Chapter 19
NEPO BABY
JESSE
What It Cost by Bad Omens
The rehearsal space sits in darkness when I pull into the empty lot at six-thirty AM, my BMW’s headlights cutting through the pre-dawn gloom. I’ve been driving for the past hour, unable to shut off the noise in my head.
I key in the code and push through the metal door.
The smell hits first—stale air, old pizza, and something unidentifiable. I flip on the fluorescent lights and they flicker to life with an awful buzzing hum, casting harsh shadows across the cluttered space.
A body sprawls motionless across our ratty couch. One arm hanging limply over the edge, dark hair covering the face. In this neighborhood, finding a dead crackhead who broke in wouldn’t be completely shocking, but Jesus Christ, it’s too early for this.
I grab one of Tommy’s drumsticks from the kit and approach like I’m examining evidence at a crime scene.
I extend the stick and give the shoulder a tentative prod.
The body comes back to life with a blood-curdling shriek, flailing arms and legs everywhere as it tumbles off the narrow couch and crashes to the concrete floor.
“FUCK!” I stumble backward into the equipment cases, the drumstick flying from my hand.
“WHAT THE HELL—OW—SHIT!”
Tommy blinks up at me from the floor in yesterday’s clothes, his hair matted and sticking up at impossible angles.
“Jesus Christ, Tommy!” I press a hand to my sternum. “I thought you were a dead crackhead!”
“What a way to wake someone up!” Tommy groans, pushing himself to a sitting position. “You could have broken my dick, falling off the couch like that.”
I glance down and immediately regret it. Tommy’s morning wood is extremely obvious through his jeans.
“Oh my God, put that away.” I turn around. “What are you even doing here?”
“Sleeping, obviously. Or I was, until you decided to jab me with my own drumstick like a psycho.” Shuffling sounds behind me. Hopefully adjusting himself. “Roommates were being loud last night. Couldn’t sleep.”
I turn back once I’m sure he’s decent. He’s wrestling the ancient couch cushions into place, squinting around with bleary confusion.
“Must be pretty bad if you’d rather sleep here.” The pizza box from the other night sits open on the amp. Something skitters in the corner behind the drum kit.
“Wait, what time is it?” Tommy scrubs his face. “Why are you here?”
“Six-thirty in the morning.”
“Six-thirty? In the fucking morning?”
“Couldn’t sleep.” I lean against the doorframe. “Thought I’d work on some stuff.”
Tommy studies me through half-closed eyes. “You look like hell, man.” He throws on a shirt and stretches, several audible pops cracking through the quiet. “How long has the insomnia been going on?”
I shrug. Toss the pizza box in the garbage instead of answering.
“How long have you been sleeping here?” I counter.
Tommy’s expression shutters. “Last night.”
I give him a look.
He sighs, running a hand through his matted hair. “Fine. A few nights last week, too. My roommates are animals, Jesse. Partying until four AM, some girl rearranging the furniture at two in the morning—I can’t get any rest.”
The idea of choosing this warehouse over a real bed puts a knot in my stomach. The couch sags in the middle. The bathroom doesn’t have a working lock.
“Don’t you have somewhere else you could crash?”
Tommy’s mouth twitches. “Well, I do know a nepo baby who lives in a mansion in Malibu who probably has a spare room…”
“I think we see enough of each other.”
“Relax, I wasn’t actually asking.” He reaches for the half-empty water bottle on the floor, grimaces, and sets it down. “But hey, maybe once these bigger venues start paying real money, I can afford my own place. One without roommates.”
The words aren’t pointed. They’re tired. The exhaustion of a guy who’s been couch-surfing and can’t afford to fix it. But something about bigger venues and real money snags in my chest.
“Is that what this is about for you? The money?”
Tommy’s head snaps up. “Don’t do that.”
“Do what?”
“Turn everything into some philosophical debate about artistic purity.” He stands, cracking his neck. “I’m not selling out by wanting a place I don’t have to share with three roommates. And you don’t get to lecture me about sacrifice from your family’s guest house.”
The words land with precision. Not cruel, but accurate enough to sting.
As if the guest house doesn’t come with its own price. As if living in my father’s shadow is some luxury.
“We’re doing the Fonda,” I say. “You got what you wanted.”
“Because Dylan forced it on you.” Tommy’s voice is flat. “You think I don’t know that? You agreed because you ran out of excuses, not because you wanted to move forward.”
I don’t respond because he’s right, and we both know it.
“Fifteen hundred people, Jesse. A real venue. Real money. And you’re acting like it’s a death sentence.” He shoves his hands through his hair. “Meanwhile I’m sleeping on a couch in a warehouse because I can’t afford to live anywhere, and you’re the one having a crisis.”
“You don’t understand what’s at stake for me.”
“Then explain it.” Tommy spreads his arms wide. “Because from where I’m standing, it looks like a guy with every advantage in the world choosing to keep the rest of us small because he’s scared. You know people are gonna find out who you are eventually.”
“Fuck off, Tommy.” I grab my keys from the amp case.
Twenty minutes later, I turn into the Morgan ranch and park beside Joey’s dusty Jeep. The sight of her in the round pen with Townshend brings immediate relief, like someone turned down the volume on everything screaming inside my skull.
She’s in a fitted tank top tucked into worn jeans, boots dusty from the morning’s work, her ponytail pulled through the back of a ball cap.
She glances up at the sound of the door slamming shut, surprise flickering across her face. In the round pen, Townshend’s ears pin back. He snorts and retreats to the far side.
“What are you doing here?” She hurries toward the fence.
I don’t have a good answer. I couldn’t stay in the warehouse. I needed her steadiness, her calm certainty, the way everything makes sense when I’m near her.
“You weren’t asking questions when I snuck through your window the other night and had my face between your legs.” I watch the blush climb her neck and flood her cheeks.
“Hard to ask questions when you’re that good with your mouth.” She says it low enough that only I hear, and the flush deepens even as her chin lifts.
She either wants to wring my neck or kiss me. I’d take either.
“I gave you guitar lessons,” I say, raising an eyebrow. “Figured it was only fair if you returned the favor.”
“We’ll get caught,” she hisses, but she’s smiling, and the pressure behind my ribs eases.
“Can’t I come here as a friend?” I cross my arms over my chest and widen my stance against the fence post. The restless energy still hums under my skin, but it’s manageable now. Joey makes everything manageable.
She tilts her head. “A friend.”
“A very good friend.”
From the round pen, Townshend sends another agitated snort.
“Still not a fan, huh?” I nod toward him.
Joey follows my gaze, something shifting in her expression. The mischief fades, replaced by quiet focus.
“Horses are mirrors,” she says.
I stare at the horse. He stares at me, nostrils flared, weight shifted toward the far fence, as if he can see what’s underneath and wants no part of it. Unnerving.
“He’s still learning to trust,” Joey continues, watching Townshend’s agitated movements. “You can stay and watch while I work with him. If you want?”
“I don’t have anywhere I’d rather be.”
“Think you can keep your hands to yourself?” she teases.
I stuff my hands in my pockets and wiggle them.
What I don’t say is how much I want to reach for her.
Close the distance. Press my mouth to the spot where her neck meets her shoulder and hold on until the noise stops completely.
But I can’t, and wanting what I can’t have is a familiar ache—the kind that settles into the marrow and stays.
She laughs and leads me toward the fence line.
“What is it you’re doing with him?” I ask, resting my forearms on the rail.
“Trust and respect. Eventually I want to ride him—he’ll have better luck finding a home if he’s rideable. But first, he needs to choose to be with me instead of running.”
She unlatches the gate and steps into the pen, and something shifts.
The way she stands changes—wider, squared off, completely planted.
This isn’t the Joey who blushes when I catch her staring.
In here, she doesn’t defer. Doesn’t soften.
She commands a thousand-pound animal with nothing but her posture and her voice, and I can’t take my eyes off her.
Townshend tenses immediately, head high, muscles coiled, every part of him reading the air for a threat.
“You sure that’s a good idea? He looks like he could hurt you.”
“You sound like my dad.”
I grimace, and she catches it, biting down on a grin before turning her attention to the pen.
“Right now, he’s more focused on you than me. That tells me he doesn’t feel safe.” Joey moves to the center of the pen with slow, measured steps. “I’m going to ask him to move around the perimeter.”
She raises her arm slightly, directing him forward, and Townshend starts moving along the pen’s edge. He’s not panicking, but he’s not calm either—just this tight, controlled pacing like he can’t stop moving.
My fingers drum against the fence rail.
“See how his outside ear stays pinned toward me?” Joey calls softly. “He’s listening, even though he’s moving away. That’s the start of a conversation.”
I watch her work. The way she shifts her body to change his direction with nothing more than her wrist and her weight.
“Are you trying to tire him out?”
“I’m asking him to join up. Everything in this pen is a dialogue—my body position, how much pressure I’m putting on him, when I back off.
” She keeps her gaze on Townshend, watching him the way I watch a crowd from the stage—reading every shift, every signal.
“Right now he’s telling me he’s not ready.
And I’m telling him that’s okay, but I’m still here. ”
Gradually, his movements begin to shift. Something in the cadence changes, loosens.
“There.” She breathes the word. Townshend’s inside ear flicks toward her. His head lowers by an inch. “He’s starting to think about this differently.”
“Because he lowered his head?”
“It’s a whole conversation happening in small signals. The dropped head means he’s processing instead of reacting. See how he’s licking and chewing?” She nods toward the horse’s mouth. “He’s deciding whether he wants to negotiate.”
Join the club.
“It’s not about force,” Joey continues, her voice carrying steady across the pen. “The thing with trauma is patience. You can’t push too hard or move too fast. Trust is built in layers. One experience at a time.”
Trust is built in layers.
“Now comes the test.” Joey turns her body sideways and drops her gaze, avoiding direct eye contact with Townshend.
For a long stretch, nothing happens. He stands at the perimeter, sides heaving, like he’s weighing his options. Stubborn fucking horse.
Then, tentatively, he takes a step. And another. Closing the distance between himself and the center of the pen until he’s standing behind Joey’s shoulder, his breath stirring her hair.
“Jesus,” I whisper.
Joey slowly raises her hand to his neck. The horse doesn’t flinch.
“I didn’t force him,” she says quietly, stroking his neck. “I showed him that being with me was better than being alone and afraid. But he had to choose it.”
She makes it sound simple.
“That was incredible,” I say, and mean it in ways I’m not ready to explain. But I’ve been standing at the perimeter of my own life for years, and choosing to step toward the center still terrifies me more than staying at the edge.
Joey smiles, pulling a peppermint from her pocket. Townshend takes it eagerly, like he’s always been hers. He’s not the only one.
She leads him into the paddock and latches the gate.
The back door of the house opens and Sasha steps out, phone pressed to her ear.
She carries herself the way Joey does—the same confidence, the same ease.
That unselfconscious freedom of someone who isn’t at war with themselves, where the world sits in focus and all the colors come through vivid and sharp.
“Yes, I understand,” Sasha says. “I’ll see what I can do.”
She spots me and leans in for a hug. “Jesse? This is a surprise.”
“Joey said I could come by and watch her work sometime.” Not a lie. Not really. “I hope that’s okay.”
“Of course. You’re always welcome here.” Would she say that if she knew I was seeing her daughter?
Joey walks toward us.
Sasha holds up her phone. “That was the Martinez family. They need Morrison delivered today instead of tomorrow.” She shoves the phone in her back pocket. “Problem is, I’ve got that grant committee meeting in an hour. I can’t cancel—we’ve been waiting months.”
“I can take him by myself,” Joey offers without hesitation.
“Joey, it’s nearly three hours each way, and you’ve never been to their place. Plus, loading and unloading by yourself…” Sasha shakes her head.
“I could go with her.” I volunteer before I’ve thought it through, and I don’t want to take it back.
Joey’s eyes find mine. She bites the inside of her cheek, suppressing a grin.
“I don’t have anywhere else to be today.”
Sasha brightens immediately. “Oh, that would be wonderful. I’d feel so much better knowing Joey has someone with her. You know how nervous I get about you driving the trailer alone on mountain roads.”
“You want to spend six hours hauling a horse trailer?” Joey asks, one eyebrow barely lifting.
“Sounds like a perfect way to spend the day,” I say.