I Found You (18 page)

I caught her hand as it lowered. “It’s okay, Rach. We’ll talk in a bit. Just get me a coffee and a burger.”

“Yeah.” She sniffed again, as I let her hand go.

One of the other waitresses brought my order over, and she lifted her eyebrows at me when she put it down implying she’d had some conversation with Rach over her bringing it across.

Rach was over the other side of the restaurant serving another family. Then she moved to the far corner to give a couple of guys their bill.

I watched her, as I lifted my burger to eat it.

There were a hundred questions running through my head. Whose baby? There obviously was a baby. So whose? How? She’d admitted to one-night stands, was it the product of one of those? Did she even know the guy’s name? Or was she not even sure which guy out of several could be the father?

I had to know what had happened in her life to leave her pregnant, alone, and ready to jump off Manhattan Bridge.

Over the last couple of days, I’d felt like she’d given my life some meaning again, and now I wasn’t sure of anything. Everything kept shifting like sand under my feet when I stepped on it.

Fucking hell, Rach. How did you end up in this mess? And why would you do it to yourself?

She didn’t flirt with the guys across the room. I was afraid she would, with doubts unraveling and tangling in my head. They paid their bill and when one of the guys said something to her, she merely smiled at him, then shook her head.

I had a feeling he’d asked her out.

I felt a rush of anger. I’d never been jealous over Lindy. I’d never needed to be, but hell I sure was jealous now, or perhaps the better word was
possessive
. I felt threatened and bruised over the revelation about the baby. I felt like Rach was my territory, just mine. But now I kept picturing her with other guys. I didn’t want to, and I didn’t want her to be with anyone else but me, now. I’d found her. She was mine. And
I
wanted to be
hers
.

When the guys counted out notes I could tell they’d given her a hefty tip, even though she hadn’t flirted. The problem was, she didn’t even need to flirt with guys, she was so beautiful that they were interested whether she did, or didn’t. She’d listened to me the other week and she’d stopped flaunting herself, but even so she was just a great girl and her light voice and the spirit burning in her eyes sucked you in. Well that and her hot body.

Had I been seduced? I really didn’t think so. But fuck, she was pregnant. How long had she suspected? When would she have told me if she’d not forgotten and left the test out? Or would she just have got rid of it and never said?

Dammit. Rachel.

She didn’t finish early. I had to endure watching her for an hour and a half. When they closed up the diner, I went out back to wait for her, and stood with my hands in my pockets looking up at the sky and watching the mist of my breath rise. I felt like the initial shock was wearing off and now the weight of this reality was setting down on me, heavily.

A baby. Was I going to stay with her? Was I going to let her stay with me?

I’m only twenty-two. Just twenty-two. If Lindy and I had got married next year, I’d still have waited three years or more to start a family. I’d have waited until I could afford somewhere larger to live, somewhere with a yard for a kid to play in.

Rach was only twenty-one. We’d never even discussed what hopes and aspirations she had. We’d just spent the last three weeks living. We were young. Rach was a life’s-just-for-living type of girl.

If we did stay together, how would we live with the two of us and a baby in my tiny apartment?

She came out the door pulling on her coat, and her gaze lifted to my face then looked down at the sidewalk as she continued putting on her coat.

She looked guilty and concerned, like she didn’t know what to say to me.

Well I didn’t know what to say either, and I’d started to feel as if I was getting to know her––now I felt as though I didn’t know her at all. Shit, wasn’t that what Lindy had said to me just over a week ago?

Yet still, when her gaze finally met mine, I had that rush of feeling, like a river tide sweeping in racing through my body. I loved her. I did. I really did. I didn’t want to let her go.

Then what was I going to do, say I wanted her kid too? God knew. I didn’t. Not yet.

“Can we walk in Brooklyn Bridge Park? I don’t wanna go home yet.”

Home? Was it her home? Was this thing between us permanent or temporary? I deliberately hadn’t asked myself and hadn’t discussed it with her, because I didn’t want to think about it yet. Okay we were living together, but that was accidental. I didn’t know what this thing was between us, it just was. It had gathered like yeast in dough, and I was afraid any discussion would be like cold striking the fermentation, and it would all collapse.

I kept my hands in my pockets as we turned and walked toward the park, slowly.

“Aren’t you gonna shout at me?”

I glanced at her. “Why? What good is shouting going to do?”

“I thought you’d be angry.”

Was I angry, over the baby? “I’m not angry, just shocked, and a bit, well… I don’t know what to think, Rach. Or what to do. I just wish––”

She looked up at me. “You hadn’t met me, or you’d left me on the bridge,” she said, finishing my sentence, although that hadn’t been what I was going to say. I didn’t correct her though and she carried on. “I understand if you want to tell me to get lost…”

I didn’t say anything. I didn’t know if that was what I wanted to say to her. But fuck I loved her. Devil and deep blue sea––here we were again. Would I ever escape these choices?

Her hands had been at her sides, now they slid into her pockets and she sped up the pace, taking a step ahead of me then turning to cross the street.

I was adrift on the deep blue sea with her, and it was rocking beneath my feet.

Dammit, I didn’t want to let her go, and I didn’t want to let her down, but… could I really keep her, and her kid?

“You’re going to have to tell me what happened before I found you on Manhattan Bridge,” I said, as we reached the other sidewalk. She stopped and looked at me, her hands still in her pockets. “I know you don’t want to, Rach, but I need to know…” It was a plea. I just needed to be able to understand. Perhaps if I did, I could adjust my head to all of this.

She looked at me, her eyes dark in the streetlight. She was thinking, making her own choices. “I’ll tell you in the park.”

I’d feared losing the joy and the shiny newness of our relationship. It was gone; she was deflated. She’d lost the bright light which had called me to her through the dark when we’d gone to the club.

I felt broken.

She walked a little ahead of me in silence leading the way, her hands in her pockets as mine were.

A part of me wanted to hold her, but another part just couldn’t reach out.

My heart was drumming in my chest again, and I really felt like I didn’t know what to do with myself, whether to laugh, cry, or shout, as we entered the park.

She walked to the rail at the water’s edge, gripped it and looked down at the inky water. She never spoke.

I hovered a little behind her. My hands still in my pockets.

“Rach?”

She turned and leaned back against the rail, her eyes on mine.

“Whose is it? Do you know?”

She looked hurt. “Yes, I know.”

“Whose then?”

“It belongs to the guy I lived with for over a year before I met you.”

“You were living with a guy?”

“I walked out on him, and left everything there. Well it was all his anyway, he’d bought everything for me for a year.”

A little like I’d been doing.

“Start at the beginning, Rach.”

She reached behind her and hooked one foot up on the railing then pulled herself up so she sat on it.

I was worried she’d fall back, but I still didn’t touch her. I could grab her if she did fall though.

She looked at me again for a moment, then over my shoulder at the other people in the park, there weren’t many.

“I didn’t grow up in a house, like you, with a family, like you. I’m one of six, and the youngest…” She’d never spoken of her family before. “Mom was a sucker for guys. We’re all from different fathers…”

“And you’re not in touch with any of your family?”

She glanced at me again, like it was a stupid question. “No. We all got out of there as fast as we could. I never went back, I don’t know if they did. I haven’t seen any of them since I left Mom’s.”

She looked across the park once more.

“My
uncles
came and went from the house all the time. Countless men, so many I don’t even remember the number she got through. Then when I was fifteen one of them took a fancy to me––”

“Rachel…” My hand left my pocket and I moved in front of her and gripped her arm.

“See, it’s a sorry tale, now you’ll know why I don’t like telling it. But anyway, he didn’t get that far. I ran away before he could. When I told Mom, she said I’d encouraged him, that I’d been trying to take him from her. It was stupid; he was fat and ugly and bald. Why would I want the guy touching me?”

“Where did you go?”

“Nowhere, everywhere. Not into a home. I didn’t want to live in a home. I avoided social services and found myself a guy in his mid-twenties. He was a good-looking mechanic and he took me in, and well, I didn’t tell him how old I was. I said I was eighteen, and then I did what Mom had always done. He wasn’t my first anyway. I didn’t even really like him all that much, but he gave me food and a roof and a bed. At least he wasn’t three times my age and ugly.”

She grimaced.

“Rach…”

She met my gaze and smiled weakly. “I know––have more respect for yourself. Well, I didn’t, I don’t. I don’t even really know myself, let alone like myself. I only like who I am with you, and now I’m gonna lose you.”

I didn’t answer; I still couldn’t bring myself to make promises.

Tears rolled out her eyes and I felt like shit.

I slid my hand down her arm and gripped the hand which was scarred by the cut she’d had the night I’d found her.

She sniffed and wiped her eyes and nose on the sleeve of her coat. “Anyway, to cut a long story short, there’s been lots of douchebags in my life like him since then. I seem to attract the bums of this world.” She gripped my hands, and looked deep into my eyes like she was looking into my soul. “You’re my first nice guy. I don’t want to lose you, Jason. But I’m going to, aren’t I? I don’t deserve you anyway, I suppose. Someone like Lindy deserves you. Not me…”

I hugged her, I couldn’t not, and her cheek rested on my shoulder as her face pressed into my neck.

“I don’t know what I’m going to do, Rach. I can’t promise you anything. But you deserve everything good. It’s just too early, honey. I just––”

She didn’t wait for me to finish, like she was too afraid of what I might say. “You asked me who the father is. His name is Declan. He’s a jerk. A rich jerk. I was living with him in his penthouse in Manhattan.”

Fuck, a rich guy. “Are you going to tell him?”

She shook her head quickly. “No. No way.”

“Don’t you think the kid should know its father…”

Her hands gripped the sides of my leather jacket and her forehead fell on to my shoulder. “You don’t understand, Jason. He won’t wanna know. He’s married. He has three kids with his wife. They have a massive house looking out over the beach. I’ve been there, when she and the kids were away. He liked throwing parties for his friends. I went there for his parties.”

“Rach?”

“I know. I’m a horrible person.”

“You aren’t a horrible person, you’ve just made bad choices, and who can blame you when you had a mother like that as a role model?”

Her head came up and she looked at me again. “You’re gonna be nice to me, even now…”

I laughed, though it wasn’t out of humor. “Rach?”

“Anyway, Declan won’t want to know his child, and he certainly won’t want his name on a birth certificate. I was fine to be in bed with and to show off with to his associates, he liked playing games, even with his wife, but he treated me like I was some disease he was inflicted with. That was why I left, because I was tired of being treated like his pretty piece of trash, and I know he wouldn’t want me or my child, back in his life. Believe me. When I left him, I let him know just how I felt.”

“Good for you…” I whispered.

She smiled, but in her eyes I saw desolation. It had been there the first night I’d met her.

“Why the hell did you get with him in the first place, though?”

“Because he was there, and he gave me stuff, and he wanted me.”

“Rach, come on, seriously. Is that what you want for yourself, just someone to want you?”

“No, not anymore, now I just want,
you,
to want me. Do you?”

“Rach––”

“You don’t.” She slid off the rail and pushed past me.

“Rach, honey––”

She turned back. “It’s okay, I understand. I wouldn’t want me either. I get it. I’ll go get my stuff.”

I caught her arm. “And go where? Don’t be stupid. I don’t know what I want yet, but right now, I don’t want to let you go…”

It seemed like someone clicked pause on time as we stood and stared at one another. I was oblivious to all else, the night sky, the electric lights, the boats on the river, the people in the park.

“Do you want me to get rid of it? I could, I’m only about two and half months. I went to the clinic to get tested for diseases. I wasn’t the only person Declan slept with beyond his wife, and… you know my history. I’ve not got checked out for a couple of years, and… Well… Anyway, I didn’t know until they called me this morning. Do you want me to get rid of it? I’ve been thinking about it all day. I don’t know what to do though. I don’t know if I could live with myself if I did … ”

My hands moved instinctively to cup her beautiful face. “I can’t make that decision for you, Rachel. It’s got to be your decision. But God, don’t get rid of a child just to please me. If you think you can bring the child up, and you’ll love it, and want it, then keep it.”