42. Different doesn’t mean Broken
DIFFERENT DOESN’T MEAN brOKEN
JESSE
Black by Pearl Jam
Ilower myself onto the bench and press my fingers to cool ivory. The opening chords come out sparse, stripped, nothing like the layered atmospherics of Silent Revenant. No effects or distortion, no ghostly vocal processing, and no mask.
This one is mine.
The bridge takes shape beneath my hands, a progression that climbs and suspends, hovering in the space between resolution and free fall. I mouth the lyrics without voice, testing their rhythm against the melody.
I drew the hard line to keep you safe
but the walls I built became your cage
I thought the distance would keep you whole
but I’m the wreckage that swallowed us both.
“You’re here early,” Hayley says from the doorway.
I keep exploring the melody of the bridge. “Couldn’t sleep.”
“Shocking.” Her footsteps cross the studio, followed by the familiar creak of her chair at the mixing board. “Neither could I, because Jasper decided three AM was the ideal time to practice his multiplication tables out loud in bed with a flashlight.”
The corner of my mouth twitches despite everything. “Dedicated kid.”
“Unhinged kid.” She drops her bag beside the console and leans over to power up the board. “Finn’s on tour, so I’m outnumbered. Two against one. They smell weakness.”
I play through the progression again, refining the voicing of a suspended chord, letting it ring.
“That’s new.” Hayley rolls her chair closer, headphones settling around her neck. “Not a Revenant track.”
“No.” I let the chord ring and fade. “Silent Revenant is dead.”
Hayley’s fingers pause on the console. “Too bad. You had some incredible stuff laid down.” She shakes her head.
“Maybe it’s for the best.” I play through the progression again, slower this time, letting each note breathe. The suspended chord resolves into something warmer, steadier. “It served its purpose. It’s time to move on.”
Hayley’s hands still on the console. She nods once.
“Everyone’s worried about me. I’m fine.”
“You’re not fine, Jesse. You’re sitting in a dark studio playing a song for a girl who won’t talk to you.” She swivels the chair to face me fully. “So talk to me instead.”
I close the fallboard over the keys and press my palms flat against the wood.
“I handled everything wrong, Hayley. All of it. The leak, Joey, the baby. I made every wrong call and I hurt the one person who never deserved it.”
She waits.
“When Joey was in the hospital, all I could think about was whether the baby was okay.” I stare at the fallboard. “That terrified me.”
“Why did that scare you?”
“Because wanting it means I could ruin it.” My throat tightens. “What if I pass this down? What if my kid ends up wired the same way and I’m the reason they have to fight through every day the way I do?”
Hayley is quiet for a long moment. She pulls one knee up onto the chair and wraps her arms around it.
“You got the good version of Dad, Jesse.” She stares at the console. “I didn’t.”
I glance over. Hayley rarely talks about the early years.
“So when you tell me you’re afraid of being a bad father, I need you to hear me when I say that fear alone puts you ahead of where Jack started with me.”
She lets that sit. The studio hums around us.
“You want to know what terrifies me? Jasper.” She shakes her head.
“His brain doesn’t work the way other kids’ brains do, and there’s no manual for it.
The meltdowns, the sensory overload, the three AM multiplication tables because routines are how he regulates.
” She pulls in a breath. “I wake up scared every morning, Jesse. Scared I’m not enough for him, scared the world won’t be kind to a kid who sees everything differently. ”
I think of Jasper on my shoulders at the anniversary party, his sneakers thudding against my chest, laughing with his whole body.
“But here’s the thing.” Hayley leans forward. “He’s happy. He’s healthy. He’s the most brilliant kid I’ve ever met, and he has a family who would burn the world down for him.” Her expression sharpens. “Sound familiar?”
The parallel lands somewhere deep in my chest. A kid who sees the world differently, loved fiercely anyway.
“Your kid is going to have you, Jesse. And Joey. And me. And Dylan. And two sets of grandparents who’ve survived worse than anything a baby can throw at them.” She squeezes my arm. “Different doesn’t mean broken.”
I press the heels of my hands against my eyes and breathe until the tightness loosens enough to let the words through.
“I want this baby, Hayley.”
The admission has been true for days, lodged beneath my ribs, waiting for me to stop being afraid long enough to say it.
Her hand closes over mine on the fallboard and squeezes once.
“I want to be a father. I want to be the man Joey deserves.” I drop my hands and meet her eyes. “But I have to face Cash first, and I have no idea where to start.”
“You walk in, and you tell him the truth,” Hayley says. “You tell him you were wrong. You tell him you’re scared. And you tell him you love his daughter enough to stand there and take whatever he throws at you.”
“And if he throws me out?”
“You go again the next day.” She shrugs. “Cash Morgan is a good man, Jesse. He’s angry, and he’s protective, and he’s earned the right to be both. But he’s watched you grow up. He’s not going to shut the door on the father of his grandchild if you show up with honesty and a spine.”
The tightness behind my ribs loosens by a single notch. Enough to let me breathe without counting.
Hayley watches me for a long moment. Whatever she sees makes her nod, slow and certain.
“Now.” She rolls her chair to the console. “Play me this new song of yours.”
I lift the fallboard and start from the top. The melody pours out cleaner this time, the opening chords spare and aching, building through verses I’ve been writing in my head for days.
When the last note fades, Hayley is quiet for a long moment. She clears her throat.
“Again,” she says. “From the top. I’m recording this time.”
We spend two hours laying down the track.
Hayley strips the production to its bones: piano, acoustic guitar, my voice.
She adds a cello sample in the bridge and a subtle choir swell in the final chorus, but everything else stays raw.
Exposed. The opposite of everything Silent Revenant has ever released.
I’m listening to the final playback, headphones around my neck, when the studio door opens.
Dylan steps inside with a matcha in one hand and a coffee in the other. He sets the coffee in front of me and drops into the chair beside Hayley.
Hayley reaches over and plucks the matcha from his hand before he can react. She takes a long sip, and her whole face contorts. “What the fuck is this?” She holds the cup away from her like it’s personally offended her.
“It’s a matcha latte.” Dylan reaches for it. She holds it out of range.
“It tastes like lawn clippings.” She grimaces and hands it back. “Drink about forty more of those and maybe you’ll grow some chest hair.”
Dylan stares at her. “You know I’m running a label, right? I have actual authority.”
“Adorable.” She pats his knee.
Dylan turns to me. “So, you said you wanted to meet. What’s going on?”
“I’ve got something for you to listen to.”
I nod at Hayley. She hits play.
Dylan sits motionless through the entire track. When the last note decays into silence, he releases a long, measured breath.
“Fuck, Jesse.” He shakes his head slowly and takes a moment to let it settle. “So what does this mean?”
“I need your help.” I lean forward. “But I need you to trust me on this.”
Dylan studies my face. Whatever he finds there makes him nod slowly, once.
“Tell me what you need.”
For the first time in days, I know exactly where to start.