“Yeah, I suppose.”
“Speaking of which, I think we definitely scared off Harry Balls for good.”
Our laughter at his comment caused an echo.
I stretched my arms and stared up at the sky. “You know what? I’m definitely happy right now. This—our little adventure—has been good for my soul.”
He flashed a sincere smile. “You have a good soul. I could see that about you straight away despite your little bitch façade. You know why you’re happy?”
“Why?”
“Because you’re finally loosening up.”
“I guess you took the stick out of my ass while I was sleeping in the tent last night then?”
“Yup. Burned it in the campfire.” He nudged me with his shoulder.
I smiled and changed the subject off of me. “What about your family? Where are they?”
Chance paused and scratched his chin. “Like you, I also lost my father. He died of pancreatic cancer a few years after my injury.”
“I’m so sorry.”
“I just have one sister, Adele. She’s two years younger. With Dad gone, my mother and she decided to move back to the states, but I stayed back in Melbourne. I never planned to move back here with them, but Adele got into some really bad shit. She needed me. I had no choice but to leave everything there behind to come handle things here.”
“What happened?”
“It’s a long story, but basically, she took up with a drug dealer and started using as well. It was a fucking nightmare.”
“God, that’s awful.”
“I felt a lot of guilt because with my Dad gone, I was supposed to be the man of the family, looking out for her. I had my head stuck so far up my ass in Melbourne that I didn’t know how bad things were with Adele.”
“Where is she now?”
“Hermosa Beach…lives near me.”
“Is she okay?”
“She’s straightened up a lot, although she’s still a work in progress. She’s not with that motherfucker anymore. That’s the main thing.”
“And your Mom?”
“I was coming back from visiting her when I ran into you, actually. She’s living in Iowa temporarily now to be closer to her mother. My Gram is dying. But my mother was also living in California near us before Gram got sick.”
“I’m sorry to hear about your grandmother.”
“Thanks.”
“I think that was very selfless of you to drop everything and move back here for your sister.”
“Well, my life had been nothing but selfish up until then. Nothing should ever come before family. I learned that the hard way. Adele and my mother mean everything to me.”
“They’re lucky to have you. I wish I had a bigger family.”
“You’ll have one of your own someday.”
“I’d like to, but I’m not sure it’s in the cards for me. I haven’t had the best luck with men.”
“Don’t tell me there were bigger douchebags than Harrison?”
I chuckled. “Along the same lines.”
“Let me guess. After you broke up, I bet they all came running back. Am I right?”
Pausing, I said, “Now that I think about it…yeah. I’ve only had a few serious boyfriends, but they all did come back at one point or another asking for a second chance. How did you figure that?”
“Wild guess.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Girls like you are hard to find.”
“Girls like me? Explain.”
“Okay. It’s not hard to find a beautiful woman, right? Definitely not hard to find a smart woman. And there are definitely some women with good hearts. But in my experience, it’s extremely rare to find the whole package.”
“Don’t even try to say you have trouble finding women, Chance Bateman. You could have anyone you wanted.”
He squinted his eyes at me. “Is that what you think?”
“Am I wrong? You’re not a chick magnet?”
“Crazy psycho bitch magnet, maybe.”
“You’ve never found the whole package?”
“The one time I thought I had, it turned out I was dead wrong. I thought it was love, but in retrospect, it was merely infatuation.”
“Was that Piper?”
His expression turned sullen as he looked down. “Yeah.”
“What happened?”
“Piper was my fiancé.”
“Wow. You were going to marry her?”