Chapter 34
HAND IN THE DARK
JOEY
I Fear Only That My Rage Will Fade Over Time by Harm
Stella meets me at the door. One look at her face and whatever doubt I had about coming dissolves. This isn’t Stella overreacting. This is Stella at the end of her rope.
She leans in to give me a hug. “Thanks for coming. I didn’t know what else to do.”
“Of course,” I say, and Stella steps aside to let me in.
When I step into Jesse’s bedroom, he’s curled on his side, facing the wall.
I’ve seen that kind of stillness before—the kind that isn’t rest, but retreat.
Animals slipping somewhere you can’t follow, bodies left behind while everything else disappears.
The sight of it in Jesse stops me in the doorway.
He’s never been still—not his hands, not his thoughts, not any part of him.
But this… whatever has him, it’s taken all of him.
And I hate that before the anger, before the hurt has a chance to rise, my first instinct is still the same.
To go to him.
I can’t reconcile this person with the Jesse I know. But then again, I never thought the person I loved would hurt me so deeply. “How long has he been like this?”
“I don’t know. I’ve been calling him since yesterday. I wanted to check in after everything went down with Tommy, but he never answered. When I got here a little while ago, I found him like this.”
I sit down on the edge of the bed. “Jesse,” I say, my hand hovering over his arm, wanting to touch him but trying to keep a healthy distance. “Can you hear me?”
He doesn’t move but his eyes flicker open, and I know he hears me. But there’s a disconnect in his eyes, as if a wire’s been severed.
I turn to Stella. “What happened yesterday with Tommy?” I need to make sense of this because I get being angry, betrayed, even scared about what the future holds, but this is something else entirely.
“They got into a bad fight over the leak. He hit him, and then Dylan came in to break it up. It was awful.” Stella wraps her arms around herself. “It wasn’t like him at all.”
Then I found him on the beach.
“Tommy denied it.” She shakes her head. “I don’t know what to think.”
“None of that matters right now.”
I turn my attention back to Jesse and lean in closer. “Hey, talk to me. What can I do? What do you need?” I whisper.
“I don’t want you to see me like this.” His voice is barely audible, like saying it costs him something he doesn’t have left to spend. But his hand finds mine under the sheets, and something deep in my chest splits open.
“I’m not going anywhere,” I say, even though being here is taking me apart from the inside. “Can you move?”
He closes his eyes and curls around the sheets.
“Will you stay with him?” I ask Stella, and she nods. I let go of his hand because I have to.
“Where are you going?” She asks, eyes full of panic, moving toward the bed.
“I need to find Jack.” I close Jesse’s door behind me and walk down the hall to the other wing of the house, through the kitchen.
It feels like just yesterday we were in here making brownies and the only worry was whether I’d make it back home without my parents knowing I’d been out so late. Now it stands empty and dark.
I head toward the studio, the light from the slightly ajar door spilling into the hall. Jack’s inside, head bent over an old Fender, his fingers hovering over the strings. When I push the door open his head snaps up and his eyebrows furrow.
“What’s wrong?” he asks, probably reading my expression.
“It’s Jesse,” I say, and he stands, propping the guitar against the couch.
“Show me,” he says, and follows me out of the studio.
Jack takes over the moment he enters Jesse’s room. He handles him with practiced ease like this isn’t the first time. He crouches beside the bed and speaks in a low and steady voice as if he’s talking someone off a ledge.
“Jess, it’s me.” He places a hand on Jesse’s shoulder.
Jesse turns over and buries his head into Jack’s chest, clinging to him. “I’m sorry,” he says, muffled and strained.
“Joey.” Jack looks up at me. “There’s a prescription bottle with his name on it in the bathroom. Bring it to me.”
I head into the bathroom knowing exactly where it is and hand it to Jack. He opens the bottle, counts the pills inside, and shoves it in his pocket.
“It’s gonna be okay,” he says and supports Jesse’s weight to help him off the bed.
“Shouldn’t we call an ambulance or something?” Stella says, finding my hand and squeezing.
“No, he’ll be fine. I’m gonna take him to the studio,” he says, not offering any other explanation.
Jesse doesn’t look at me. It’s as if I’m not in the room, like I never was.
I follow him to the studio where Jack sets Jesse down on the couch.
He grabs the Fender he left behind and places it in Jesse’s lap.
I watch from the doorway as the fog starts to lift, Jesse’s hand wrapping around the neck of the guitar.
Jack walks him through each chord like he’s teaching him how to play for the first time, patient and unhurried.
I stand there pretending my heart isn’t breaking when all I want to do is wrap my arms around Jesse, have him tell me that he wants this baby with me.
Jack looks up and meets my eyes with a reassuring look. It only makes me want to cry even more. “Music helps,” he says.
I’m afraid to ask what that means. Afraid to ask what’s happening to him.
Erin lays a hand on my shoulder, nodding for me to follow her. “Don’t worry,” she says quietly. “He’s gonna be okay. Jack’s got him now.”
I don’t want to leave. Even now, even after everything, I don’t want to take my eyes off him.
Reluctantly, I follow Erin into the kitchen. Stella slips onto the stool beside me at the island without a word.
Erin pours us each a cup of coffee and leans against the counter. “I know this is probably very scary for you but he’s gonna be okay. I promise you,” Erin says.
I finally find my voice again. “What’s wrong with him?”
“It’s called a depressive episode.” Erin says. “Music helps him get out of it. Jack knows what to do.”
“A depressive episode.” I turn the words over in my mind. It felt like more than that, more than just sad. It felt seismic, like something bigger than him, something taking hold of him and leaving a hole in its wake. “What does that mean?”
“It happens with bipolar disorder,” she says, like it’s something I should have a framework for and I don’t. I have so many questions whirling around in my head, and I can’t catch any of them. It’s like someone has knocked me over and I can’t get up.
“Jesse has bipolar disorder.”
Erin sets her coffee down. “He was diagnosed when he was fifteen.”
Fifteen. I sit with that. It explains the pill bottle I found and why Jack asked for it.
Erin keeps talking but all I can think about is if that’s why he pulled away from me, and the years after thinking I’d done something wrong.
And recently, the way he’d be electric, like pure adrenaline one moment, and then simply withdrawn the next, like a light switched off… like he was on the beach the other day.
“Why didn’t he tell me?”
The question sits between us. Erin’s expression doesn’t change but something in it closes slightly.
“That’s not my answer to give.”
I don’t trust myself to say anything because I’m sitting with this.
I keep thinking about the beach. About the way he looked at me when I told him I was pregnant.
Like I’d detonated a bomb inside of him.
And I thought it was about me, about us, about the baby, but what if he was already standing on the edge of this before I ever opened my mouth? What if I just pushed him over?
But that doesn’t excuse what he said to me.
Stella’s been quiet. Too quiet, and when I look over at her, she’s not surprised.
“Did you know?”
Stella looks up but doesn’t flinch. “Yes.”
Why didn’t I know?
“When the band first formed, he went through something similar, but it wasn’t this bad. I was freaked out and that’s when he told me,” she explains.
I don’t know what I’m supposed to do with that. He told Stella. This whole time we’ve been together, he had every opportunity to talk to me, but he kept me at arm’s length on purpose.
“Who else knows?”
Erin’s voice is measured. “Us, his sister Hayley, Dylan.” She holds my gaze. “He has a support system.”
“Does my dad know?”
There’s a long moment of silence.
“Your father and Jack go back a long way.”
I swallow hard. Of course my dad knew. Heat creeps up my neck. He knew this and made Jesse feel like he wasn’t good enough for me.
“Joey.” Erin moves around the island toward me. “I know this is a lot.”
Erin has always been kind, a calming presence, but if she touches me right now I’ll completely fall apart.
“I need to go.”
“Joey, wait…” she calls after me.
I walk out before she can stop me.
It’s dark now, and the salty night air feels good against my face. I can breathe now. The door opens behind me a few seconds later and Stella steps out.
“I’m sorry.” Stella’s voice is quiet. “He made me promise not to tell anyone.”
“That’s not good enough,” I say.
Stella twists one of the rings on her finger. “He loves you,” she says. “Don’t doubt that.”
“I know,” I admit. It’s the one thing that’s real but it’s also the thing that pulls me apart on the inside. “But sometimes it’s not enough.”