I’m Keeping You

by Jane Lark

  I had to stop them happening.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Rachel

  My fingers held on to the arm of the seat as I stared out the window of the small United Airlines plane. It was taxiing out to the runway. My body was so heavy with fear it felt like I’d been tied down to the seat with iron chains. They held me in place. I wanted to run. I could see Saint, in my head, reaching out his hands for me when I’d walked away with Jason. My heart hadn’t beaten in a normal pattern since.

  But I was doing this for Saint. To protect him. To keep him.

  Jason could have gone alone. But I didn’t want him to go alone. I didn’t want Jason to leave me. I wanted to be with him—but I wanted to be with Saint too. I was breaking in half. The two guys in my life were ripping me in half.

  I sighed out. My breath became moisture on the small oval window. My teeth sank into my lower lip, holding in the emotion threatening to well over in a flood of tears as I lifted a hand and wiped the moisture away.

  “Are you okay?” Jason’s hand rested over mine on the seat arm.

  I didn’t look at him, just turned my hand up the other way and clasped his, clinging to any connection that held me closer to normal.

  “Rach…” He pushed, worry catching in his voice

  “Yeah.” No. I was a fucked-up mess. But he knew that already.

  The plane taxied around, turning on to the runway, then stopped.

  I breathed in deep and held the air in my lungs. The image in my head became the packet of meds I’d left in the drawer in our room. The meds I’d stopped taking a week ago. I couldn’t be the zombie I was when I took them. I needed my brain to be working. Declan was clever. I needed to be able to think when I faced him. The meds made me feel like I was drowning all the time, trapped under an ocean and looking at the world through a fog; I couldn’t breathe through it, or reach through it. I needed to be alive and awake to cope with Declan and New York.

  My head was full of memories, memories that said the meds would make everything too hard to deal with—and there was the memory of Jason telling me at the Halloween party the other day that he missed the me who’d had crazy moments. He’d liked my crazy moments. The meds stomped on all my crazy—I wanted to be able to be crazy sometimes. I wanted to make him laugh and smile wide. I wanted to make sure he wouldn’t stop loving me.

  “It’ll be okay,” Jason said as the pilot switched up the engine and the plane started speeding along the asphalt highway to the sky. G-force pulled at my stomach, making it queasy.

  “Don’t worry,” Jason reassured again. “It’s going to be alright.”

  I looked at him and tried to smile. He smiled back, closed lipped, but considerate. It wasn’t the smile I longed for. Nothing was right. Not now.

  I wanted it to be right.

  “Sorry, I’m missing Saint.”

  “I miss him too, so we’ll get to New York, sort everything out as fast as we can, and get back. Two weeks. That’s what I’m giving us. We have to have this fixed by Thanksgiving.”

  I nodded.

  The nose of the plane lifted, pressing us back into the seats, and then we were off the ground and rising, climbing through the air, up into the sky. I wanted to climb like that in spirit. I wanted my bipolar, spinning-top of a brain to whiz up. I hated the swamp of middle road. I wanted to feel high. I wanted to be buzzing with happiness.

  Jason’s fingers squeezed mine.

  I looked back out the window, down at the earth, at the city beneath us, as Portland became like a toy town. Saint was miles away from us already, but soon he’d be hundreds of miles away from us. There was a hook in my heart trying to pull me back. The pain of it became sharper the higher the plane climbed.

  We breached the clouds and flew above an ocean of glistening vapor, caught in the brightest sunlight.

  “Saint will never remember this, you know. I bet you don’t have any memories before you were one… So don’t worry about what he’s thinking, he’s fine with Mom and Dad. They’re going to feed him and cuddle him loads, and he’s going to be okay.”

  I was learning to hate the word okay, but I nodded as tears slipped from my eyes while I watched the swirling clouds making patterns below us.

  “Hey…” Jason’s fingertips touched my cheek and turned my head, then he kissed a tear away. “It’s going to be okay.” I think he thought if he used the word enough he’d make it happen.

  I nodded, then looked back out the window. I didn’t feel that in my heart, and he didn’t know my ex like I did. Declan had been Jason’s boss for a year, but I’d lived with Declan and I knew the darkness that was in him. Jason had only glimpsed it.

  I didn’t see how we could win; Declan had money and contacts and influence. We had us, love for Saint, a sense of right and wrong, and a small-time solicitor in Portland.

  The tears tightened into a lump in my throat. If I hadn’t messed up we wouldn’t be on this flight, we’d be at home with Saint.

  Jason lifted my hand and kissed my fingers.

  I looked back at him. I was such hard work. I felt sorry for him.

  “Hey, we’re nearly there. We’re over New York.”

  My eyelids were heavy as I opened them and lifted my head to look at Jason. I’d slept on his shoulder. I was drowsy and there was a density in my body that made my limbs feel like stone. It could be the meds lingering or my mood falling. The meds had made me feel asleep even when I was awake.

  Jason gave me a subdued smile. It said what he wouldn’t: I keep telling you it’ll all be okay because I know that’s what you want to hear, but I’m not convinced.

  I smiled back. He was looking out for me. That’s what Jason did, he cared, with a heart that was as big as an ocean.

  But our smiles hadn’t used to say it’ll be alright or I’m sorry—we used to smile because we were happy together.

  The seatbelt light was on. I looked down. He’d buckled mine back up while I’d been out of it. I looked out the window. The plane was banking around, flying in over the Upper Bay of the Hudson. I leaned over to look down at the city that had been my home for a large part of my miserable life. I had so many bad memories, memories of me being crazy and stupid, but then I saw the Brooklyn Bridge, and behind it, Manhattan Bridge, as the river’s path split. I’d met Jason on Manhattan Bridge, on a night I’d cracked up entirely and decided I’d had enough. Jason had found me there and saved me from myself.

  “Brooklyn, Manhattan Bridge, and DUMBO,” he said in a low husky voice.

  I glanced back at him. He’d remembered the moment I’d met him too. He’d taken me to his apartment in DUMBO that night; we hadn’t left each other since. He pressed a quick kiss on my lips, then we both leaned over and looked down, watching the plane come around, following the Hudson, rather than the East river.

  I took a breath, a part of me was terrified about coming back and facing Declan, and yet, with my distorted bipolar brain, another part of me experienced a sudden fizz of excitement. New York.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Jason

  I walked out of JFK airport, pulling our suitcase on its wheels and gripping Rach’s hand like I was hanging on to her as luggage too. But I felt protective. This trip was scary. Saint’s life was hanging on a line, and the other end of it was wrapped around Mr. Rees’s finger, and he kept jerking it, messing us around.

  I’d worked for him for a year, and thought him an asshole, but then I’d met the side of him Rach knew, when he’d tried to drag her into his car with three other guys, like it was okay to snatch a woman when she didn’t want to go. No way did I want him to take Saint. Saint was my son and he might have Mr. Rees’s DNA, but that was the only tie he should ever have to that asshole.

  We were booked on the SuperShuttle to get out to the hotel. There was a van waiting. I handed over our tickets and stashed our luggage in the back while Rachel waited on the sidewalk. Then we got in. I made sure she was by the window so she didn’t have to cope with any strangers too close. />
  We sat in silence as the van filled up, and stayed silent as it drove through the city. New York. The Big Apple. Rachel looked at the streets as the van dropped people off at the Manhattan hotels. She had more history with New York than I did. I’d never really settled here, my roots and soul had always been back in Oregon. But Rachel had tamed this place and played it for the years she’d lived here. She’d taken a massive bite out of the apple. I’d left it to go rotten. It had never tasted good to me.

  Our hotel was in Brooklyn, near the area where I used to live, DUMBO, Down Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass. The hotel was a narrow, sky-scraping building. It stood out, tall amongst the lower-story buildings surrounding it. We unloaded our stuff and walked into the place.

  I guess its whole theme was tall and narrow; the welcome desk area was the same.

  I checked us in as Rach stood near me, her arms crossed defensively in front of her chest and her hands clasping either elbow.

  The last time I’d checked us into a hotel it had been in Las Vegas, when we’d gotten married.

  We were up on the fifteenth floor. Rach pressed the button for the elevator, then stood staring at the numbers above the elevator doors. The doors opened. I lifted a hand encouraging her to go in first. I followed, with the suitcase.

  She leaned her shoulders against the wall, so I stood next to her, slid a hand around her and gave her ass a pat to make her smile. She did smile—slightly.

  Everything was ruined. She never gave me bright smiles anymore, and it was all Mr. Rees’s fault. She’d been fine until he’d started messing us around over Saint. First off, before all of this, he wouldn’t do the DNA test and I’d needed him to do it so I could start the adoption process. That was about the time she’d walked into the river with Saint. So then I’d come to New York, alone, and forced him into doing the fucking DNA test. Only since then he’d stopped not wanting Saint and started sharpening fucking knives to chuck at us.

  Our room was alright, nothing special. It had a desk in front of a mirror outside the en suite, a chest of drawers, a king-sized bed with a nightstand either side and a long window which looked out across the city. Rach walked over to the window as I lifted the suitcase up on to a stool.

  “This reminds me of your apartment.” She turned back and looked at me.

  “Yeah.” It did a little. I’d had a floor-length window like that; it had looked out over DUMBO.

  She looked back out.

  I walked up behind her, slid my hands over her belly and kissed her neck. “What do you want to do, go out?”

  Her head fell back on to my shoulder. “I don’t know.”

  I missed my Rachel, the vibrant, half-crazy girl I’d met. She was smothered by her meds. But she’d been vulnerable then too, and lonely, and easily hurt behind all her bravado. She had crashed down into sad moods as fast as she’d gotten happy and dragged me into doing something I’d have avoided like hell if it hadn’t been for her.

  I’d been reading up on bipolar on the internet, though, and she might need to be on her strong meds right now, but people didn’t have to stay on heavy doses forever, they reduced them. She’d get back to herself one day. Soon, I hoped. “Then let’s walk down to the Brooklyn Bridge Park?”

  She turned around and pressed her face into my neck. Her lips touched my skin when she said, “I’d like that.”

  “I thought you might.” It was one of our old haunts. We had memories there.

  I pressed her back against the window and kissed her properly. Her arms lifted up on to my shoulders and rested there as her tongue wove about mine slowly. My hands slid to grip her butt and I pulled her hips against mine.

  Many things had gone wrong in our marriage in the last few months, but the one thing we’d recently managed to fix was the sex. We’d been to a party a week ago, for Halloween, and gone outside in the dark. But then she’d told me about this threat from Mr. Rees.

  I broke away from her. “Come on, let’s go to the park.”

  I got the first proper smile I’d had out of her all day. Those smiles were way too rare.

  We walked through Brooklyn holding hands. Then headed into the park and looked up at the massive bridge, with Manhattan Bridge as its shadow. I let go of her hand and slung my arm around her shoulders.

  The Brooklyn Bridge was a giant. It dwarfed us. I’d forgotten how dominating the New York skyline was. It put you in your place, made you realize how much of a nothing you were in the world. That’s how I’d always felt in New York.

  We walked along the path by the river.

  This park was so familiar and yet we’d been different people when we’d been here last. She’d poured out her sordid past to me here, the night I’d found out about Saint. But that had been in the dark. We’d generally come here in the dark after I’d picked her up from work, when all the lights were reflected on the water, swaying with the rock of the waves. It was a different place in the daylight and there were more people here, tourists as well as locals.

  When we were far enough away from the main tourist area, I stopped and held the railing, looking down at the water as it washed up against the bank.

  Rach gripped the rail too.

  I looked at her.

  Her gaze stretched to the far bank. “When will we go and see Declan?”

  “Monday, so we can have tomorrow to do normal stuff before we face him.”

  She turned around and looked at me. “What will you say?”

  “I have no idea. It depends on what he says… and what he’s like.”

  “An asshole.” A smile parted her lips as she quoted back what I’d called him for the year he was my boss.

  I chucked her under the chin. “That I can guarantee. He’s always that. Shall we walk up to Manhattan Bridge?” Where I’d found her, alone, destitute, and desperate. “Then I thought we could go and eat at Joe’s, where you used to work.”

  She leaned forward and kissed my cheek. “Thanks, I’d like that.”

  It was nearly a year since I’d found her in a tee and jeans, she’d had nothing else on but her sneakers, on a freezing night in New York.

  A subway train passed as we reached the DUMBO end of the Manhattan Bridge’s path. It rattled along on the rails, making a racket. I’d used to deaden the sound with the music in my earphones when I’d jogged along here. We didn’t walk out very far on to the bridge, but we walked along the path until we saw where she’d been the night I met her. She caught hold my fingers and turned away from it. “Can we walk back past where you used to live? Some of those days were my happiest.”

  Her words cut, but she hadn’t meant them to cut—it’s just—I wished she was happy now. She should be happy now. I needed to make her happy again.

  Joe, the restaurant owner, her old boss, made a fuss of her when we went in there. Rach was really pretty and one of those girls that when you met her you didn’t forget her; so even though she’d only worked there for a few weeks, Joe and the others remembered her. But the thing was, that when we’d lived here, what had made her memorable had been the light of joy and mischief that had shone out of her. That light had gotten snuffed out by her meds.

  Sitting in the restaurant, remembering how she used to be, made me miss that girl more than ever. But then, maybe this was who she was really—the person who wasn’t sick—and I had to just suck it up and get used to it.

  She’d have to get used to it too, though, and she wasn’t coping so well with it either. She was scared I’d stop loving her now that she was different.

  I’d spent the last seven days proving to her just how much in love with her I still was. I still was… But it was painful loving her now, not an exciting rush. My heart hurt and my head was a mess—and I hoped when everything was fixed with Mr. Rees it would all calm down, and she and I, we could just be us again.

  When we got back to the room, Rach dropped her purse on the bed, then bent over and took out her cell. “I’m gonna call Mom and speak to Saint.”

  “It
’s too late.”

  She looked at the clock by the bed. It showed eleven-thirty in red digits.

  Her expression crumbled in distress.

  Ah shit. Now she’d kick herself that she hadn’t called earlier. She’d be telling herself she was a bad mom.

  Tears flooded her eyes, making the unusual soft mossy green sharpen and sparkle in the electric light. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  Because I’d thought about it and decided it was best to let her settle in here and do normal stuff for an afternoon and we hadn’t eaten dinner alone since Saint had been born.

  I caught hold of her hands before they could lift and clasp her hair. I hated that pose. She’d been in that pose for all the days she’d been in the hospital, when they’d put her on the shitty meds she was taking now. “Hey. It’s okay not to speak to him for a day. We’ll call first thing in the morning.”

  “But why didn’t I think to call earlier?”

  “Because you’ve got a ton of stuff going on in your head. You were thinking about facing Declan and coming back to New York.”

  “But I should think of Saint first. Why don’t I think of him first?”

  “Because you’re on a load of meds…” and your bipolar brain just doesn’t work like that, sweetheart.

  Rach had always been scared she’d turn out like her mom, who’d been so crap at motherhood Rach had run away at fifteen, and since Rach had walked into the river she didn’t trust herself at all. She challenged everything she thought, and why she thought it, or more frequently didn’t think it. She was trying to make her brain work like normal. But Rach wasn’t normal, and that was one of the reasons I’d fallen for her.

  She hadn’t tried to drown Saint anyway, she’d been thinking of him and trying to teach him to swim. She’d walked into the water with him to swim with him. Fully clothed, yeah. But she’d just lost her hold on reality in a moment of distorted euphoria. That happened with bipolar. It wasn’t because she was a bad mom.

  Rach started to cry. I pulled her into a hug and stroked a hand over her hair. “He’s okay.”