No Chance by Lisa Suzanne

CHAPTER 17: BRETT

When we hear crying over the monitor, I walk with Hannah toward the bedroom. She flicks on the light, and Chance is standing in the crib looking sleepy. The crying stops as soon as he spots Hannah. I watch her bend over the crib to pick up the baby, and I get another peek of that ink on her back as her shirt lifts. But this time, it’s more than a quick peek. This time, I make out the entire thing.

It’s a feather, and woven into the shaft of the feather is the word strength in a beautifully simple script font.

I commit the image to memory.

I clear my throat. “Can I do anything?”

She glances at me and shakes her head. “Why don’t you just watch and maybe you can give it a try another day?”

I nod as she lifts the baby out of the crib and carries him over to the changing pad on top of my dresser. She straps him in for safety then gently peels off his pajamas. She grabs the shirt he was wearing earlier and puts it on him before changing his diaper, and then she finishes dressing him. She unbuckles him and lifts him into her arms with a quick kiss on his cheek.

“And that’s how we get up from a nap,” she croons softly as she bounces Chance in her arms, and he smiles at her.

Their dynamic is nice, but I can’t help but be reminded that she isn’t his mother. She’s forced into that role now anyway.

“Want me to hold him while you wash your hands?” I ask. It’s the first time I’m voluntarily asking, and her eyes seem to light up just a little at that.

“That would be great,” she says, and she hands him over to me. I try to hold him the way I see her do it, with him sort of on my hip and my arm under his bottom for support, but I still feel like I’m doing it wrong.

“That is a much better hold than the one earlier,” she says, and her tone is teasing but her implication is sincere.

My chest warms at her praise. “Practice makes perfect, right?” I look down at the boy in my arms, and he looks up at me. And then I carry him through the bus, past Tommy, who ignores us both as he watches something on his phone (probably porn), and toward the front cabin, where she washes her hands at the sink.

“Has he been around a lot of strangers?” I ask out of the blue when she’s done wiping her hands on a towel. She takes him from me.

“Not a lot, but he hasn’t been sheltered, either,” she says.

“He just doesn’t seem afraid of me.”

“That’s because you’re his daddy,” she murmurs.

Is that true? I’m not sure, but the word sends a ripple of fear down my spine.

* * *

The rest of the day passes like all days on a bus with the addition of a chick and a kid. Snacks, movies, TV shows, planning the next meal. A little time for work, a little time for play.

Hannah pulls out some contraption from the wardrobe in my bedroom and pops it up in the front cabin between the couches. It has a bunch of kids toys on it and a little seat for the kid in the middle of it, and she sets him in there. He bounces around and plays with all the shit for hours, which gives us a bit of a break and keeps him entertained, too. And, according to Hannah, it’s great for his fine motor development and critical thinking skills, whatever the fuck that means.

I get in touch with Tyler to plan dinner, and we order some food for delivery to the rest area where we’ll stop. We go with some local Italian place, and I get pepperoni pizza and spaghetti with meatballs for our bus. We stretch and get off the bus for a while, and Tyler’s daughter loves seeing my kid. She’ll make the perfect older sister someday, and I wonder if that’s on Tyler’s radar yet. Probably. The guy goes on and on and on about how great fatherhood is. I haven’t exactly experienced enough of it yet to form an opinion. So far, it’s not really my thing, but maybe time will change that.

The kid goes to bed right after dinner, which is close to eight, and then the three adults hang at the kitchen table as Lou starts the bus back up and we’re back on the road toward Salt Lake. It’s another five hours on the road, and we’ll roll into town a little after one in the morning. The plan is to sleep on the bus tonight.

“Movie or poker?” Tommy asks. He sounds tired.

I’m tired, too, and I haven’t really done anything today. I can’t imagine how Hannah’s feeling considering how change after change plows into her on the same day as her sister’s funeral.

I glance at Hannah, but her eyes are down on the table. “Poker,” I say. There’s something about playing cards with another person that lets you see a little bit into their psyche.

She glances up at me while Tommy moves toward the kitchen cabinet where we keep our poker chips and a few decks of cards. “I’ll just watch.”

I shake my head with a little gleam in my eye. “Oh, no, my friend. Poker on a tour bus is a rite of passage.”

She shrugs as she gives me one of those grunt-laughs, and I take it. “I’d hate to show you up my first night on the bus,” she says casually, and I can’t help but find her confidence appealing.

“You think you’re going to beat Brett the Shark Pitzer?” Tommy asks.

I laugh. “Brett the Shark?”

Tommy shakes his head. “The dude’s ruthless when it comes to cards.” He thinks twice about that statement. “He’s pretty ruthless in general, actually.”

Hannah raises a brow. “Looks like we’ll be seeing new sides of one another, then.”

Tommy starts divvying up the chips, and usually we keep a running total on a tour and payout when we get back home, but we haven’t actually started playing yet this tour. “Divide evenly for three and I’ll cover her,” I say.

“What does that mean?” Hannah asks.

“Standard values are a dollar for white, five for red, ten for blue, twenty-five for green, and a hundred for black,” Tommy says, holding up each color as he explains. “We add a zero to the end of each of those.”

She glances at the pile accumulating in front of her. “So fifteen white is one-fifty, ten red is five hundred, six blue is six hundred, six green is fifteen hundred, and four black is four thousand...” She trails off and does the math. “So six thousand, seven hundred fifty dollars?”

My eyes widen, and Tommy’s do, too.

“How’d you calculate that so fast?” Tommy asks.

She lifts a shoulder. “I’m smart.”

I laugh. We might be in trouble here.

“But I can’t afford to join you,” she says, shaking her head. “That kind of money is life-changing for me and I can’t risk it on a silly game.”

“You’re not risking it,” I say. “I am. And we’ll keep a running tally for the next three months. We start fresh each night with the same number of chips. I’ll cover you and if you win, you keep it.”

Her brows dip. “If I win?” She shrugs. “Okay, then. You’re on.”

Three hours later, all the chips are on Hannah’s side of the table and you want to know what I’ve learned about her psyche?

She has one hell of a poker face.

Apparently she picked up this talent in one of the foster homes where she lived. At the tender age of twelve, she was learning how to bluff. That was only a decade ago.

A decade ago, I was twenty. I was already in the band that would eventually go on to see all the commercial success we have today, but at the time, it was only a dream.

My life has changed dramatically in the last decade, while dramatic changes have been the only real constant in her life.

Maybe that all ends now. Maybe she fell into my life so I could find a way to provide a little stability for her.

Financially, I mean. Because I’m just not in the market for providing any other sort of stability.

It’s not late, but we’re all yawning—a side effect of nursing a glass of whiskey rather than shot after shot, I guess. For me, anyway. She didn’t have a drop, and Tommy stuck with beer.

“I’m going to bed,” I announce.

Tommy stands. “I guess I’ll be in my room watching porn. You might not want to come in.”

Hannah wrinkles her nose. “Are you serious?”

He shrugs and shoots her a sly grin. “Unless you’re offering yourself up, my options are limited tonight.”

All the hairs on the back of my neck stand at attention at his line. “That’s enough,” I hiss.

He holds up both hands defensively. “I said unless.”

“For the record, I’m not,” she says. She stands, too. “Can I use the bathroom to wash up before bed?”

I nod, and she heads through the bus first while I stay back with Tommy. Once the door clicks shut to the bathroom, I turn to Tommy. “Hands off,” I say.

His brows shoot up. “Why? You tossing a shot? Mm, sisters. Good call, dude.”

My hands ball into fists at my sides as my nostrils flare. “Fuck you, Tommy. The poor girl has just lost everything. Don’t be an asshole.”

He holds up his hands again, but he can drop the innocent act. Innocent is the last thing this dude is. “Whatever, man. You have a good night. I’ll be indulging in my favorite threesomes.”

“Just keep it down,” I mutter.

I head toward my bedroom, where I strip off my clothes in the dim lighting of a bedside lamp so as not to wake the baby, and that’s when I realize for the very first time that either one of us has to sleep on the couch or we’re sharing a bed. I’m not sure why that thought hasn’t crossed my mind before now, but in the chaos of the day, it just hasn’t.

I rummage through my duffel bag for my basketball shorts, which I never sleep in as I opt for either naked or boxers. Hannah appears in the doorway. “Oh,” she murmurs, her eyes flicking to my abdomen. “Sorry.” Her voice is low so as not to wake the baby.

“Don’t be,” I say quietly, and then I realize I just need to be myself here. I stick with the boxers. “I, uh, hadn’t really thought about sleeping arrangements.”

“I can just take one of the couches,” she says.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” I say. I refrain from saying that I want her in this room in case the baby wakes up, but the truth is that’s part of it. “The whole point of the bedrooms is to separate your sleeping area from your living area. It’s an essential part of touring. You take the bed, and I’ll take the floor.”

It won’t be the first time I’ve slept on a bus floor, though the last time I was out of my mind on a combination of weed and whiskey so I didn’t really notice the fact that the floor vibrated all night or that it was hard as fuck.

“Don’t be silly,” she says. “I’ll feel awful with you on the floor and me in your bed.”

“Are you okay with just sharing the bed?” I ask.

She clears her throat. “I, um...”

“Purely platonically,” I say by way of comforting her. “Just because we’re low on options.”

“Yeah,” she murmurs. “Yeah, it’s fine. Let’s just get some rest.”

She climbs in first, and she takes the side closest to the baby’s crib, which is still clear across the room but she’ll have the quickest path to him if he wakes.

And then my only option is to climb in beside her.

I’ve shared beds with plenty of different women. So why does this feel so different?