I’m Keeping You

by Jane Lark

  I’d never told Justin about the link between the woman I’d met and married in a hurry and our boss. When I’d found out, I’d left work the next day the office opened, but since then Justin had seen me shout at Mr. Rees in the summer and he was with Portia, so he’d know what had just happened. What brought a person back to yell at their ex-boss months after they’d left? Nothing. Normally. But nothing about this was normal.

  “You’re… With her…” He said it like it was an impossible thing.

  “Yeah.” I answered in the sort of flat tone Mr. Rees used. It said, so what?

  “That’s something.” His eyebrows lifted, and his voice changed to one of, well wow, you lucky fucker. He pulled up a chair and dropped down on to it, sitting at our table without asking if we minded.

  Seeing as it was too late to say go away… “Justin, this is my wife, Rachel. Rachel, this is Justin, who I used to work with.”

  “We’ve met,” he said, smiling at her like it was a riot to catch us together.

  She didn’t remember him.

  “Were you the girl he met on the bridge?” From Justin’s voice he was as surprised as if I’d walked into the office and punched him in the belly.

  “Yeah…” Rach answered, with a pitch that said, why?

  “Mr. Rees’s girl,” Justin said on a low breath. He’d seen her at a New Year’s party in Mr. Rees’s flash penthouse apartment. It was the one time a year everyone at work had been treated like humans. “Shit. And that paternity case.” He looked at me.

  Great, how did he know about the paternity case? He’d put the puzzle together.

  His eyebrows lifted. “Now everything makes sense. That girl you met on the bridge was pregnant with someone else’s kid. I remember. Mr. Rees’s fighting you for custody, isn’t he?”

  “How do you know about the custody thing?” Mr. Rees would not have discussed it. It wouldn’t have hit the office gossips’ network. Mr. Rees would’ve hung on to that secret with an armed guard.

  Justin’s eyebrows lifted again, in the way he’d had of roasting my naivety when I’d been green to New York and sitting at the desk opposite him—the country kid lost in the concrete jungle. “Portia is his Personal Assistant and I’m engaged to her… You accused us of being gossips last time you were here, so you know what the two of us would be like at keeping secrets from each other.”

  Oh my Lord.

  Portia arrived with coffees and sandwiches. Justin got up and pulled another chair over.

  It looked like we had their company while we drank our coffee whether we wanted it or not. But I’d liked him a year ago. I hadn’t liked Portia so much, though, she’d been pushy, and playing for me, even though she’d known I had a girl.

  “This is my wife, Rachel. Rachel, this is Portia from the office.” I did the introductions.

  “Recognize her…” Justin looked at Portia.

  “Ohhh.”

  Yep, she did.

  “The paternity case…” She made the connection too. Awesome.

  But then she reached across the table and gripped Rach’s hand, which was something I didn’t expect. “I’m sorry. It must be awful for you. Mr. Rees is a bastard.”

  Her preppy, British voice made the statement sound funny. But what I realized, suddenly, was that finally we had some intelligence on Mr. Rees. “What do you know?” I hadn’t once thought about Justin, and through him, Portia, being useful.

  Rach looked down at Portia’s hand; it still held hers, then she looked up into Portia’s eyes, asking the question I had, without speaking.

  Portia let Rach go and tore open her sandwiches while she spoke. “Most things. I type his letters. His personal ones as well as those for the magazine.” She glanced up at me, then looked at Rach. “I know that his wife is suing for divorce because your lawyer sent letters about the baby to his house, so she found out.”

  “Shit.” The word slipped past Rach’s lips.

  Portia looked at me. “I didn’t know the name, but I knew a guy was trying to adopt the kid. It’s you, right?”

  “Yeah.” She knew it all anyway.

  “See I told you, now it all makes sense,” Justin said in a dry tone. “You coming in before, in the summer, and shouting at him. I thought it was about a reference or something, but that was a bit extreme for someone who gave you a bad rep.”

  “When did you come in the summer?” Rach looked at me, a little line creasing a frown in her forehead.

  My hand lifted and my thumb ran up the line, trying to wipe it away before I answered. “When you were in the hospital. I came to persuade him to do the DNA test, so we could get going with the adoption.”

  “Oh.” The sound said she’d worked out what that meant—that all this shit was my fault.

  I looked at Portia. “Do you know everything that he does?”

  She nodded. “If it’s to do with business, or needs a letter or a phone call.”

  Or a phone call… I needed to think. What could she find out that would help us? Mr. Rees was a player. There must be some dirty secret he was hiding.

  A year ago, his secret had been Rach.

  The thought punched me in the gut. I hated to think about her past, and so mostly I didn’t, but it was in my face here, I couldn’t escape it.

  “Would you help us?” I’d never imagined I’d be asking self-obsessed Portia for help. Her crisp, British accent made her sound like she thought herself better than others. But she’d just expressed sympathy to Rach, and Justin liked her, and I’d liked Justin a lot, so by means of elimination, I figured she was worth a chance. Maybe she’d help us.

  “How?”

  “I don’t know, but are you willing if we can think of something? He has evidence against Rach which is giving him the grounds to win custody, the only thing I can think to do is build counter-evidence. He’s hardly led a clean life.” Portia and Justin made sounds of agreement, Justin’s amused, Portia’s annoyed. “If we can get some dirt on him, we’d have a chance to fight him. So, will you help?”

  “Yeah, I—”

  Rach shifted forward in her chair and leaned her elbows on the table, looking hard at Portia. “Does he still take cocaine?” Her voice was sharp, bitter, and accusing. Her mood had swung. The girl who’d made a face at me against the window pane had gone.

  “I didn’t know he—”

  “Does he still invite his powerful friends back to his apartment for sex parties?” Rach’s voice said to Portia you-know-nothing. But they were from different worlds, and Portia was too well-bred to have a clue about the life Mr. Rees lived behind closed doors.

  “No, I… I…didn’t know he did that—” If Portia had thought him a bastard already, the shock on her face said she’d happily go back to work and pour arsenic in his coffee.

  “Then you don’t know much about him,” Rach pushed. “I doubt you can help.”

  Portia’s preppy, pitched voice was putting Rach off, like it had me when I’d worked with Portia.

  Justin leaned back and wrapped an arm around Portia’s shoulders, in a gesture of reassurance that I’d deployed on Rach a million times. “She just wants to help you.” He looked at me. He was defending her. They really were tight. As tight as Rach and I… were.

  The words that had slipped into my head, were had been.

  It wasn’t had been, we were tight. Are tight. Good for one another. Right.

  “Rach,” I breathed, looking at her. “If there’s any chance Portia can help… We need all the help we can get.”

  Rach looked at Portia. Her eyes had been mistrustful. I’d seen the hint of paranoia I’d gotten used to since her brain had been wounded by the river incident.

  “Okay. Sure. You can try. But the stuff I said, that’s the stuff we need to know about, not about his business conversations.”

  An image of Portia and the other girls from work going through all of Rach’s stuff that she’d left behind at Mr. Rees’s place played through my mind’s eye. They’d been like vultures, disse
cting it all, rooting through every drawer, looking for bikinis to wear in the pool they were going to sneak into, while everyone else carried on the New Year’s office party in the living room. That had been less than a year ago. It was hard to believe so much in my life had changed.

  But if Portia could help… “Thanks, Portia.” I needed some way to get at Mr. Rees. I had to win.

  Justin gave me a nod confirming that they’d help, and thanking me for accepting Portia in more ways than her offer of help. He’d known I didn’t like her last Christmas. But then his arm slipped off Portia’s shoulders and he sat forward. “I know you’ve ignored every single text from me, but I still have your number, unless you changed it? I can call you if Portia sees or hears anything useful.”

  I sighed out a breath. This whole thing suddenly seemed like a massive mountain. “We have to work it out quickly, we’re here for two weeks, then we have to get back.”

  “I wanna be with Saint, my son, for Thanksgiving.” Rach’s voice changed to a pitch of longing when she spoke of Saint.

  “Let’s get together one evening, then, and throw some ideas around?” Portia suggested. It was Portia’s typical let’s-get-on-with-it-and-fix-it-all style I’d known at work, and it was probably too much for Rach. Portia still sounded like she thought this was going to be easy. Rach and I knew it was never going to be easy.

  “I don’t know…” Rach held back. She didn’t believe Portia could help at all.

  “She’s good at fixing stuff, it’s why she’s a PA.” Justin said to Rach, smiling and making a joke out of it to try to break the ice Rach had thrown on the table. Then he looked at me. “Portia hates him too, and you know I was never his fan.”

  “I seriously hate Mr. Rees,” Portia added, giving Rach a smile. “He’s a weasel. Like my dad. An arrogant asshole and a player. I hate men like that.”

  Rach laughed. The sound caught me by surprise as it broke like a crack of sunshine through her meds, but it was gone as fast as it came. I reached across the table and held her hand. She was not normal today. But we had a chance here, and we had to take it.

  I looked at Rach when she answered, “Okay. Where should we meet?”

  Maybe it was being here in New York that was affecting her moods. Maybe it was the pressure of facing the memories she kept trying to scrub out as hard as I did.

  “Our place. If you like,” Portia offered.

  “Where are you?” I asked, as I squeezed Rach’s hand, deploying the same type of reassurance Justin had. Rach and I, we were just as tight. Definitely still were. We are…

  “In Queens.”

  Justin pulled out his cell and was typing something. My cell buzzed in my jacket pocket. I took it out. He’d sent me the address and I guess also checked that he had the right number and I hadn’t deleted him off my contacts.

  I smiled at him. “Thanks.” We’d been good friends when I’d worked here. Maybe I’d sold him short by cutting him off, but I’d just wanted to protect Rach and Saint by cutting all my ties with New York.

  “When should we come?” Rach asked.

  “We’re visiting Justin’s mum tonight, and I’ll need time to think anyway. What about the tomorrow night or Wednesday?”

  “Tomorrow,” I stated. The sooner the better. Every hour counted, as far as I was concerned. Every hour impacted on Rach’s health and kept us away from Saint.

  “Okay, at seven?”

  “Okay.”

  Portia stood up. “We need to get back to work.” She picked up her packet of barely eaten sandwiches.

  Justin stood too. “We’ll see you tomorrow.”

  “Yeah.” I nodded. He lifted a fist. I bumped it. Then he opened his hand and offered it to me, I clasped it for a moment, then lastly we struck hands in a loose high five. I guess it was like a bridge over the months I hadn’t replied to his texts.

  “Bye,” I said.

  When they walked away, he gripped the back of Portia’s neck gently, then leaned to whisper something in her ear.

  It looked like I had had her wrong.

  “Why do you think they can help?” Rach asked me in a bitter voice.

  I looked at her. The full weight of the baggage that I’d carried to New York hit me in the chest. Her eyes were alight with anger. There was a bipolar storm brewing, and it was coming in from the east and about to hit me full force in a Rachel-style hurricane of emotion. “Because I don’t know what else will. Maybe it’ll help, maybe it won’t, but it’s worth seeing if it will, and don’t knock it until we’ve tried it, honey.” Fuck, I knew what was coming from the look in her eyes.

  “Why did you come here in the summer? Why didn’t you tell me? Why would you do that?”

  Do what? Try to make sure I could adopt our son so I can get that asshole out of his life… Oh, for no real reason at all, Rach. “Let’s not have that conversation here; save it for the hotel.” I stood up.

  She sighed when she stood. Even that slight sound had a heavy, bitter, accusing note to it. She didn’t want to stall on the conversation, she was ready to fly at me. But she was going to have to wait, I wasn’t having a fight in a café when I knew damn well she’d end up shouting.

  We left our empty coffee cups on the table and walked out.

  “Where do you want to go? Central Park or something?” I offered, hoping I could distract her and get her mood back up before we had this face-off.

  “No. I want to go back to the hotel.”

  She wasn’t going to let me stall very long, then, and probably not long enough for her temper to diffuse.

  The weight pressing down on me jumped harder on my shoulders.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Rachel

  Anger bubbled in my veins, fizzing through them. I let it play and nurtured it with words of paranoia as we walked back to the hotel.

  Why had Jason done it?

  Anger invaded everything and it felt good. It tingled in my nerves and fired sparks off in my belly. It felt good to have some sort of emotion. My meds were wearing off. I was escaping the bland, heavy, dark emptiness—slipping free of the chains.

  I had feelings. They may be imbalanced sometimes, and irrational most of the time, but I was alive. I was. I wanted to be in charge of my life.

  Jason didn’t rule it.

  And he’d come here in the summer without asking me, and interfered.

  He’d no right.

  He’d prodded Declan.

  Saint wasn’t even his! Saint was my son! I should get to make the decisions! Not him!

  As soon as Jason shut the door of our hotel room, I said, “I would have told you not to come and see Declan if you’d’ve asked me.” They were vicious words, but my bipolar was a vicious thing when it wanted to be. It was nasty at times and I didn’t care if it was right or wrong. I was glad to have those vicious thoughts back. I’d rather that than emptiness.

  “You weren’t in a state to be asked, and one of the reasons you were so messed up was because of the pressure from Mr. Rees not completing his stuff on the paternity so we could get going with the adoption. I came here to make him do the damned DNA test to clear up any argument.”

  “You provoked him! And now he’s changed his mind! And you lied to me!”

  He sat down on the bed in a sort of collapsing motion, like he’d been pushed down, and his head dropped forward as he answered me and ran his hands through his hair. “I didn’t lie. I just didn’t tell you. You were ill. You didn’t need to know. It would have upset you.” He looked up at me when he said the last bit.

  “Yeah, it sure has upset me! You shouldn’t have come here and messed with him.”

  He didn’t come back at me, and his eyes said he thought it had changed Declan’s mind too. He’d regretted coming here without me.

  “Was that why you didn’t want me to go into the office today? So you could hide it?”

  “No. I was trying to protect you. That’s what I do. I try to protect you and Saint. That’s what I did then, and it’s what I
’m doing now. I was worried about you. I came here to make things better for you.”

  “So you shut me out!”

  “Not like that, Rach.” His hands gripped his thighs, holding on, in an expression of frustration, with his jaw clenched. But then he stood suddenly, turned his back on me and walked over to the window, to look out.

  We didn’t argue often, because he hated arguing. He avoided it. This was what he did—turned his back on me and walked away, or went out for a run to get away.

  He turned around. I waited for the words… I’m going for a run… Sometimes, before I’d gone on to heavy meds, and before I’d walked into the river, when my bipolar had hit a nasty mood, I’d played with him, pushed and pushed him to see if I could make him break and get really angry and shout at me. He never had gotten really angry. That wasn’t Jason. The golden fall sunshine poured through the voile curtain behind him, etching out what was so beautiful about him.

  I wanted sex.

  The urge flooded me with a sudden hard hunger.

  I had emotions, and feelings, and life inside me again. I wanted sex.

  When I breathed out I didn’t say anymore, just walked over there, clasped his head with both hands and kissed him, hard.

  I wanted sex.

  From his hesitant response he didn’t know what to make of it. But that didn’t matter. He liked to avoid conflict and what better way to avoid it? I could let him avoid it and have my way.

  His arms wrapped around me as he kissed me back, and then I was pushing his coat off his shoulders, and pulling his top off.

  Jason got me like no one else ever had. He could take my bomb blasts of craziness and absorb and forget them just as easily as he comforted me when I was down. His eyes told me he’d taken the kiss as a peace offering. It wasn’t.

  He gave me a broad smile when he pulled my sweater and top off in return. He liked sex as much as I did, and the equality of our addiction shone in his eyes.

  I shoved his shoulders and knocked him back against the window before he could do anymore. It pulled the curtain on the rod, but the curtain didn’t tear. I dropped to my knees and undid his belt buckle.