I’m Keeping You. Jane Lark

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.”