Desperate Chances (29 page)

His lips slanted over mine, his tongue sweeping inside. Our teeth clanked together in our haste.

For a little while nothing else mattered.

Just Mitch and Gracie.

Gracie and Mitch.

The way it was always supposed to be.

But…

I pulled away, covering my mouth with my hand, horrified at the both of us.

“You have to go meet your girlfriend,” I reminded him, feeling sick.

Mitch’s eyes, hazed with passion and wanting, cleared and he curled his hands—hands that had only moments before been holding me—into fists. “I should go.”

“This just made everything worse, didn’t it?” I asked, choking on my words.

“I don’t know. I’ve got to think, Gracie. I just can’t—” He shook his head. “I’ve got to go.”

“All right,” I murmured, grabbing my things and climbing out of his car.

“I’m sorry,” he said, his eyes sad as he looked at me.

“Me too,” I replied, closing the door.

Mitch didn’t pull away immediately. He waited until I walked into the apartment building before he took off down the road.

And all I could do was go upstairs, lock myself away in my room, and cry for everything that
almost was.

I
slammed my palm against the steering wheel as hard as I could.

Fucking moron!

What in the hell had I been thinking?

Gracie was right, I was a mess! I was saying one thing and doing another! It was like I had multiple personalities.

My phone buzzed with an incoming text. I glanced at where it lay in the center console and thought about running far, far away.

Are you coming over? You were supposed to be here thirty minutes ago.

Sophie.

Shit.

Fuck.

God damn it!

I had kissed Gracie.

Jesus, had I kissed her.

And it had been the most incredible, mind-melting kiss.

Not only that but we had spent time together and it was fun. It was just like how we used to be. Without the watching her get drunk and go home with other guys part.

The Gracie she had been lately was the Gracie I had fallen in love with. Sarcastic. Funny. Easy to be around. I remembered how I had dismissed her in the beginning as a flaky college girl only to find out later that she was so much more.

She was smart. She didn’t advertise the fact that she had almost perfect GPA the entire time she was in school. She wrote amazing stories that she sometimes would let me read. But she was guarded about them, almost as though she were afraid for people to see that side of her.

But she let me see it.

Just me.

I loved seeing her in her element today. Interviewing Mrs. Wagner and later taking pictures of the garden. She enjoyed her job. She felt like she was doing something worthwhile. She was
happy.

And again, she shared that with
me.

So I had let my guard down. The guard that I had only erected after she had pushed me away. One that was meant to keep
her
out.

And I touched her. I held her hand. I told her I fucking
missed her.

And then to complicate an already overly complicated situation, I kissed her. And she had kissed me back.

I could still feel the imprint of her fingers on my back.

Then she had gotten pissed. She had accused me of being wishy-washy. And she had gotten out of my car and walked away.

Again.

But this time, I really freaking deserved it.

Because I was a royal dickweed.

I turned down a tree-lined road and stopped in front of a small cape cod house with a white picket fence. When I parked I quickly typed out a response to Sophie and hit send and then got out of the car.

“Hey, man,” a voice called out. I found Jordan on the porch, scraping off paint from around the windows on the door. His T-shirt was splattered with paint and a bucket and brush sat at his feet.

“Look at you getting all domestic,” I joked, kicking the empty bucket with my boot.

“Who woulda thunk it, right?” Jordan shrugged, dropped the scrapper into the bucket and picking it up.

“So Maysie finally got her picket fence, huh?” I asked with a smile, following him into the house.

“As you know, what Maysie wants, Maysie gets,” Jordan replied, closing the door behind me and turning on the foyer light.

“This is a great place,” I said, looking around.

“Thanks. I know it’s not some mansion in Beverly Hills with a pool or anything, but we love it. It’s got a big yard, plenty of room and Maysie has her whirlpool bathtub. We’re happy.” He flipped on the kitchen light and opened the refrigerator and offered me a beer.

I took it and popped the cap, tossing it into the red and white checked trashcan that Maysie obviously picked out. “So what brings you to our neck of the woods? Didn’t I just see your sorry ass this morning?” he asked, tipping back his beer and drinking most of it in one gulp.

He was right. I had just seen him this morning when he came by with more donuts from Maysie. We had tried to jam a bit but with the looming weight of our impending call with Pirate, neither of us was in much of a mood to play.

“Just doing some thinking. Thought I’d come by and check out the new digs,” I remarked offhandedly, sitting down on one of the stools at the island.

“You’ve got that line between your eyebrows. You must be thinking pretty hard then,” Jordan observed with amusement.

“Wrinkles are a dead giveaway, huh?”

“Yep. ’Fraid so. They give you a way every time. Your brow gets all furrowed and you look like your channeling your inner Luke Perry. It’s very angsty,” Jordan stated blandly and I tossed his beer cap at his face. It bounced off his cheek and rolled onto the floor, where he promptly picked it up and threw it away.

“Maysie would have ripped you a new one if she had found it, huh?” I deduced and Jordan made a cutting motion across his throat with his finger.

“I would have been a dead man.”

“Oh how times have changed,
Piper,”
I chuckled, purposefully using his old nickname. A nickname that didn’t carry any weight anymore. He wasn’t the Pied Piper of Pussy anymore. He was a one pussy dude.

Jordan cupped the back of his neck and looked around the brightly decorated kitchen, a look of disbelief on his face. “If you had told me four years ago that I’d be living in a Cape Cod with a white fence out front about to become a dad, I would have laughed in your face.”

I sputtered and almost choked on my mouthful of beer. I quickly swallowed and wiped my lips with the back of my hand. “Hold up right there! What did you just say?”

Jordan grabbed another couple of beers from the refrigerator and laid them on the counter. “Maysie’s pregnant.”

My eyes almost bugged out of my head. “Fucking hell! Are you serious? How long have you known?”

This changed absolutely everything. And from the look on Jordan’s face he knew that too.

“Two weeks. Maysie took a test right after she got back from the concert in Norfolk.” Jordan took a sip of his beer. “That’s why we wanted to move in here. We needed the room. We wanted a place to raise a family. We wanted a
home.”

I slowly peeled the paper off my bottle. “So what does that mean for the Rejects then?”

I knew the answer. He didn’t have to tell me. I saw it written all over his face. Jordan Levitt may look like a tatted up badass but when it came to Maysie, he was nothing but heart. He loved that woman. And now he was going to be a dad. That turned his world—and by association ours—on its head.

“Maysie’s been awesome about the band. She’s been completely supportive—” Jordan began.

“She’s been great. We couldn’t have done it without her. Especially in the beginning.” And it was true. She had been integral in marketing the Rejects and getting our names out there. Before we had a manager she set up interviews, worked with my cousin Josh to get gigs. She was our one-woman publicity powerhouse.

And after we had started to get big, she stayed on the tour, providing all of us the moral support we needed to keep going. She wasn’t just Jordan’s girlfriend, then fiancé. She was our friend.

Jordan put down the beer bottle and crossed his arms over his chest, looking almost defensive. Like he knew what he was going to say wouldn’t go over well and he was preparing himself for my reaction.

“We’re having a baby, man. I can’t go on the road and leave Maysie here to deal with all that on her own. You know she has a shit relationship with her parents and I can’t expect Gracie and Vivian to fill in while I’m out there trying to be a rock star,” he said almost angrily. “And I won’t be the kind of dad that misses out on first steps and night feedings to chase a buck.”

He sighed and looked at me, his face set, his decision made. “Before I met Maysie, my dream was making music. When I met you and the other guys, we all wanted the same thing. To make a living doing what we loved. We were all on the same page. But now…”

“Now you have a new dream,” I filled in for him.

Jordan nodded.

“Maysie is my dream. The family we’re making together, that’s what I want from my life. I can’t stand the thought of leaving her here and going on the road. I won’t do it.” He took a deep breath and delivered the final blow. “So, no matter what is said during that phone call with Pirate, this is it for me. I’m sorry, man.”

I didn’t say anything for a long time. I really didn’t know
what
to say. I had suspected Jordan was looking for an out for a while. If I was truthful, we all were. Generation Rejects had been created by four kids. Now we were men who had seen both the good and ugly side of the music business. We had experienced the highs and the lows. And while the ride had been great, Garrett had been right when he had said maybe it was time for us to grow up.

It felt like the ending of a chapter. And I couldn’t decide if I was relieved or fucking depressed.

“Have you told Cole and Garrett?” I asked him.

“Garrett knows about Maysie because Riley knows. We haven’t talked about the other stuff but I have a feeling he’s expects it. As for Cole—”

“He’s too busy with his head up Viv’s—”

“Yeah. Exactly. But I think he’ll understand. He and Vivian are looking to settle down. I think he’s going to pop the question,” Jordan said and I almost choked again.

“Cole’s going to propose to Vivian? Where the fuck have I been during these conversations?” I asked in disbelief.

Jordan laughed. “He hasn’t come out and said he’s going to, but he was asking me all sorts of questions about how I asked Maysie to marry me. Then he asked if I thought it would be fucked up if a guy asked a chick when he was going down on her.”

“Was he serious? Jesus,” I muttered.

“His reasoning was that it was when a woman was most agreeable,” Jordan shrugged. “So I think he’ll be okay with my decision.” He looked at me hard. “So that just leaves you really. Are you pissed at me?”

I balled up the paper from my beer bottle and rolled it across the counter, making sure to put it in the trash can so Jordan didn’t get bitched out.

“I’ll be honest, the thought of not being in the band anymore freaks me out. It’s all I’ve known for almost ten years, man,” I explained.

“I get that, Mitch, I really do. But maybe that’s more of a reason to go out there and do something else,” Jordan suggested.

“You, Garrett, and hell even Cole, have their lives sort of planned out. You’re going to be a dad. Garrett’s got Riley and their future together. Cole and Vivian are, surprisingly enough, a sure thing. Then there’s me. I just feel like I’m going to be left dangling in the wind, you know?”

Jordan dropped the empty beer bottles into the trash. “What about Sophie? I thought you guys were solid,” he said.

I snorted. “We’re anything but solid.”

Jordan raised an eyebrow. “Let me guess, this has to do with Gracie.”

“Why would you think that?” I muttered.