...

  I could still see her face when I’d told her the truth, her eyes widening, her expression dropping like someone had held her at gunpoint.

  Adopted by wasn’t as good as born to.

  Nothing would change that.

  “I told her I was adopted just now,” I huffed, glaring out over the hill that hid her house from view on their property. “She can’t date a poor guy you know, it’s just ‘not done.’ Her father would never allow her to date me. Doesn’t matter that I’m considered family. Dating me would probably be grounds for being sent away... or worse.”

  I had no idea if that was true, but the words seeped in sarcasm and bitterness did the trick. Hearing the words from her was just like an affirmation of all of the things he knew growing up, thrown back in his face and left there to fester.

  Except she hadn’t just thrown them. She had taken them, shaped them into a knife, let me look at it, and then walked around and stabbed me in the back.

  “You know what’s sad? Well, you might not think this. But... When she thought I was a Hunt things were good...”

  The minute that she found out otherwise, the minute that she found out who I really was...

  And I knew there was no escaping my current fate, my current status, and my current family.

  In some ways, I loved them. They helped me and gave me what they needed.

  But in other ways, I hated being with them.

  I had to live with them, learn all of their rules and their intrigues, but I was never going to be good enough. My future, sincerely, was that of the simple son adopted to be built into what looked like a manservant for their only real son. That was my place, the place that Mr. Edwin Hunt had appointed me before even meeting me.

  It just wasn’t the role that I had actually taken on, something that had more to do with Morgan and my mother than it did with Mr. Hunt’s planning—God knows Mr. Hunt had no shame in playing up the family dynamics. Morgan didn’t want me as a manservant, he wanted him as a friend and a brother, which, I guess, a friend and a brother I was, good enough in Morgan’s eyes... but no one else’s.

  I would always be on the outside looking in, like the kids outside those pastry shops I’d grown up passing with the Hunt’s who could not afford the luxury desserts, all of those goods lined on the counter that they would never get to touch. It was the same hollow, hungry feeling that choked up the back of my throat and lay leaden in my stomach. I may be named Chance Hunt, but I sure as hell didn’t feel like a Hunt right now—or ever, for that matter.

  “You won’t always be poor, Chance,” Morgan finally cut in, drawing my gaze back.

  The funny thing was, when I got older, I always wondered if Morgan was the one thing I would end up feeling the most hate about being adopted by the Hunt’s... and was the one thing that actually made any of the bitter yearning bearable. The two of us had
bonded so far past what Mr. Hunt had intended for us to do, our lives intertwining until they were past the point of being separated. My “father” might be that only in the legal sense, but Morgan was truly my brother.

  “You have to say that,” I replied lightly, trying to let his friend off of the hook. “Since I’m destined to grow up and be your damned butler. At least I won’t be your maid.”

  I knew I was just fuming at this point, but what else could I do?

  “I couldn’t do that, could you imagine how awkward you being my butler would be?” Morgan retorted.

  We both laughed, and the genuineness of my brother briefly relieved the frustration I felt.

  “Having you as my brother will be bad enough! Besides, you’re too nosy to ever be a successful butler.”

  The jokes were nice. They felt good, at least in the way that a brief drop of a roller coaster felt good.

  But like the nauseous feeling following a roller coaster too close to a meal, once the laughter subsided, the disgust and anger at what had just happened and my current family situation came roaring back. I couldn’t just drop it, no matter how much I wished I could. Alfred, I wanted to joke, had been a successful butler to Bruce Wayne and he’d been plenty nosy. It would have kept in the theme of our joking, but I just didn’t want to joke. What was the damn point?

  Sarah was gone. I wasn’t a true Hunt. Nothing else mattered.

  “I just want to prove myself.”

  This wasn’t something that the two of us had ever discussed previously, and my eyes went anywhere but on my brother. Confessions to Sarah were hard enough—if Morgan mocked me for this, I don’t know that I’d ever show my face in society again.

  “I’m not you Morgan, I’m not even like you. I don’t have any real family to fall back on, much less a family name or family money. I want to make something of myself, I want to have my own money to fall back on, my own money to leave my kids.”

  If I ever get to have them...

  I knew that I probably should have left it alone. These were things that I knew not a lot of kids his age even thought about, much less wanted to talk about. Especially in the circles Morgan and I ran in.

  But when you grow up in the environment I did with the disadvantages I did, you grew up awfully quickly.

  “I don’t want to be a butler.”

  I was trying to soften it again, pull back from that depressive spiral that I was falling into. We didn’t have time for it.

  Or, rather, I didn’t think that Morgan really wanted to be talking about any of this, and why would he? It wasn’t that I thought that Morgan wouldn’t talk to me about it, it wasn’t even that I thought that Morgan would have a problem with doing so.

  It was that I knew that Morgan couldn’t relate. He was a billionaire by inheritance alone. Me? I was lucky to be a thousandaire by association.

  Because of Morgan’s inability to relate to the topic, he was going to feel awkward. It didn’t help, either, that Morgan felt responsible for some of his own father’s mechanisms and schemes, which left him feeling guilty, mostly when it came to those concerning either his mother or me.

  I knew, just as everyone knew, that I had a brash attitude and an even brasher mouth—that is, when I wasn’t feeling like shit as I did now—but that didn’t mean that I didn’t feel emotions like any other kid his age. It was just that I had learned to bury them beneath an act of casual indifference and sarcasm. At least Morgan knew this well and knew how to recognize after our years of friendship and brotherhood.

  Unfortunately, that did not change the facts. Morgan might have been more sensitive and self-aware than most of his peers in his social circle, mostly due to his mother’s influence, but he was still a rich boy and always would be. It made it that much harder for him to actually identify and keep from self-absorption, no matter how much he was my brother.

  Morgan’s laugh was easy enough, even if I could sense some discomfort for him.

  “We’re twelve,” he said finally, laughing around the words as if they were actually funny at all. “We’ll have time to figure it out you asshole, we have all the time in the world.”

  My jaw tightened at the words. I tried to ignore that rush of irritation that they brought, a persistent reminder of just how easy it was for the son of a billionaire to say something like “all the time in the world.” If only he knew how rare and how good he had it.

  Again, I was reminded of our differences, of the different rate at which they had had to grow up. Morgan didn’t get it, he wouldn’t be able to understand, and he would never have to face that hurt. Even when Morgan moved, striking forward and punching me jokingly and jovially in the arm, I was still preoccupied. But, wanting to dodge my thoughts and because I felt I had to, I gave chase regardless.

  It would be too easy for me to go nowhere, something I was all too aware of, even if no one else was. Morgan seemed to forget about the fact that his father was the man that he was, like I didn’t understand that just because Mr. Hunt had adopted me didn’t mean that he couldn’t discard me even faster. Perhaps Mrs. Hunt would have some sympathy and bring me back on as a damn butler, but I sure didn’t have the guaranteed future Morgan did.

  I was overly aware of this fact, aware that if I didn’t find some other service to provide to the man of the house, that it was very likely that he would cast me aside the minute it was that it became evident that I wouldn’t fill the role that he had intended for me to. For now—emphasis on now—I had access to the same schooling as Morgan, to the same society I was such an outcast from, to the connections and the means that allowed him to have them... but that was a limited time frame.

  And I only knew that it was limited, not to what degree.

  I wasn’t going to inherit anything like Morgan was, I wasn’t going to be written into the Hunt family, I hadn’t even been given their name when I was adopted. Mr. Hunt’s snort at the question posed by the social worker referring to such still echoed in his head. Only the insistence of Mrs. Hunt had allowed me to become Chance Hunt, but a legal certificate did not change what Mr. Hunt thought.

  For at least a few seconds, though, I just became another twelve year old boy, chasing after his brother for some rough and tumble—maybe some physicality would get rid of the thoughts in my head.

  I caught Morgan by the waist and tackled him down onto the compact earth, the both of us rolling and fighting for control until I could work his knees around either side of Morgan’s ribs. I pushed him back even further into the dirt and cocked my arm back. By all appearances, I was about to beat the shit out of my brother.

  It would be too easy to take my frustration out on Morgan; it wouldn’t even be the first time for either of us to go that route. Too easy to release my coiled arm and connect with Morgan’s still laughing face again and again until we were actually fighting, until Mrs. Melanie Hunt were screaming again about the bloodstains and the broken bones they inevitably inflicted upon one another. Too easy to bring him down to the level that kids who didn’t have wealthy mommies and daddies lived at.

  However, Morgan was my best friend and my brother. And even if he didn’t have a damn clue about how the world worked, he was my naive best friend and brother.

  The tension in my arm released and the flat of my hand lowered to the ground instead, grabbing an accumulation of dirt and grass... and throwing it in Morgan’s face.

  If I was being honest, for all my dark thoughts, it wasn’t just Mrs. Hunt that would keep me from the streets. Morgan would put a word in as well. I appreciated that, even if I couldn’t admit it.

  Unfortunately, if push came to shove, that wasn’t going to keep me from ending back on the streets. The only thing that was going to keep me from ending back up on the streets was myself and my humility before Mr. Hunt. I fully intended to use whatever leg up I could get from being adopted by Mr. Hunt as I could; I just had to find out how it would be most profitable for me, and absorb all of those lessons I was getting unintentionally through just
being present and Morgan’s best friend and brother.

  “You dick!” Morgan muffled from underneath.

  Morgan, showing surprising strength, buckled me off. My knees came up under in an attempt to get back to my feet before Morgan got his hands on me, but that was ruined the minute that Morgan’s hands closed around my ankles, jerking me back and digging his elbows mercilessly into my back.

  “You’re not getting away that fucking easy, you prick,” Morgan said through his laughter, the sound of Chance’s jacket tearing inspiring even more laughter still.

  It seemed the two of them weren’t going to get away without a lecture from Mrs. Hunt after all, but I figured we could handle that. Dirt accumulated on our nice clothes, said clothing ripped, and a few scratches formed, even drawing blood.

  I had to say, fuck girls, and fuck money... but damnit, I loved Morgan, even if he came with a whole lot of surrounding baggage.

  Chapter Three

  On the other hand, as we made our way back to the house, past the pool and the horses and everything else the Hunts owned, I had to say that there were some times in which I just could not stand Mr. Hunt.

  Mrs. Hunt was tolerable, although she seemed to sometimes have aggressive mood swings, not so much from happy to sad, but happy to utterly withdrawn. She would go from cleaning my clothes off, fearing for my life from the tiniest scratch, and making sure I had the cleanest shoes in all of Connecticut, to just getting a look in her eye, standing up, looking at Mr. Hunt, and walking away. At first, it confused me and made me wonder if she felt she was not allowed to treat me as she did Morgan.

  But then, she would do it to Morgan too, and the feelings of jealousy and paranoia would quickly vanish. My gratitude toward Mrs. Hunt grew all the time, although I could never quite call it love, not with all of the conditions surrounding it.

  But Mr. Hunt...

  Edwin Hunt seemed to carry the way he conducted business to the house. He doted on Morgan, probably because Morgan would take over Hunt Industries someday, while I got the occasional “Hello, Chance,” if he seemed festive. If he wasn’t—which, let’s be honest, was most of the time—then he would just walk right by me and ignore me.