Page 80 of Midnight Between Us
I can’t believe I let her carry that fear alone.She thought I’d be the one full of regret.
She wasn’t wrong.
Because I am.
The truth is, I already am.I just found out about him, and I’m drowning in it—fucking regret.There’s no learning curve when it comes to guilt this deep.No manual for how to read the story of a life you missed, page by page, knowing every sentence is a place where you should’ve been.
The letter slips from my hands and lands quietly among the others.Like it’s something sacred, something meant to be kept whole.It feels wrong that my touch is on it at all.My throat tightens.Not with tears—I’m not sure I even remember how to cry.There’s just this pressure building, like something internal collapsing under the weight of everything she never said out loud.
Simone was always the exception.The thing I tried to leave untouched.I told myself I was doing the right thing by staying away.That she deserved better.Maybe that’s true.Maybe she did.But the choice still broke her.And now it’s shattering the broken pieces of my existence.
My mind spirals through a thousand questions I’m not sure I want answered.I want to keep reading.I want to devour every letter, even though they’re killing me.I want to know about every night she spent awake, every breath she took while convincing herself I wasn’t coming back.Every moment, she held on alone.
But it won’t be enough.Reading these words, no matter how many times I go over them, won’t be enough.The story feels worse now.Not tragic in the obvious way.It’s more subtle.Like she hurt so much, for so long, that eventually she just stopped bleeding.Went numb.Lost the ability to feel anything but the ache of surviving.
And there’s nothing I can do to undo it.
No way to take back the silence.No way to erase the things I didn’t say or the fact that I wasn’t there when everything fell apart.No matter how many times I replay it, the outcome doesn’t change.
I don’t want her written words anymore.
I want her.
In front of me.Alive, breathing fire because she’s so fucking angry at me she can’t help herself but wanting to burn me with her words.I want her yelling, crying, doing something to let me know she still feels it.Still feels anything.I’d take the anger.I’d welcome it.As long as it means she’s not lost beneath years of pain and ink and everything I let rot between us.
My palm presses to my chest like I can hold something together through sheer force of will.If I press hard enough, something will stop shifting.Maybe the splintering will slow.But it doesn’t.It just keeps spreading until I don’t know what’s breaking anymore.Or if I’ll survive the wreckage I created.
For the first time in a long fucking time, I want to cry.Not for me.
For her.
For Simone.
For everything, I didn’t live.For every second she spent carrying the impossible on her own.
I push off the floor like I’ve been underwater too long—lungs burning, body unwilling.My knee throbs.Ribs ache like they’ve been wrapped too tight for too long.But staying here isn’t an option.I need to move.Need to breathe somewhere she is.
There’s no plan.No grand apology ready on my tongue.Just this raw pull from somewhere gut-deep that say,Find her before you talk yourself out of it.Before you convince yourself you don’t deserve to.
The hallway stretches like it’s been rewired by memory—longer, quieter, lined with echoes of everything I can’t undo.I pass the kitchen.Her mug—the one she made for Delilah—is still on the counter, half-full and forgotten.Vanilla chamomile clings to the air.
I spot her on the back porch.She’s sitting at the edge of the step, barefoot, knees tucked under her chin, arms wrapped tight around them.Her hair’s loose, curling around her face in a way that looks soft and unguarded.She’s staring out like she sees everything and nothing at once.
I hesitate.My feet stall.Every instinct screams to turn around, to disappear back into the silence I’ve always used as armor.Then she glances over her shoulder, just enough to catch me standing there.Our eyes lock.
And I stop breathing.
She doesn’t flinch.Doesn’t move.Doesn’t even look surprised.
She just looks tired.
It’s not the surface-level kind of fatigue that sleep can fix.This is more like depletion etched into her posture, into the way she holds her arms around her legs as if they’re the last scaffolding left.It’s what happens when you’ve spent too long surviving instead of living.When every breath feels like a negotiation.When holding it all together becomes a habit so ingrained, you forget there was ever another way.
I take a step forward.Then another.
She doesn’t turn away.Doesn’t tell me to fuck off.That’s enough of an invitation, so I lower myself beside her—close but not touching.I leave space.Space for her hurt.For her history.For all the things I don’t know how to say yet.
“I read most of them,” I say, my voice raw from words I’ve been holding back for too long.
