Chapter 38 Knocking On Heaven’s Door
KNOCKING ON HEAVEN’S DOOR
NATE
The apartment door feels heavier than it should, like it knows what I did last night. My hand trembles on the knob—not from fear but from whatever cocktail of poison I fed myself after leaving the cemetery.
Time doesn’t work the same way anymore; it slips under me, over me, through me, folding in on itself like I’m falling through something I can’t hold onto.
Christian’s the only person I can still call without swallowing glass. The only one who answers on the first ring. Funny how your dealer becomes the closest thing you have to a friend. There’s no judgment, no pity, no fucking expectation.
Just the transaction.
And then the silence.
The understanding that you want out of yourself and he’s holding the door open.
I don’t remember when I crossed the line from using to needing. Maybe it was the night Monty pumped something into my arm and laughed while I slipped under. Maybe it was when I woke up to Mom sobbing beside my hospital bed, begging me to stay.
Or maybe it happened after the funeral, in that five-day blackout where I woke up wearing a shirt that didn’t belong to me and a soul that didn’t feel like mine.
Addiction isn’t a decision.
It’s erosion.
One day you’re managing your pain like it’s a job and the next you’re in a stranger’s bathroom tying off your arm because it’s the only way to quiet the noise long enough to breathe.
Nick tried.
Jay tried.
They all said the same lines—we’re worried about you, you don’t look good, please talk to us—but it all sounded muffled, like they were yelling down a tunnel I’d already sealed up.
I’m supposed to be crashing at Jay’s place, but I prefer strangers’ couches or floors or anywhere that isn’t filled with people who expect me to still be human in the morning.
The light through the blinds is this washed-out grey, the color of a world that doesn’t give a shit. I stumble inside, prepared for the usual—emptiness, stale air, nothingness.
But then I see her.
Mom is sitting on the couch, rigid as stone, with a cardboard box on the table in front of her.
For a moment I just stand there, suspended, unable to process the shape of her here, in this place.
Her eyes lift to mine, and they fucking wreck me—full of something between hope and heartbreak, and hope is always the more dangerous of the two.
“What are you doing here?” My voice sounds like gravel being dragged across concrete.
“Checking to see if my son is still alive and breathing.”
“I’m breathing,” I mutter.
Although barely.
“Nate,” she whispers, “what are you doing to yourself?”
“Coping.” The word feels cheap in my mouth, like a lie I didn’t bother wrapping properly.
She exhales, sharp, brittle. “We’re all coping. What you’re doing is slow suicide.”
I laugh—short and empty.
“You don’t get it.” I move toward the kitchen, muscle memory dragging me toward Jay’s old whiskey stash. The cabinet is empty, of course. Jay’s always been one step ahead when it comes to my self-destruction.
“You won’t find what you’re looking for.”
Her voice is too calm, too quiet, the kind of tone that slices through you. I turn slowly, jaw tight enough that I taste blood.
“What do you want from me? You show up here with your sad eyes and a box full of shit—what are you trying to do?”
“I didn’t come to fix you,” she says softly. “I came to tell you the truth.”
“Now you want to tell the truth?” My voice fractures. “Now? Really Mom?”
She opens the box, hands trembling. “I started packing up Jake’s things.”
The words hit harder than any withdrawal, harder than any drug.
“You’re already erasing him?” I snap.
She pulls out a record—Bob Dylan—and it steals the air from my lungs. Jake’s handwriting scrawled across the sleeve punches straight into my chest.
“He saved for weeks to buy this for your birthday,” she whispers. “He begged me to give him chores to do around the house just so he could say he was the one that bought it.”
“Stop.” The word claws out of me. “Don’t use him like that.”
Her eyes flash—not anger, just pain sharpened into something with an edge.
“I know deep down you want the truth” she asks. “So sit down.”
I don’t want to. I actually want to bolt.
Or break something or claw my way out of my own fucking skin.
But something in her voice—something final—pins me in place.
So instead, I sink into the chair ignoring how my body shakes and my skin burns.
She sits across from me, hands twisting into the fabric of her blouse like she’s bracing for impact.
“I need to tell you about your father,” she starts.
I scoff. “What’s left to tell me about that piece of shit?”
Her next words freeze the entire room.
“Not Scott, Nate.”
My mind stutters and the air goes thin.
I look up. The room narrows.
“Scott was everything the town loved—captain, golden boy, Sullivan heir. I was the girl from nowhere. The daughter of addicts who skipped town when I was sixteen and never came back. He saved me once, or I thought he did. But after college, after we got married against his parents wishes, after he took over the family business, he changed. Or maybe he just became who he really was.”
Her voice cracks. “The first time he hit me, he cried after. The second time, he didn’t. The third time, he was high and I stopped fighting back.”
Something cold snakes up my spine.
“David had introduced me to one of his childhood friends, his name was Dominic. He was gentle and kind. And was a musician, a really talented one at that. Dom was the first man who saw the real me and saw what was happening while I was with Scott. I didn’t mean for anything to happen, but it did.
And when I found out I was pregnant—with you—I prayed to God it wasn’t Scott’s but also knew what would happen if you were Dom’s. ”
She keeps talking, voice trembling.
“I stayed with Scott to protect Dom. To protect you. I thought if Scott believed the baby was his, he’d stop. And for a while, he did. But the day you were born, I knew. You weren’t a Sullivan. You were light, you were pure and when Dom saw you for the first time…”
She pauses, and for a moment, her eyes drift far away.
“He froze. Just looked at you and I saw it hit him, that quiet certainty. He knew you were his before I said a word. And I knew I’d just broken two hearts—the man I loved and the man I’d condemned myself to.”
She swallows hard.
“When Scott found out, he lost control. The threats, the drugs, the violence—it all came back worse. And then Dom disappeared. No goodbye, no trace. He was just gone. I always knew what that meant.”
I want to move, to speak, to do anything—but I can’t. My body’s a live wire and my chest feels like it’s caving in.
She grips her sleeve, twisting the fabric tight in her hands.
“I was terrified every day. I slept with a knife in the drawer. I stayed because he said if I left, I’d never see Jake again. So I stayed and something inside broke a little more every day.”
Her voice shakes as she continues.
“Dom reached out before your eighth birthday. He wanted to send you a card. I told him no—it wasn’t safe. He said he’d take us away. But I couldn’t because Jake was Scott’s and he’d never let him go.”
Her sobs fill the room now.
“You were my hope, Nate. You were the proof that something good could come from all that hell. And Jake—Jake was the reason I stayed alive long enough to raise you both.”
I stare at her, but I don’t see her. I see every version of her—the woman patching bruises with makeup, the mother hiding vodka in coffee cups, the one who smiled like her mouth remembered how even when her eyes didn’t.
She takes a breath, steadying herself.
“I know you’re angry and you have every right to be. But you can’t tell me I don’t understand pain. You can’t tell me I don’t know what it’s like to want to disappear. Because I do, more than you know.”
She’s right, I can’t tell her any of that.
“But when you think you’ve got nothing left,” she says, voice softening, “that’s when you hang on. Even if it’s just by a thread. Because that thread might be the only thing keeping you from falling completely. For me, that was you and Jake. Now it’s just you.”
She wipes her face, trembling.
“You are my last thread of hope, Nate. Please, I beg you—don’t cut it.”
Her body shakes, all the years of silence unraveling in front of me.
I never got it before.
I thought she stayed because she was weak. But looking at her now—seeing the girl who got trapped and the woman who survived her own personal war—I finally do.
Abuse rewires you.
Turns love into something you bleed for.
She reaches into her purse and pulls out an envelope, pressing it into my shaking hands.
“Nora wrote this for you,” she says quietly. “I don’t know what’s in it. But I think you should read it before you disappear completely.”
Her voice breaks again.
“Jake loved you with everything he had. That doesn’t change because of blood or secrets. You were brothers. You always will be.”
When she leaves, I’m alone with the record, the letter, and the wreckage of everything I thought I knew.
I lie back on the couch, the letter unopened on my chest, and let ‘Knocking on Heaven’s Door’ play on repeat. My eyes trace the cracks in the ceiling, the same way I traced the bumps above that spare bed.
Each time the chorus comes around, something inside me loosens.
For the first time in days—maybe weeks—the noise in my head eases just a fraction.
Just enough to breathe, even if it stings.
Just enough to remind me that I’m still here.
Whether I want to be or not.