I’m Keeping You. Jane Lark

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       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 СКАЧАТЬ