Page 50 of Midnight Between Us
I don’t like it.
Not the tone.Not the finality.Not the fact that she can talk about me like I’m just some appointment she wants to cancel but can’t.I used to be something more.I think.I hope.But now I’m just a task to complete.
I don’t like that this woman—this brilliant, impossible woman who once swore she saw something in me when even I couldn’t—won’t even pretend anymore.
I don’t like that I lost her.
And the part that really guts me?
I’m starting to realize I never had her to begin with.
ChapterSeventeen
Keir
It’s beensix weeks since I arrive at Sims’s house.
Long enough that I don’t need help getting out of bed.Long enough that I can limp short distances with the brace and barely feel like my bones are threatening to crack.Long enough that I should know what comes next.But I don’t.
This is my first real tour through the house.Not just the five steps to the bathroom or the shuffle to the couch.An actual attempt to move through the space, see the perimeter, and understand the fortress I’ve been sleeping in.
Confession time, this isn’t what I expected.
It’s not some crumbling farmhouse or quiet cabin tucked into the trees.It’s a modern structure from some fancy magazine for gazillionaires—angular lines, expansive glass windows that don’t bother with curtains, flat stone siding that blends into the woods like camouflage.
There’s a perimeter gate, barely visible through the brush.Surveillance cameras tucked into the eaves like they’ve always been there.One road dead-ends into the driveway and the lake.That’s it.No neighbors.No sign of life unless you count the birdsong that cuts through the late spring air.
We’re far enough from Birchwood Springs that no one would find this place by accident.But close enough that if something happens ...she could still be collateral.
There’s no welcome mat by the door, no faded wreath or hanging plant like I imagined she’d have.Just a keypad and a reinforced door that clicks open when she taps in a code I’m not allowed to see.
I try to swing my good leg down from the bench.Brace for the shift.I’ve done this twice already today, but something catches.Pain laces through my thigh like a wire pulling tight, and my vision sways.
“Whoa,” the agent mutters, catching my side before I tilt too far.Simone’s there a second later, her hand under my elbow, the other against my chest like muscle memory.
“I’ve got it.”Simone’s voice is clipped, and I’m beginning to hate it.
It’s the only tone she uses with me now—crisp and distant.It’s as if she’s reading off a checklist instead of talking to someone she used to know.I’m almost certain that if I were any other patient, she’d be warmer toward him.Not me.
“You don’t,” I mutter, finding my footing again.“I’m fine.”
“You’re not,” she replies without looking at me.“You’re stitched together like bad origami.”
I almost laugh.
Almost.
But I don’t.Because I can feel her fingers through my shirt, and everything in me remembers this.The way she held me once after Dad beat me up when I was too angry to cry and too young to know the difference.Simone never asked if I was okay—just stayed until the shaking stopped.
Instead of focusing on the pain, I continue walking through the house.This place breathes open.Cool air rushes past us.It smells like lemon oil, antiseptic, and something faintly bitter.Coffee, maybe.The floors are wood.No rugs.No clutter.Like someone lives here out of obligation, not comfort.A temporary life packed into clean corners.
There’s a laptop on the table.Some files are left half-closed.A set of crutches leaning near a low-slung couch.Which I assumed are the ones they gave me earlier and I refused to use them.That’s the only time Simone had a somehow human response toward me.She said something like, “You’re fucking stubborn, Timberbridge.”The words might be different, but the hate was there.
There’s no trace of the girl I used to know and love.
Just the woman who learned how to erase herself well enough to survive.
I pause.Let my gaze drift past the hallway to the right—probably where the bedrooms are—and focus on the wall of monitors across the room.Surveillance feeds.The gate.The perimeter.Even a drone shot looping silently in the top corner.
