Chapter 15
COME GET ME
JESSE
I think about you all the time by Deftones
This room belongs to the part of me I haven’t figured out how to share with anyone.
Until tonight.
Because I opened the door and let Joey walk through it.
She moves through the space, her fingers trailing the edge of the mixing board before drifting toward the vintage Martin on its stand.
I lean against the doorframe and watch her discover my world, and a possessiveness I didn’t know I was capable of takes root in my chest, dangerous and warm and too big for this room.
Nobody has ever stood where she’s standing. Nobody has ever been invited.
“Blood and Bone.” She reads my father’s handwriting on the framed denim, the actual jeans, mounted behind glass, his lyrics scrawled across the fabric in faded Sharpie.
Her fingertip hovers over them, tracing the words as if she’s memorizing lyrics.
“She was wearing them when he wrote this,” she says in awe. “It’s just incredibly romantic.”
“Incredibly tragic,” I say, moving behind her, close enough to catch the scent of her shampoo: vanilla and coconut.
She turns to face me. “Did you ever read the book?”
I push a hand through my hair. “No. It’s a part of my dad’s history I don’t want to repeat.”
“What do you mean?”
“Nothing.” I turn toward the far wall. “It’s just the industry took everything from him. I’d rather not give them the chance to do the same to me.”
“I can understand that.” She nods. “My dad always said walking away was the best decision he ever made. He wasn’t made for the spotlight.”
Something we have in common.
She stops at the row of electric guitars and cocks her head at my seven-string. “How is this different from a regular guitar?”
“I’m surprised your dad never showed you.”
“The only time I paid attention at the record store was when he broke out the vinyl.” She laughs.
“Sounds about right, you music snob.” I reach past her to lift the seven-string from its mount.
“Extra string. Tuned lower.” I run my thumb across the thickest gauge, and the low note hums through the body of the guitar, even without an amp.
“It drops the range into this guttural territory a six-string can’t touch.
Heavier. Darker.” I strike a muted chord, letting the room absorb the impact.
“It’s what gives Silent Revenant that wall-of-sound thing. ”
Her eyebrows lift. “One guitar is doing all of that?”
“One guitar and a lot of distortion pedals.” I nod toward the small pedalboard on the floor.
“The full rig lives at the warehouse. I keep enough here to experiment with, but on stage it’s a different animal.
My dad thinks it’s overkill. He’s a purist. Acoustic guitar, a whisper of reverb, and keep your mouth shut about it. ”
Joey laughs, and the sound fills every corner of the room, settling into places I didn’t realize were empty. She drops her voice an octave, squaring her shoulders in a dead-on impression of Cash Morgan. “If you can’t play it on a Fender with your eyes closed, you don’t deserve to play it at all.”
I laugh and hang the seven-string on its mount before settling into the wide leather armchair by the mixing board, one ankle crossed over my knee, arms resting wide.
She’s moved to the piano now, one hand resting on its closed lid, her gaze sweeping the framed photos above it.
My dad holding me as a newborn in this room.
Me at six with an acoustic guitar bigger than my torso.
The two of us at the board, his hand over mine on the fader, teaching me to listen before I ever learned to play.
“You never brought me in here when we were kids,” she says in a soft voice.
“The warehouse is for rehearsal. It belongs to the band, the noise, the mess, the collective.” I lean forward, elbows on my knees. “This is where I come to be honest.”
Except I’m not being completely honest with her.
Joey holds my gaze, reading me like she does most things, without pressure, without demand, but with a patience most people mistake for softness. “You don’t think the work you create with Silent Revenant is honest?”
“The first time I put on the mask and walked onto a stage, I could finally breathe.” I hold her gaze. “The music is honest. Every note of it. But I can’t be honest behind a mask, Joey. I made a trade, and some days the cost of it is higher than others.”
Her thumb traces the edge of the piano lid. “Sounds like a lonely trade.”
She’s not wrong. The loneliness is the price, and you’re the reason I keep paying it, because the alternative is losing you.
“Play something for me.” She settles onto the leather couch, tucking one leg beneath her, and the way she says it isn’t a question.
“Do you have any idea what people would pay for a private concert?” I reach for the acoustic leaning against the arm of the couch and settle it across my lap.
My hands know this instrument the way hers know a lead rope—by touch, by instinct, by the thousands of hours that live in the muscle memory of my fingers.
She props her chin on her fists, watching me with an expression stripped of everything except trust. “It’s just me, Jesse.”
And that’s the thing she doesn’t understand.
It’s her. The girl who heard me butcher “Into the Mystic” around a bonfire at thirteen and told me I had a nice voice with sincerity so unguarded I believed it.
The girl whose opinion carries more weight than a venue full of strangers hiding behind their phones.
I can’t say no when she tilts her head and pins me with those blue eyes.
And she named one of her horses Morrison.
So, I don’t say no. I just play.
I work through a chord progression I’ve been building for weeks, something unfinished, still searching for its shape the way songs do when they’re trying to tell you something you aren’t ready to hear.
“It’s not done,” I tell her, working through a transition where the chords haven’t decided what they want to become. “I’m still figuring out what it needs.”
When I find the rhythm, the lyrics come without resistance.
They always do when the source is sitting three feet away, watching me with undivided attention.
Every syllable is a confession dressed in melody, and the intimacy of singing these words to her, words she doesn’t know belong to her, makes the air in the room heavier, closer, charged with a frequency only I can hear.
Swallow me whole in the dark of your mercy
I was nothing before you wore me thin
I am the wound dressed in worship
The liar who’s begging you in
Every offering I lay down is broken
Every word is a debt I can’t pay
But I’ll kneel at the altar of your silence
And I’ll burn for the words I can’t say
The truth of a song that isn’t finished because the story isn’t finished.
I lay my palm flat against the guitar’s body, silencing the strings. The last note hums in the acoustic panels and fades to nothing.
“That doesn’t sound like anything you play at the clubs.” Her voice is quiet, the playfulness stripped away, like the music reached a place in her she wasn’t guarding.
“It’s not.” I rest my palm on the body of the guitar. “This is something else. Sometimes music shows up in my head fully formed, demanding to exist, and I have to chase it down even when it doesn’t fit anywhere. Maybe it becomes a Silent Revenant track someday. Maybe it stays in this room.”
“The way you play on stage is so different.” She straightens, tucking a strand of blonde hair behind her ear. “Even the technique. Your right hand does this rhythmic thing I don’t see very often.”
“You noticed that.” Most people wouldn’t. Of course, Joey would.
“I pay attention.” She shrugs, but a flush creeps up her cheekbones. “When something interests me.”
The air between us shifts and charges. I hold her gaze a second past comfortable, loving when the flush deepens.
“It’s called djent.” I angle the guitar toward her so she can see the strings.
“The name comes from the sound itself.” I demonstrate, pressing the heel of my right hand against the strings near the bridge and striking with a sharp, staccato downstroke.
The low string produces a tight, percussive bark.
“You mute right here with the fleshy part of your palm, and you hit hard. The tension between the mute and the attack is what creates that metallic chunk.”
I do it again, slower this time, letting her see the exact point of contact.
“Most acoustic players keep their hands loose and open, but djent is the opposite. Everything is controlled and compressed.” I strike the string and let the percussive bark hang in the air.
“You’re choking the sound and forcing it to earn every note. ”
“It sounds angry,” she says.
“It can be.” I transition into a riff, alternating between palm-muted chugs and open power chords, and the contrast between compression and release fills the studio with something alive, a conversation between restraint and surrender.
“This style was born from progressive metal, bands like Meshuggah, and Periphery. The whole thing lives in this space between precision and chaos,” I say with a passion that I don’t catch until I realize she’s staring at me, grinning.
“Will you show me?” she asks softly, curiosity igniting behind her eyes.
I set the guitar aside and pat my thigh. “Come here.”
She doesn’t hesitate and crosses the distance between us, settling on my lap, and the weight of her anchors me to the version of myself I’m most afraid to be.
I wrap my arms around her and position the guitar across her body, adjusting the angle until the neck rests comfortably against her left hand.
“Left hand first,” I say against her ear. “Wrap your fingers around the neck. Good. Now press your index finger across all the strings at the fifth fret.”
She presses down, brow furrowing with concentration, her bottom lip caught between her teeth. “This hard?”
“Harder.” I close my hand over hers, guiding her fingers into position. “You need enough pressure to kill the buzz. Don’t be gentle with it.”
“I’m not known for being gentle,” she says, tilting her head just enough so I can see the smirk on her face.
“I’m aware.” I keep my voice even despite what her mouth does to my pulse.
I take her wrist and bring her hand to the strings near the bridge.
“Rest the heel of your palm right here. Light pressure. You’re dampening, not deadening.
” I position her hand, then curl her fingers so they’re poised to strike downward.
“Now hit the string. Short and sharp, like you’re snapping a whip. ”
She strikes, and the guitar produces a dull thud. She shifts on my lap and the pressure causes my stomach to tighten.
“More wrist, less arm.” I guide the motion, my hand wrapped around hers, demonstrating the controlled flick. “Think of cracking an egg. Quick and decisive.”
She tries again. The string responds with a satisfying percussive chunk. It’s not clean, not perfect, but recognizable.
“Oh my god.” She turns to look at me, her face close enough that I can count the shades of blue in her eyes. She’s so fucking cute when she’s excited. “I did it!”
“You’re a natural.”
“Must be my teacher,” she says, a coy smile playing on her lips.
“Must be.”
Her cheek brushes the line of my jaw, and I breathe her in, peppermint and sunshine and the faint salt of the ocean.
I lift the guitar from her and lean it against the armchair.
When I straighten, she’s already turning in my arms, shifting until she’s straddling my lap, her knees bracketing my hips.
She wraps her arms around my shoulders, her mouth level with mine.
She doesn’t kiss me. She just holds my face between her palms, thumbs tracing the line of my jaw, and studies me with an intensity that makes my ribs ache.
The kind of scrutiny I spend my life avoiding, except from her.
Because when Joey searches my face, she isn’t cataloging flaws or mining for weakness. She’s searching for me.
The tragedy is that I’m right here. Every version of me she doesn’t know about, hiding in plain sight behind the eyes she’s staring into.
“What are you thinking about?” she asks, the feel of her in my lap is enough to make me want to throw her down on this couch.
“You,” I say without hesitation. “I’m thinking about you in my studio and in my chair, and how nothing in this room has ever sounded as good as your voice does right now.”
The corner of her mouth lifts. “Smooth.”
“Honest.”
She rolls her hips against me, slow and intentional, and the friction tears a sound from my chest that I couldn’t stop if I tried. My fingers grip the fabric at her waist, anchoring myself because the rest of the room is dissolving and she’s the only solid thing left.
She leans in until her lips graze mine without connecting, her breath warm and unsteady against my mouth. I chase the contact, and she pulls away by a fraction, close enough to taste, but too far to reach.
“You want this?” she whispers, rolling her hips again. Slower. Devastating me.
“Yeah.” My voice comes out sounding wrecked. “I do.”
Her mouth curves against mine. She holds my gaze for a long, charged second before she leaps from my lap.
“Then come and get me.”