I’m Keeping You. Jane Lark

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