I’m Keeping You

Saint was in the river with me, in the deep water of the Hudson. Then I was on Manhattan Bridge in the dark, watching the lights on the shifting water and gripping the grill, getting ready to climb it so I could jump.

I’d have drowned in that water, if I’d jumped from Manhattan Bridge.

The water was cold and dirty, it sucked me under, dragging me down, and then Saint was in my arms, and it was dragging us both down, and trying to pull him away. Declan’s face jeered at me in the murky cold.

“Rach…” Jason’s hand touched my back.

My eyes opened on a moment of another memory, of his hand touching my back the night I’d been climbing the grill, to jump off the bridge. He’d talked me out of it and taken me home with him. “I was dreaming,” I whispered without lifting my head off the pillow I’d made of his chest.

“I know, and it didn’t sound all that good.”

“Nope.”

“The river…”

“Yeah, that and Declan.”

His arm came around me and his hand squeezed my shoulder. “It’ll be okay.”

That was what he kept saying. But it was Declan we were going up against. Declan didn’t do okay. He did nasty, mean, and cruel. Never okay. Okay as an aim, or a desire, was mediocre. It was losing to Declan. He didn’t do anything without putting all his influence behind it. He didn’t lose. I wanted things to be awesome.

My palm settled on Jason’s bare belly as his breathing slowed and shifted into the soft rhythm of sleep.

I couldn’t sleep.

Maybe my meds were wearing off.

CHAPTER FIVE

Jason

I ran a finger along Rach’s forearm as it rested on top of the covers, to wake her. “Hey, someone wants to say hi to you.”

Her eyes opened, looking at me. She’d been in a deep sleep even though it was already eleven a.m.

“I face-timed Dad, it’s Saint.” I held my iPhone out so she could see him and he’d be able to see her.

She lifted up on to her elbows, smiling instantly. “Saint.”

“He says, good morning, Mommy.”

“Good morning, sweetheart. What are you doing?”

“Playing with Grampy, he’s had his second bottle of milk today and he’s full of beans.” Dad’s voice came through the cell.

Saint was making sweet, babbling, I’m-full-up, happy sounds and he was laying on his back while his legs and arms kicked out like he was doing a little kickboxing routine.

She took the cell out of my hand. “Did Grampy change your diaper?”

“Grampy did not, that is Granny’s task.”

She’d been teasing him about his dislike of diapers since Saint had been born. It was good to hear the humor in her voice. She’d been lacking humor since she’d been on her meds. It was a ray of the Rachel I’d fallen for in the beginning, shining through the gray clouds of the last couple of months.

“So you let Grampy do all the fun bits and leave all the nasty sick and poo to Granny… That’s not fair, Saint, Granny wants playtime too.”

I laughed and tumbled down on the bed beside her, so Saint could see me. But really Rach had to get up, we needed to go. “Dad, we need to get into the office, so I’m going to have to chase Rach out of bed. Saint, say goodbye to Mommy.” Dad’s hand came into view and lifted Saint’s hand to wave at us. Saint made the cutest baby face, with a toothless smile.

I loved my kid. His blood might not be mine, but it didn’t matter, he was my son. I wanted to adopt him, but if I hadn’t been pushing to make him legally mine then maybe we could’ve lived together forever in peace and avoided Mr. Rees paying any attention to us. He wouldn’t have had any reason for this custody fight.

I reckoned this mess was my fault.

“Bye.” Rach pressed a kiss on to her fingertips then blew it off them toward the screen.

I pursed my lips and blew Saint a smacker. “Bye, Saint. Bye, Dad. We’ll call you later.”

“Yes, bye, Rachel. Goodbye, son.”

I pressed the end-call icon, then took the cell out of her hand. “Okay, Rachel Macinlay, you need to get up and we need to go and fight for our kid.”

She gave me a smile, which was not the reaction I’d expected.

“What time did you get up?”

“Two hours ago.” I’d washed, dressed, and just been looking out the window playing games on my cell ever since, leaving her to sleep because I knew she’d had a bad night, dreaming. Off meds Rach had two extremes: never sleeping and sleeping nearly all day and night, but on the meds she was just always a little bit doped up. I hated her meds more than she did, probably, and that was saying something, but I felt like they were crushing her. She wasn’t anything close to normal on her meds.

I sighed—remembering again that, maybe, who she was now was normal for the not-mentally-sick Rach.

But that was why I’d made another call this morning, before I’d called Mom and Dad, because I needed to know what was right and what was wrong, and so many things didn’t feel right at the moment.

I got up off the bed when she walked into the bathroom. “I called the hospital here this morning!”

She reappeared, holding the door jamb and looking at me, her eyes questioning. “Why?”

“Because, first of all, it would be good for you to have two psychologists to make a statement for you if we end up in a courtroom before a judge fighting to keep Saint and, second of all, because I thought the guy here talked a lot of sense when we saw him last year, and I want you to have a second opinion on the best treatment for you. You don’t feel good on the meds you’re taking, and maybe there’s some other choice.”

“You made an appointment already…”

“Yeah, for the end of next week.”

She turned away and walked into the bathroom, not giving me a clue what she thought about what I’d done. There’d been nothing in her body language and I hadn’t seen her expression.

I sighed and turned around, there was no point in following her in there to push her for a response. Rachel shared things when she wanted, and not when she didn’t. I left her to get her head around the idea. My head was full anyhow. I was getting my brain around what the hell to say to Mr. Rees to stop him pushing for custody. No ideas had come to me yet.

How did I win against a rich guy who could afford billion-dollar lawyers?

I didn’t even really get why he was fighting… He hadn’t wanted Saint to be born. He’d wanted Rach to have an abortion. I still had his stupid scribbled note saying he didn’t want anything to do with the kid if she had it.

So why had he changed his mind?

Because I wanted Saint…

That’s what I thought, that this was between him and me and had nothing to do with Rach or Saint. They’d just gotten caught up in it. When I’d worked for him he’d seen me as a nobody and neither of us had known about our connection when I’d found Rach and she’d moved in with me. It wasn’t until the party he’d had when I saw her picture in his penthouse that I found out who Rach’s abusive ex had been—my boss.

I’d quit work. I’d heard enough about her ex from Rach to know there was no way I could work for him knowing that, especially when we were going to raise his kid.

But after I’d walked out of work, he’d come after Rach. He’d turned up at my place, late at night, off his head on something, with a group of guys. That hadn’t been just about Rach. He’d wanted to take her away from me, not just take her. I’d been the guy he’d deemed a worthless piece of shit. He had loads of money. Several businesses. Friends in powerful places. Massive houses. The best of everything. Everything I could never hope for. But I’d kicked his ego that night I’d blackened his eye and probably broken his rib, and he’d gone away. I’d won that night.

But Mr. Rees was the sort of guy who didn’t like losing.

Shit.

So how did I persuade a man like that to let us keep Saint and stop fighting?

I didn’t know. But I was trying to convince Rach I did. I’d told her everything was going to be okay. That we’d get this fixed. But the problem was—I looked at my watch and remembered how long it used to take me to get to the office, about forty-five minutes—in forty-five minutes she was going to discover that I’d lied.

Nausea twisted around in my gut and I rubbed my hands on the seat of my pants.

I’d hated the asshole a year ago, but that feeling then had been a shallow dislike. Now it was a violent distaste. But the cutting thing was, that underneath every feeling I had, I still had this shitty sense he was better than me, because he had so much more than I did.

“What do you want to wear?” I shouted into the bathroom. I had to do something other than stand here, otherwise I was going to blow like a volcano of nervous energy. I would’ve run while Rach was sleeping but I didn’t want to leave her to wake up alone.

“My light jeans, my dark-blue long-sleeved tee and my pale-blue sweater!”

“Okay, I’ll get them out of the suitcase.”

“You can pick my underwear!”

The first day we’d been out together, nearly a year ago, the first trip we’d made was shopping for clothes for her. She’d left Mr. Rees with nothing but the clothes she’d had on at the time, which hadn’t included underwear. She’d waved the underwear at me as she’d picked it, with a laugh. I wanted to hear that laugh right now.

I chose blue underwear, to go with the clothes she’d picked, and then laid all her clothes out on the bed. She came out of the bathroom, naked and smiling at me.

I hadn’t expected her to be smiling this morning, and it may not be a wide smile, just a lifting at the corner of her lips, but she was definitely smiling.

She dressed while I sat on the bed watching, with my palms on my thighs, trying to restrain the anxiety that whipped at my back. I didn’t want to let it show. When she turned and slipped her cell into her purse, I stood up. “Are you ready?” I wasn’t, but there was no running from this standoff, it had to happen.

She turned and gave me another slight smile. “Yeah.”

What was with her smiling today?

We put our coats on, ready for the cold walk to the subway, then went out the door. My hand settled at her waist and I kept my arm around her as we travelled down in the elevator, and when we walked out the door of the hotel her arm came around me and her hand slipped into the back pocket of my pants.

We were tight together—right. Declan and Rachel… they’d been so wrong.

We had to stand in the subway car. I grasped the bar over my head as she leaned back against an upright one with her hands behind her, her body rocking with the sway of the car. She didn’t look like she was scared at all. But I knew she was scared of Mr. Rees, of what he’d done to her, and what he might do yet. Maybe she was hiding her fear like I was.

When we got off the subway I held her hand through her woolen glove. Her hand hung on tightly to mine as we made our way out of the station, and then walked to the office where I used to work. For months I’d walked this route, and I’d only been glad to be walking it for about the first two weeks, when I’d still had hopes it would be the dream job I’d wanted. It had never been that. I hadn’t been sorry at all to leave it behind for Rach.

When we got nearer the office, my nerves ratcheted up ten notches. I couldn’t take her in there. What if it went badly? It was better if I did this alone.

There was a Starbucks near the office. I stopped in front of it. “Do me a favor, Rach, wait here, please? I don’t want to take you in there.”

Her hand slipped out of mine and she faced me, clasping the sleeves of my leather jacket instead and trying to shake me. “Why?”

My hands settled at her hips. “Because the man is unpredictable, nasty, and violent.”

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