I heard movement and looked up.
Jason was standing in the door opening, leaning against the jamb, naked. I smiled. He lifted one eyebrow at me, querying the conversation.
He looked pale.
“Mrs. Macinlay, Jason’s woken up. You can speak to him, now. I’d better carry on getting ready for work.”
“Oh, goodbye, Rachel,” she rushed to say before the cell left my ear.
“Yeah, goodbye, and happy New Year.”
“Yes, dear, happy New Year.”
I covered the cell with my hand, and mouthed at Jason, as I handed it to him. “She called me, dear, twice.”
He smiled, then took the cell.
Wow, was his mom going to like me? She’d said I should call her ‘mother.’ I’d never had a proper family, would I have one now?
His family
.
I put my shoes and coat on once I’d dried my hair.
He was still talking to his mom, so I kissed his cheek and then whispered, “See you later.”
He nodded, catching my fingers. Then he pressed them to his lips before letting me go.
I felt like Rachel and I had reached firm ground. I knew her now, like I’d known her forever. There were no gaps between us. No old wounds. I was as sure as I could be that we were going to be fine. Which was crazy when I was about to face up to my boss and tell him I’d married a woman who’d stabbed him and was carrying his child.
My heart was racing when I saw Mr. Rees walk across the office floor.
I hadn’t said anything to Justin. I didn’t want anyone else knowing this connection. I was going to look for another job now anyway.
I gave Mr. Rees a quarter-hour to settle in, my heart thumping out every second as I waited and kept looking at the clock on the bottom right-hand corner of my computer screen. I’d spent all New Year’s day, while Rach had been at work, planning what I’d say, and rehearsing it.
Justin was talking to me across the desk. I wasn’t listening.
I’d already had to wait three hours, praying Mr. Rees came in today. He didn’t come in every day, and sometimes only for an hour.
I took a breath the minute it reached fifteen minutes past twelve, and stood up.
Rach would be in the restaurant, serving.
When I turned Justin said, “Hey, I was talking.”
I looked back and gave him an apologetic smile. “Sorry, I’ve got something to do.”
Justin frowned, and I felt him watching me as I cut a path toward Mr. Rees’s office, in the far corner.
The door was ajar. I knocked.
“Yeah, come in.”
Dammit, my heartbeat roared through my veins. I couldn’t remember having an adrenaline rush like this before.
“Mr. Rees?” His name stuck in my throat. I hated this man with a fierce passion.
He was standing behind his desk looking out his window. The office wasn’t as high up as his penthouse, but it still had a great view.
He didn’t even bother looking at me.
“What do you want? Jason, isn’t it?” I swear, he always said ‘isn’t it?’ just to make me feel like I wasn’t worth shit; he knew who I was.
I shut the door.
He did look ‘round then.
“What is it?” He sounded impatient. He sat down behind his desk, moving a pile of paper in front of him, in a gesture that said hurry-up-and-get-out.
I didn’t know how to start the conversation and I’d forgotten every word I’d rehearsed. So I just broke into it. “My wife is Rachel.”
“Rachel?” He looked up, frowning.
“Yeah,
the
Rachel that used to live at your place.”
His eyes widened but he didn’t speak.
“And the baby you saw yesterday. That’s your baby.”
The man’s mouth dropped open.
I didn’t say anymore, just stood and stared at him as he gathered himself together. I wanted to tell him he was a fucking bastard. I didn’t. He knew it, I’m sure, and he didn’t give a damn.
His skin colored and he stood as his hands fisted, proving to me that he’d hit Rachel in the past.
“I suppose she wants money. She won’t get it.”
“If she’d wanted money she’d have stayed with you. She doesn’t want it.”
“Then why the hell tell me!”
“Because it’s your child. You should know.”
“What do I care about that bitch, or her child? She’s mad as hell. And you should know what you’re getting in to.” He grabbed his shirt and pulled it out of his waistband.
There was a red-raw jagged scar on his side, about two inches long. It had the same appearance as the one on Rach’s palm, except it had stitch scars too.
“The bitch did this the night she left.” He let his shirt fall. “If I were you I wouldn’t sleep. She’s fucking crazy. Did you know that? I’d get rid of the kid, and get rid of her.”
I just stared at him, and my mind ran through what Rach’s life must have been like; how low she must have judged herself to be sucked into a life with this asshole. She must have been miserable.
Well she had me now.
He looked into my eyes. “Is that all you want?”
He was dismissing me, but more importantly dismissing his son or daughter. Well it wouldn’t be a loss to them. “Is that all you have to say?”
“Yes, and don’t expect anything from me in the future.” The bastard growled at me.
“We won’t,” I snapped back. “And, can I have that in writing?” What I wanted to say was ‘and this is for Rachel’ and then punch him in the face. I didn’t, what I needed was him out of our lives not a court case.
In answer, he picked up a blank piece of paper and scribbled,
I want nothing to do with Rachel Shears, or her child
, on it. He underlined it, and signed it,
Declan Rees
, then dated it.
He held it out to me.
The bastard. I couldn’t hit him, but I could…
“I’m resigning, you can take this as me giving you notice, too.” I couldn’t work here now. I’d do any job I had to, but I wasn’t going to work here and have to keep looking at him.
He glared. “Well then, you can consider yourself dismissed. Pack up your stuff and get the fuck out of my sight.”
My heart raced, with anger, shock, and fear. Shit, what had I done? I had a wife and child to support.
But I wasn’t going to backtrack. I couldn’t stay here. “Fine.” I said, staring back at him, then I turned and left the room.
Justin stared at me when I got back to my desk.
Immediately I started emptying my drawers, catching Mr. Rees watching me from his office door. When he saw me notice, he turned and went back in, cutting me, Rachel, and his kid, out of his life. Thank God.
“What are you doing?” Justin asked.
“Leaving, Justin. Sorry.” I was piling everything into a small cardboard box which had been under my desk. There wasn’t much, I hadn’t been here too long.
I remembered the guy I’d been when I walked in here. Hopeful, thinking this job was going to be the answer to everything that was bad in my life. It hadn’t been. Rachel had been that. This job I’d dreamed of for years, meant nothing.
But what would I do now? I needed to earn money, and I’d spent everything I’d saved on Las Vegas.
“Why are you leaving?” Justin asked.
Others had looked up, and the girls came over.
I smiled at him. “I just realized this job isn’t for me.” Being a husband and a father to Rachel and our child, that was the job for me.
“Jason?” That was from one of the girls, Portia.
My box packed, I pulled my coat off my chair. “Nice to have met you, Justin. Cheers for being a friend. Bye.”
“Bye,” he answered, as I walked away, the cardboard box under my arm.
I rode the subway home.
Thank God Rach wasn’t home when I got in.
I looked at the stuff in my box and realized none of it was important. I chucked it away.
Dammit, I was going to have to tell her we only had her income now.
Coward that I was, I got changed and went for a run in Central Park.
Rachel still wasn’t in when I got back. She was working all day, still making up her lost Christmas hours. She’d have to work 24/7 to pay the rent on the apartment on her own. Shit, I’d done something really stupid. And yet I couldn’t regret walking out, only losing the income.
I showered and changed, and decided to do something I hadn’t done for a while and eat at the restaurant.
Rachel glanced across as I walked in. She looked surprised, pleasantly so, she threw me a broad smile, then looked back at the customer whose order she was taking.
I took a breath, remembering the news I came bearing, and moved to the table near the kitchen.
Rach rushed past, taking her order in.
God I loved her.
Joe was behind the bar pouring customers’ drinks. He winked at me.
I smiled, though I didn’t feel like smiling. The shock had worn off during my run, and now the reality was setting in.
Rach came back a couple of minutes later with her pad.
“Hey, you fancied eating out then?”
“I fancied seeing you,” I answered.
She smiled.
I wanted to speak, but I couldn’t while she was still working. I wished she could just sit down with me.
“A burger?” she said.
“Yeah.”
“And beer?”
“Yep.”
She glanced back at Joe, and he moved to open one.
“You, okay?” She said when she looked back, tilting her head a little.
I wanted to say, no, but I didn’t. She must have seen the answer in my eyes anyway.
“What is it?” she slipped into the chair opposite me.
“I’m sorry, Rach.”
“Sorry?”
“I messed up. I’ve left my job.”
“What?”
“I couldn’t work there when
he’s
there.”
“You spoke to him?”
She reached across the table and gripped my hand.
“Yeah, and he said what you thought he would, he doesn’t want anything to do with the baby, I got it in writing too. But there was no way I could stand being there with him, Rach. I’m sorry, I quit, and then he told me to get out today. I’ve left.”
Her fingers squeezed mine harder. “It’s okay, Jason. Like you said, we’ll work it out.” She looked across her shoulder, then back.
She stood.
“I have to get back to work. I’ll get your beer.”
When she brought it over, her hand ran across my hair and she leaned down and kissed my head.
“Thank you, Jason.” Her breath brushed my skin as I looked up, puzzled. “For being willing to defend me,” she answered the question that must have shown in my eyes. “It feels like years ago since that awful night when I got away from him. Then I found my knight in shining armor on Manhattan Bridge. I can’t believe you’ve given up your dream, for me. I’m sorry. We’ll talk later, but just, thank you.”
I caught a hold of her hand, and looked up into her green eyes. “You’re my dream, Rach.”
She smiled, and I let her fingers slip from mine as she hurried off to put my order in.
God, I was happy, when I had no reason to be happy, other than I was with this woman.
I ate the burger and drank my beer, watching Rachel work, and feeling the calm, rightness, I always felt around her.
My life had turned upside down, but it was finally the right way up.
When Rach finished her shift, she suggested we walk down to the Brooklyn Bridge Park before going home.
It was quiet. We walked by the water. The water she’d planned on jumping into when I’d found her. I shivered at the thought of her being consumed by it.
We stopped at the railing and looked at the lights reflecting on it. They were shifting as the water swayed.
My life had changed so much since I’d met Rach. I’d grown up, properly grown up.
I gripped the railing and felt the cold seep through my gloves.
She gripped my arm.
“Have you called your Mom yet?”
“Not yet.”
“Call her now. She’ll want to know, Jason. She’ll be upset if you don’t tell her what happened.”
Rach was right.
I took my cell out my pocket, went into my contacts and brought up, Mom. I pressed the call symbol and held my breath while it rang, looking at Rach.
She smiled reassuringly.
“Hello, Jason.”
“Hi Mom. I’m sorry, I’ve got some bad news.”
“Oh darling, what now?”
“I left my job. I couldn’t stay there. Not with him owning the place. It all felt wrong. I talked to him but he’s not interested and he called Rach a bitch. I couldn’t stay there, Mom.”
I watched Rach listening, clearly trying to work out what Mom was saying at the other end.
“Are you upset?”
“To have left there, no––”
“It’s just we had so many arguments about you going and this being the thing you really wanted to do…”
“Rach is more important than any of that, Mom.”
Rachel smiled at me.
“But this was what you said you wanted all your life, Jason.”
“I know I said that, Mom. But I was wrong. Rach is what I’ve wanted all my life. I just had to come to New York to find her. I have her now. I can work anywhere. It doesn’t really matter.”
Tears shone in Rachel’s eyes as she listened. Then one tumbled over and ran down her cheek. I wiped it away with my free hand.
“Well, as long as you are both happy, Jason. Then we will be happy for you.”
“Okay, I’m going to go. I’m just walking Rach home from work, but Rachel said you’d be upset if I waited to tell you what happened.”
“She was right. Goodnight, Jason, and say goodnight to Rachel too.”
“Night.”
She rang off.
I smiled at Rachel. “She said, goodnight. I think you’ve seriously won them over.”
Rach hugged me, her arms crossing behind my back.
I held her too.
We stood there in the city lights, in the dark, and I knew what I had said to Mom had been right. Fate had led me here, only to find her.
She pulled away and wiped tears from her eyes again, smiling. “You know, you don’t even need a massive publishers, or printing machines, or anything but a laptop to start up a magazine. You could write your own and publish it on the internet.”
I just stared at her for a moment and then laughed. “Do you know what? You’re right. Why didn’t I think of that?”
Because I was meant to have come here
. I laughed. Of course we’d covered online magazines at college, but I’d been holding out for the traditional route. But what the hell did it matter if it appeared on a shelf in a store or not? Rach, was right. I should just do it.