I’m Keeping You. Jane Lark

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СКАЧАТЬ face-timed Dad, it’s Saint.” I held my iPhone out so she could see him and he’d be able to see her.

      She lifted up on to her elbows, smiling instantly. “Saint.”

      “He says, good morning, Mommy.”

      “Good morning, sweetheart. What are you doing?”

      “Playing with Grampy, he’s had his second bottle of milk today and he’s full of beans.” Dad’s voice came through the cell.

      Saint was making sweet, babbling, I’m-full-up, happy sounds and he was laying on his back while his legs and arms kicked out like he was doing a little kickboxing routine.

      She took the cell out of my hand. “Did Grampy change your diaper?”

      “Grampy did not, that is Granny’s task.”

      She’d been teasing him about his dislike of diapers since Saint had been born. It was good to hear the humor in her voice. She’d been lacking humor since she’d been on her meds. It was a ray of the Rachel I’d fallen for in the beginning, shining through the gray clouds of the last couple of months.

      “So you let Grampy do all the fun bits and leave all the nasty sick and poo to Granny… That’s not fair, Saint, Granny wants playtime too.”

      I laughed and tumbled down on the bed beside her, so Saint could see me. But really Rach had to get up, we needed to go. “Dad, we need to get into the office, so I’m going to have to chase Rach out of bed. Saint, say goodbye to Mommy.” Dad’s hand came into view and lifted Saint’s hand to wave at us. Saint made the cutest baby face, with a toothless smile.

      I loved my kid. His blood might not be mine, but it didn’t matter, he was my son. I wanted to adopt him, but if I hadn’t been pushing to make him legally mine then maybe we could’ve lived together forever in peace and avoided Mr. Rees paying any attention to us. He wouldn’t have had any reason for this custody fight.

      I reckoned this mess was my fault.

      “Bye.” Rach pressed a kiss on to her fingertips then blew it off them toward the screen.

      I pursed my lips and blew Saint a smacker. “Bye, Saint. Bye, Dad. We’ll call you later.”

      “Yes, bye, Rachel. Goodbye, son.”

      I pressed the end-call icon, then took the cell out of her hand. “Okay, Rachel Macinlay, you need to get up and we need to go and fight for our kid.”

      She gave me a smile, which was not the reaction I’d expected.

      “What time did you get up?”

      “Two hours ago.” I’d washed, dressed, and just been looking out the window playing games on my cell ever since, leaving her to sleep because I knew she’d had a bad night, dreaming. Off meds Rach had two extremes: never sleeping and sleeping nearly all day and night, but on the meds she was just always a little bit doped up. I hated her meds more than she did, probably, and that was saying something, but I felt like they were crushing her. She wasn’t anything close to normal on her meds.

      I sighed—remembering again that, maybe, who she was now was normal for the not-mentally-sick Rach.

      But that was why I’d made another call this morning, before I’d called Mom and Dad, because I needed to know what was right and what was wrong, and so many things didn’t feel right at the moment.

      I got up off the bed when she walked into the bathroom. “I called the hospital here this morning!”

      She reappeared, holding the door jamb and looking at me, her eyes questioning. “Why?”

      “Because, first of all, it would be good for you to have two psychologists to make a statement for you if we end up in a courtroom before a judge fighting to keep Saint and, second of all, because I thought the guy here talked a lot of sense when we saw him last year, and I want you to have a second opinion on the best treatment for you. You don’t feel good on the meds you’re taking, and maybe there’s some other choice.”

      “You made an appointment already…”

      “Yeah, for the end of next week.”

      She turned away and walked into the bathroom, not giving me a clue what she thought about what I’d done. There’d been nothing in her body language and I hadn’t seen her expression.

      I sighed and turned around, there was no point in following her in there to push her for a response. Rachel shared things when she wanted, and not when she didn’t. I left her to get her head around the idea. My head was full anyhow. I was getting my brain around what the hell to say to Mr. Rees to stop him pushing for custody. No ideas had come to me yet.

      How did I win against a rich guy who could afford billion-dollar lawyers?

      I didn’t even really get why he was fighting… He hadn’t wanted Saint to be born. He’d wanted Rach to have an abortion. I still had his stupid scribbled note saying he didn’t want anything to do with the kid if she had it.

      So why had he changed his mind?

      Because I wanted Saint…

      That’s what I thought, that this was between him and me and had nothing to do with Rach or Saint. They’d just gotten caught up in it. When I’d worked for him he’d seen me as a nobody and neither of us had known about our connection when I’d found Rach and she’d moved in with me. It wasn’t until the party he’d had when I saw her picture in his penthouse that I found out who Rach’s abusive ex had been—my boss.

      I’d quit work. I’d heard enough about her ex from Rach to know there was no way I could work for him knowing that, especially when we were going to raise his kid.

      But after I’d walked out of work, he’d come after Rach. He’d turned up at my place, late at night, off his head on something, with a group of guys. That hadn’t been just about Rach. He’d wanted to take her away from me, not just take her. I’d been the guy he’d deemed a worthless piece of shit. He had loads of money. Several businesses. Friends in powerful places. Massive houses. The best of everything. Everything I could never hope for. But I’d kicked his ego that night I’d blackened his eye and probably broken his rib, and he’d gone away. I’d won that night.

      But Mr. Rees was the sort of guy who didn’t like losing.

      Shit.

      So how did I persuade a man like that to let us keep Saint and stop fighting?

      I didn’t know. But I was trying to convince Rach I did. I’d told her everything was going to be okay. That we’d get this fixed. But the problem was—I looked at my watch and remembered how long it used to take me to get to the office, about forty-five minutes—in forty-five minutes she was going to discover that I’d lied.

      Nausea twisted around in my gut and I rubbed my hands on the seat of my pants.

      I’d hated the asshole a year ago, but that feeling then had been a shallow dislike. Now it was a violent distaste. But the cutting thing was, that underneath every feeling I had, I still had this shitty sense he was better than me, because he had so much more than I did.

      “What СКАЧАТЬ