RISK

by Deborah Bladon

  "I have to get Annie's journals." I motion toward the hallway. "I keep them in my shoebox. It's under my bed."

  He takes a step in the direction of my bedroom. I stop him with a pull on his shirt. I didn't know if Adley would be here when I told Nolan I wanted to come here. I'm glad that she's not. I need time with just him to absorb everything. It's too much. I can barely wrap my mind around the fact that May was that baby. I can't grab hold of the reality that he is Rigs.

  "You treated me like shit," I blurt out. "I'm mad at you."

  He kisses my forehead. "You have every right to be pissed as hell at me. I was an asshole. I'm sorry, Ellie. I lost it when I saw you with Wolf."

  "He was helping me," I explain. "This week is a hard one for me and I saw him there and he asked how I was doing and I lost it. I cried because Annie and I used to share a package of candy whenever we found enough change in the park to buy it. I went there for May. I went to the store to get a necklace for May."

  "I've never been in love before." His arms circle me. "I don't know how to do this. I need you to guide me, to help me. I need you to tell me when I'm fucking shit up because I cannot lose you. I won't. You are my breath now. If I lose you, I lose me."

  "Never stop talking to me." I bump my fist against his chest. "Never do that. We can work out anything if we talk. If you go radio silent, I can't deal with it."

  "It won't happen again." He trails his lips over my forehead. "I promise I will talk to you if I lose my shit over something I see or hear. I'll discuss it with you, Ellie. I won't shut you out."

  "I love you so much," I whisper. "I was scared that I lost you forever."

  "You love me?"

  I look up and into his handsome face. "I love you more than anything. You know that, Nolan."

  "I hoped that you loved me." He moves his hands to cradle my face. "You haven't said it yet, Ellie. You didn’t tell me that you love me."

  "I love you," I shout. "I love you, Nolan."

  "I love you too."

  "Promise me you'll never shut me out again. Promise me you won't let your huge ego destroy us." My mouth curves into a smile.

  "I promise and it's not that big."

  "It's huge." I hold my hands out in front of me so they're two feet apart. "It's this big."

  "You have my ego confused with my dick." He cups his hands over mine and brings them to his chest. "Let's put the past to rest so we can focus on our future."

  "I'd like that." I reach up to brush my lips over his. "I'd actually love that."

  ***

  I hold his hand in silence as he reads my sister's journals.

  We'd taken them out of my shoebox together along with a Polaroid picture of Annie and me that had been taken four days before our father died and our lives changed forever. In the photograph we're standing in Times Square, our arms linked together as we smile for the camera. The woman taking it knew us. She'd been working the area taking pictures of tourists for spare change for months. When she saw us that day, she asked if she could snap a picture. We agreed and after she was done, she handed it to Annie. She tucked it into the pocket of the worn varsity jacket she'd gotten from the shelter.

  "You're sure you don't want some water or something, Ellie?" He turns to look at me.

  We've been sitting on the couch in the shoebox apartment for more than an hour now. We came straight here after we got the journals. I wanted the privacy this space offers and he wanted to bring me here to show me the blanket that May had been wrapped in that day he became a dad.

  "I'm fine." I glance down at the page he's reading. "You were like an older brother to her."

  His eyes search mine. "Why did I never meet you? Where were you when I was with Kip?"

  "One time I was hanging on the edge of the park and I saw you two talking." I pause to read a sentence written in my sister's handwriting. "Mostly I was with my dad. He would ask people for money and I was his prop."

  I see the pity in his eyes but I don't want it. My dad lived a life that was filled with regret. He lost his first wife, Annie's mom, to a heart attack when she was too young for anyone to know that her heart wasn’t strong.

  He worked through that pain by having a bottle of whiskey by his side and different women in his bed. My mom was one of them. She didn't tell him about me until she knew her life was over. I was supposed to go live with my aunt in Brooklyn until my dad came to Boston. He arrived with a bouquet of flowers and Annie by his side.

  The loss of my mom after their brief reunion sent him into a tailspin. He drank more and worked less and soon the small furnished apartment in Murray Hill that we lived in wasn't ours anymore. We slept in the car until he sold that and the city's shelters became our home.

  He closes the journal with shaking hands. "We need to talk, Ellie, about something I did for Kip."

  I squeeze his hand tighter. "You did lots of things for Annie. You gave her food and gloves. Your friend Jeff told her about Paris and it made her fall in love with it."

  "That was Crew." A smile ghosts his lips. "Crew told Kip his name was Jeff."

  I scan his face, tears swelling in my eyes. "That was Crew? He knew her too?"

  "Not well." He swipes the pad of his thumb over my cheek to catch a tear. "They met only a couple of times. Crew talked about Paris. She was mesmerized by it."

  "I can't believe that was Crew." I hold his gaze with mine. "I still can't believe you're Rigs."

  "I'll read these." He runs his fingers over the open journal in his lap. "I will read and cherish every word that she wrote in here, but I need to talk about something now. I need to explain why I did what I did."

  "What did you do?" My stomach knots. I've read my sister's journals more than a dozen times. I've held tight to her thoughts and her words because they've brought me comfort.

  "Kip was attacked one night," he begins, his shoulders tensing. "Do you remember that night?"

  "I remember everything about that night."

  "I was there." He closes his eyes. "I was walking through the park. I heard her scream. I ran. I saw things. There was a man on her, Ellie. His hands were all over her. He was hitting her. Holding her down."

  "Yes," I mutter, my voice barely audible. "I remember."

  "I pulled him off." He reaches for my hand. "I pulled him off and he took off. He ran. I chased that sick fuck until I caught him."

  Chapter 54

  Nolan

  Ellie's staring at me. I have no idea what Kip wrote in these journals about that night but I don't want to read her words before I tell Ellie what happened in my own words. I want her to understand why I did what I did. I want her to know that I was trying to protect her sister.

  "He hurt Kip," she says softly. "She was in the hospital for weeks. It's a miracle she survived."

  I've never known the extent of her injuries. All I saw was blood covering a face I couldn't recognize. Her nose was battered and broken, her jaw hanging loosely revealing missing teeth. Her clothes were on, though. Her shirt was ripped but her body still covered. She rolled over to shield her face as I pulled the bastard off of her.

  "Did he… do you know if he…"

  "No." She moves closer to me. "He didn't rape her. Annie fought hard. She fought him off."

  By the time I caught him and dragged him to the ground, his jeans were closed but his belt hung open, the buckle clanging as he ran.

  I heave a sigh of relief. I wanted to call the hospital back then to ask how she was, but I was too scared that they'd somehow trace the inquiry back to me and I'd be brought in by the police.

  "Please know that I only did what I did for her, Ellie." I turn so I'm looking right into her eyes. "I don’t regret it. I would do the same thing again."

  "What did you do?"

  I want her to put the pieces of this together herself. I scanned the newspaper the next day and the day after that when there was finally a small story about a jogger finding a man's body on a trail in Central Park. His name was never released. No one repo
rted on his cause of death. I took it as a sign that I'd done the right thing and I took off. I went to Miami for a week with Crew after I burned my clothes and shoes in the fireplace of my parents' summer home on Long Island.

  I held my breath for months after that hoping that no one would ever know that I'd taken a man's life.

  I don't waver at all. I keep her gaze as I say the words aloud for the first time. "I killed that man, Ellie. I beat him until he was dead."

  She moves back on the couch, her hand falling from mine. Her head shakes, a quick jerk before he eyes fall to her lap. "No."

  "Yes." I don't want this hanging over me anymore. My anger fueled my movements that night but it wasn't just the sight of Kip laying there that spurred me on. It was the realization that the man I'd punched until he stopped fighting back and I couldn't lift my arms, had been watching Kip for weeks. He'd approached her more than one time. He'd walked past as I talked to her, gawking at her thin frame hidden beneath her jacket.

  "Nolan." She drops her head into her hands, her palms pressing into her eyes sockets. "You didn't. You didn't kill him."

  I expected this. I anticipated it when I realized that she knew I was Rigs. I knew that she'd have to deny it before she accepted it. Hiding it from her will only tarnish what we have. Sooner or later I'll have to confess. I can't hide a secret this size from the only woman I've ever loved.

  "Ellie." I reach for her leg. "I know it's a lot to take in."

  "No." She covers my hand with her own. Her gentle touch a sign. She doesn't hate me. She hasn't judged what I've done. "You didn't kill him. He didn't die that night. He died in a jail cell last year."

  "What?" My vision blurs as the guilt lifts. I've never regretted what I'd done but there were moments where I wondered about his family. I had flashes of shame when I imagined him coming out of that night alive and turning his life around. I brushed off those fleeting thoughts quickly whenever I thought about Kip and the way she looked the last time I saw her.

  I wanted to go back to help her. I ran in that direction, with my gloves covered in the bastard's blood as sirens wailed their imminent arrival. When I reached the edge of the alcove where she was, I saw two people. Both of them were on their knees, tending to her. I ran then. I tucked the gloves in my jacket, dropped my head and I ran home. I threw everything in a trash bag and waited until the next day when I went to Long Island and destroyed my link to that night.

  "Annie helped the police." She searches my face. "She used to notice everything about every person she was around. That helped them tremendously. He was arrested a few months later after he attacked another woman in Connecticut. Annie identified him and he was prosecuted."

  "A man died in the park that night, Ellie. I read about it in the paper."

  Her lips thin as she closes her eyes. "My dad died in the park that night. He drank himself to death because he'd finally given up."

  ***

  My own fear has kept me captive for more than a decade. I was so scared of being prosecuted for killing that man that I hid behind an emotional wall of my own making. The only person I let in was May until Ellie fell into my lap.

  I take the empty glass of water from her hands and place it on the coffee table. After she had explained that her dad died from acute alcohol poisoning, I held her while she cried. She and her sister had no one at that point. Her best friend's family stepped up to the plate. They took the two girls in and gave them a safe place to heal and thrive.

  Annie took the time to get to know one of the EMTs who had been there to care for her that night. They fell in love. They married and had three beautiful daughters. A brain aneurysm took her life the day May was born.

  Ellie was rushed into surgery while her sister's husband, Clinton, rushed into the ER with his wife on a stretcher. Their daughters had been over at a neighbor's home that day for a playdate and when Annie didn't go to pick up her children, the neighbor went there and used the key they had given her to check on her friend. Annie was unresponsive and when her husband arrived with his uniform on, he tried everything he could to save her life. There was nothing. She'd suffered a major stroke and died in her bed.

  "Can I see it now?" Ellie takes my hand and kisses my fingertips. "I want to see it."

  "Twenty seconds." I kiss her hand. "I'll be back in twenty seconds."

  I sprint down the hallway and unlock the cabinet in the office. I push a bunch of loose photographs aside as I dig in the top drawer for a plastic bag. I find it. I yank it out before I take double strides to get back to where Ellie is.

  I place the bag in her lap and she doesn't move. She stares at it. "Yes. This is it."

  "You remember it?" I ask as I lower myself next to her. "Do you remember it, Ellie?"

  Her hand carefully glides over the surface of the bag and the blanket and note that is trapped inside. I'd put it in the bag on the advice of my attorney. He wanted me to keep it preserved in the event that I'd be faced with a custody battle.

  She cranes her neck to try and read the note. "I remember it. It was such an unusual blanket for a baby to be wrapped it. I kept thinking that it looked like the torn piece of a quilt. I asked her where it came from."

  "The woman holding May?" I refuse to call that woman May's mother. That's not who she is. It took Kristof less than thirty minutes to learn her name after I told him that she was a witness to Ellie's shooting.

  Jennifer Richardson abandoned her premature daughter in the lobby of my building sixteen hours after she gave birth to her. The note she left with May listed her time of birth. She wrote that she was doing it because she realized that her life didn't have room for a child. She wanted May to be safe and to live with someone who could give her what she needed. She ended the note with a vague promise that if things didn't work out for her, she'd be back for our daughter.

  May was her backup plan which meant I'd never let her near my daughter.

  "Where did she say it came from?" I ask because I'm curious. I want to know Jennifer's mindset between the time my daughter took her first breath and the moment she left her alone in a cardboard box.

  "She didn't say much of anything." Ellie half-shrugs. "She didn't look well. She was so gaunt and I asked if I could help. I offered to buy her food and take her to a doctor."

  That's not what she needed. Jennifer needed courage. She needed the courage to face her estranged husband to tell him that she had fucked a stranger she met in a bar and ended up pregnant. She obviously didn't do that. She's living with him in Texas now on a sprawling ranch, happy and child free. The shares of their tech company are riding high at the moment.

  Their year-long separation was documented in the tabloids as he spent his time chasing after women half his age and she disappeared from the public eye.

  Kristof will keep a distant eye on Jennifer in the event she ever decides to seek out May. I'll keep the blanket, the note and the information Kristof gathered to give to my daughter if I ever feel it's necessary.

  I'm indebted to her that she didn't make another choice when she discovered she was pregnant. She made a choice to have our daughter and to give her to me and for that, I am eternally grateful.

  "Do you think it was fate?" Ellie slides the bag back onto my lap. "Me and May, you and Annie? Was it all fate?"

  I place the bag on the coffee table before I turn and face her. "I think fate is part of our story. I think risk is a bigger part. I took a risk for Annie. You took a fucking huge risk for May and we took a risk on each other."

  "I'd risk anything for May." She scoots closer, her hands landing on my leg. "And I'd risk anything for you, Nolan."

  "We're doing this until we die." I pull her into my lap. "You and I are in this until we're as old and gray as Jersey."

  "I'm in." She kisses me softly. "You are my destiny. I can't even try and deny that."

  "You're mine. I'll cherish you forever and celebrate every day I get to love you."

  "I'll do the same. You, me and May."

  Epil
ogue

  One Year Later

  Nolan

  "I'm not a doctor." Ellie hands the piece of paper back to me. "What does any of this mean?"

  I look down at the complex terminology splattered across the page. "It means that I can be up to full speed in no time flat. All we need to do is book an appointment and a new baby brother or sister for May B will be on the way."

  Her brow furrows as she rips the paper from my hands. "We already did the home study for the adoption. Why are you having an appointment on your own? Also, May would tell you no speeding in that new car you bought."

  "I bought that car so we could take Sunday drives out of this city. I bought it for all of us."

  "You bought it so you could race around and pump up your ego." She waves her hands in the air as she puffs up her cheeks. "I'm on to you, Nolan Black."

  "You're not a detective yet, Ellie Black," I point out. "I realize you will be one day because you are rocking the shit out of that administrative job you have at police headquarters."

  "I am doing a great job." She tugs on the bottom of her T-shirt. Actually, it's my T-shirt. It's that boyband farewell tour shirt that my wife has now claimed as hers.

  "I’m going to have the surgery to reverse the vasectomy." I catch the paper as it flutters out of her hand toward the floor. "I want us to have a baby, Ellie. I want to see you pregnant. I want it all."

  "We're adopting a baby, Nolan." Her bottom lip quivers. "He's three, but you know what I mean. Jonas is going to be our son in just a few months."

  "I'm already lining up season's tickets for the Yankees for my boy and me." I tap the brim of the Yankees cap on my head. "I'm talking about another child, Ellie. One that we create. It'll be a little bit of you and a little bit of me."