No Chance by Lisa Suzanne
CHAPTER 1: BRETT
I stare at one of my best friends in the entire world as he tells the three of us he’s getting married.
Married.
As in one woman for the rest of his life.
What the fuck?
This is not the guy I’ve known for the last decade.
But he has a kid now, and he wants to be with his kid’s mom, and yada yada yada they’ve got their happy ending.
The only happy ending I’m interested in is of the naked variety.
At least Tommy’s still with me on that front. At least I still have one wingman left.
Dustin breaks the silence first. “Congratulations, man.”
“Yeah, man. Congrats,” Tommy says, and I echo some similar sentiment. “When’s the wedding?”
Tyler shrugs. “I just asked her last night, so we haven’t had much time to figure that out just yet. Shortly after this tour wraps.”
“Everything’s changing.” I know my tone conveys my disappointment in that. The four of us range from twenty-nine to thirty-one. I guess this means a new season in life, but it doesn’t mean I have to like it, and it doesn’t mean I have to be on board with it. I try to finesse my words with an explanation. “You and Danielle are getting married. Dustin and Amanda. You two have kids. You’re growing up.” I don’t have to say that I’m not. It’s implied.
“Life moves forward, you know?” Tyler asks, and he says it in that really annoying way people have about them when they have something they think everyone else should have, too. Oh, Brett, you’ll make a great father someday. Brett, don’t you want to just settle down and have what I have? Brett, one woman for the rest of your life is so fucking magical.
Yeah...no thanks. I shrug. It’s been the four of us for so long that it feels strange letting outsiders in. It’s no longer just about the band. It’s about them and their families, and I know Tommy senses it, too. He’s the only one I can talk to about this shit. He’s the only one who gets it. If anything, he hates it even more than I do.
“All right motherfuckers, anything else?” Tommy asks.
We all shake our heads.
“Then we reconvene here for the private show Karl booked us,” he says. “I’ll be very busy getting wasted until then.”
“I’ll be smoking,” I add. I don’t need to clarify what I’ll be smoking. They already know.
“Don’t get drunk,” Dustin says to Tommy. He turns his eyes on me. “And don’t get high. At least not until after we’re done playing.”
“Yes, Father,” Tommy says with petulance in his tone, and I laugh. Dustin thinks he’s the boss of me? Fuck that noise straight into next week. Dustin and Tyler take off for their own buses, leaving Tommy and me to the one we share.
He shakes his head and rolls his eyes once the door slams shut on our bus.
“Did those two turn into pussies when they got so whipped?” he asks.
“You are what you eat,” I say wisely, and he laughs.
I light up a blunt. I offer Tommy a hit and he takes a quick drag before he hands it back and grabs himself a tumbler. He fills it to the brim with whiskey and grabs a bottle of Coors from the minifridge for me.
“You want that shit?” he asks.
“Pussy, yes. Relationships? Marriage? Kids?” I shake my head with vehemence. “Fuck no.”
“Yeah, me neither.”
I drink down half the Coors before I take another drag. “I like life this way. Easier to fuck and run than form attachments and have to figure out the logistics.”
He nods, and one of the things I love about this dude is that he doesn’t beat around the bush. “What do you think made us this way and made them that way?” He nods toward the window that Dustin and Tyler’s buses are parked on the other side of.
“I don’t know what your problem is, but for me...” I trail off and chuckle lightly even though this conversation is anything but light. “I blame a very strict childhood and rebelling against my upbringing.”
“Yeah,” he muses. I think he’s about to say something along the lines of me too, especially given that we know all the details of each other’s history, but he doesn’t. Instead, he says, “I blame pussy. I just really, really love pussy.”
It’s probably not as funny as my reaction makes it seem, but I laugh harder at that than I have at anything in a long time. It’s probably the weed.
Dustin gets back first, and Tyler’s not far behind. “You had sex,” Tommy says to Tyler when he practically skips up the steps and into the forward cabin of our bus.
“Is it that obvious?” He laughs.
“Your smile is wider than it was when you left,” Tommy says.
“Sorry.” He doesn’t seem all that sorry. “It was good sex.”
“My blunt was good, too,” I say. “Not as good as sex, though.”
“I didn’t get sex,” Dustin admits. “But not for lack of trying. Amanda was too tired.”
“The whiskey was good but not fuck-worthy,” Tommy adds. “I have a lot of pent-up sex endorphins that need to be released, and tugging on myself isn’t cutting it. So let’s get to this event so I can go honey-hunting.”
Hell yeah. I grin at my boy Tommy. “I’m up for hunting.”
I’m always up for hunting, and private events like the one tonight feel so much easier than the big stages in front of tens of thousands of fans. Tonight’s event celebrating a tech company’s ten-year anniversary will have around a thousand people at it, and I’ll find my target during the meet and greet before we take the stage. I’ll woo her by flicking my eyes in her direction once I find her in the crowd while I beat on my drums, and then I’ll meet up with her afterward, we’ll fuck out in some alley, and we’ll call it a night.
Our manager, Karl, ushers us to the company’s backdrop where we’ll snap photos with fans. I see a few prospects already in line from where I stand. The meet and greet begins, and women toss their arms around our necks. One grabs my ass. Another pushes her hips close to mine as she tells me how much she loves what I do on the drums.
It’s all going well. Smooth as silk, with plenty of gorgeous ladies to choose from.
And then it happens. A woman by herself walks up to meet us, and she’s timid. She’s unlike the other women in line, and not just in the way she carries herself. Her mousy brown hair is pulled back in a ponytail, and she pushes glasses up her nose as she approaches our band.
Something about her is vaguely familiar, but between the beer and the weed and the environment in which I find myself, I can’t quite place her.
Her demeanor is just...different. She isn’t a rabid fan, and she’s here by herself. She looks young—early twenties, probably, like she might even be too young to actually work at this company. Maybe she’s here with someone else, but then why is she in line for the meet and greet by herself?
I’m ready to snap a quick pic and get back to the ladies who are more my type when she moves past Tommy, who’s first in line, and stands directly in front of me. She stares at me for a quick beat before she links her arms around my neck. It’s not in a sexual way—it’s more in a way to get closer to tell me a secret. She’s on her tiptoes as I automatically lean down to hear her words. “I need to talk to you.”
To me? What could this mousy little girl have to say to me?
“Do you remember a woman named Brianna Hartman?” she asks.
“Ma’am?” I hear security saying behind me.
My brows dip as I mentally scan through the files. The name isn’t ringing any bells, but I’ve been through a lot of women.
“You had one night with her after a show in Poland about a year and a half ago. She, uh, got pregnant, and she had a baby boy. She was in an accident. She’s in the hospital. I thought you should know.”
“Ma’am,” I hear security say again, a little more firmly this time, and mousy girl ignores him.
I’ve had more than one woman claim I fathered their child. It comes with the territory when you hit the big time. Everybody wants a payday. Hell, I’ve had cousins come out of the woodwork that I didn’t even know existed. When you make a little dough, everybody thinks they deserve a piece just because they know you.
My first instinct is not to believe what she’s saying. I say that, too. “I’m sorry. I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“She’s my sister,” she says, nearly desperate, and what if this is just some scam to get money out of me? Maybe she really does have a sick sister and maybe they need money to cover the bills. But why would she target me specifically? “She’s dying and she’s leaving behind a little boy that’s yours.” Unshed tears sparkle in her eyes as she clearly is going through something heart wrenching.
As I look down at her soft brown eyes and pale cheeks, I can’t help but believe her. There’s something intrinsically honest about her, so unlike the other women who’ve walked this line tonight.
Something finally clicks in my brain as my legs nearly give out. “Brianna Hartman?” I ask. Snippets of our night in Poland come back to me. An American woman a little older and a little taller than this girl but with the same wide brown eyes, the same straight nose, the same soft lips.
“Let’s move the line along,” Karl says, or at least I think that's what he says because my brain is buzzing with this information.
“A little older than you?” I ask.
She nods. “Six years older. Please. I don’t know what to do.”
Karl starts in our direction in an attempt to move her along, and she turns to leave before she gets her photo with the band, but none of that registers as all the color drains from my face.
I remember.
Like her sister, she was different from the other women. Classier. I remember thinking she deserved more than an alley behind a venue, more than a dressing room, so I took her back to our tour bus—not totally out of the ordinary, but usually reserved for more special occasions.
“Stop her,” I yell at Karl. “I need to talk to her.”
Tyler grabs my arm. “What’s going on?”
I brush him off as I rush toward the girl whose name I don’t know. When I catch up to her, I have no idea what to say. “Is she going to be okay?”
She shakes her head.
“What about the kid?”
Her lips turn down as she brushes away a tear. “He’s losing the only mom he’s ever known, and he’s never known his father. He’s just so little. Nine months old.”
I heave out a breath as I try to figure out what the fuck I’m supposed to do here. Give her money? Help put the kid up for adoption? I’m half-drunk and three-quarters high and I’m amped up for tonight’s show and this isn’t the time to be making decisions about whether or not this chick is telling the truth.
But something tugs at me.
And I’m terrified.
I pull my phone out of my pocket. “What’s your number?”
She rattles it off and I type it into a random note. I don’t have time to try to decode how to create a new contact when I need to get back, and in doing it that way, I don’t realize that I never ask for her name.
“I have to play right now. They need me.” I nod back toward the guys waiting for me.
“Okay,” she says.
And that’s it. I head back toward Tyler, Tommy, and Dustin without a promise to call.
But I have her number, and if I wake up in the morning and the buzzes have worn off and my brain still judges that this is real, then I’ll use it.
“Booty call?” Tommy guesses.
I shake my head as I try to push this information to the back of my mind. It’s not just the fact that some woman I fucked a year ago is dying. That’s tragic. But she’s leaving behind a son. Also tragic, and maybe the most tragic part of the whole story is the fact that if this is true and I have a son out there, I’m not capable of caring for him.
“Who was that?” Dustin asks.
I gaze back at the girl whose name I still didn’t catch.
“Guys, we need to get the line moving,” Karl says.
Tyler snaps his fingers in front of my face. “Are you okay?” he asks.
I shake my head because fuck no, I’m not okay. What the hell just happened? I was riding a buzz and now...fuck. “I need to sit. You guys...you finish the meet and greet without me. I need a minute.”
“What just happened?” Dustin asks.
I clear my throat as the beer and weed seem to swim together in some uncomfortable combination and I feel like I’m going to be sick. “She said my son’s mother is in the hospital.”
“What?” Tommy says at the same time Dustin asks, “Who?”
“You have a son?” Tyler asks.
One of the security guards brings a chair over, and my legs give out with gratitude.
“I guess I do.”
