Page 81 of Midnight Between Us
She doesn’t look at me.
“I didn’t mean to ...I found them by accident while searching for something to read.”I clear my throat.“Atlas?—”
“You fucking Timberbridges are fucking meddlers.”
I can’t help but chuckle.“When I found the letters—I didn’t know what they were, but my name was there.”
No reaction.No shift in breath.Just silence.
“It just seemed like an invitation, you know.”
“They weren’t for you.”
“The first one was,” I argue.
“Yeah, but then they were mostly for me.I needed to talk to someone and ...they’re for him now.”She gives me a sad smile.“One day, I want to give them to him so he knows his history.”
Well, fuck, they made me sound like a prick.Not that I wasn’t, but ...I stop and focus on what matters right now.
“I left you,” I say, the truth tasting worse out loud.“And then I made it worse.”
Her eyes close slowly.Her whole frame folds in a little tighter.
“I didn’t know.”The words scrape coming out.“I thought I was protecting you from the pain of being attached to a Timberbridge.We break things.We fuck people up.”
She shakes her head—not like she’s arguing, just confirming how ridiculous that sounds now.
“If I had known about the baby ...”I stop.There’s no right way to finish that sentence.I don’t even trust myself with the truth.Back then, my self-loathing would’ve convinced me to stay gone anyway.
“You didn’t want to know,” she says.No venom in it.No edge.Just a quiet fact.
And that—that hits harder than any punch I’ve ever taken.
“I was angry,” I say.“At everything.At myself.At the world.I thought if I severed it all, I could stop the bleeding.”
She lets out a breath that almost sounds like a laugh.It’s soft.Bitter.Wounded.
“You fucking bled all over me, Keir.”
My head drops.Shame crawls up my spine like it’s hunting for a permanent place to settle.
“I didn’t deserve those letters,” I murmur.“But I read them.Not all.I stopped right before the birth—when you were deciding if you’d give him up.”
She finally turns.Looks at me.
Her eyes are full—of what, I’m not sure.Something torn.Something alive.History.Hurt.Resentment.Maybe a thread of love still holding on even if it’s frayed at every edge.
“That part was complicated,” she says.“Because you were gone.They couldn’t find you after the first time.”
It’s true.I vanished.Took a fake ID and went north to Alaska, joined a fishing crew, bounced between jobs that didn’t ask questions.I flirted with death more times than I can count because life had gone tasteless.Numb.Meaningless.I eventually made it back to New York.I started college like nothing happened.Of course, I continued to fight because it brought me money, but it also numbed everything I felt inside.
But she needs to know it wasn’t noble—it was just stupid.
“I don’t know what to say,” I admit.
She nods.Just once.“Okay.”
One word, but it lands like grace.Like a door cracking open, even if just a little.It gives me permission to stay here beside her, while my chest pulls tighter under the weight of everything I never gave her, never asked, never stood still long enough to face.
