Page 83 of Midnight Between Us
There was a time she saw the parts of me I kept buried, the fractures I tried to outrun, and she didn’t flinch.Didn’t turn away.She just ...stayed.Held them like they weren’t minefields.Loved me even when I didn’t know how to love myself without destruction trailing behind it.
“I didn’t think I had anything to offer,” I admit.The truth sits low in my throat, cracked and uneven.“All I saw was everything I didn’t want ...I could only see every broken thread in the Timberbridge men.Every failure waiting to happen.”
I don’t add how terrified I was that I’d fuck up something pure.That I’d ruin her.That I already had.She probably knows.
And still—she loved me.
Even then.
Especially then.
“You had everything,” she says, eyes wet now.“And you threw it away like it meant nothing.”
My throat closes.
I want to tell her I didn’t mean it.That every word I said on that call was a lie.That I was young and angry and scared and spiraling.
But she already knows.
She lived it.
“Why did you choose adoption?”I ask.
The question lingers between us, quiet but cutting, and I already know it’s going to haunt me either way.
ChapterThirty-Nine
Keir
There’s a pause.Not long enough for it to be silence.It’s just long enough to feel like she’s weighing how much truth she wants to give me.
“Giving him up isn’t the right phrasing,” she finally says, and the quiet strain in her voice does more damage than if she yelled.“I gave him a better life with a family that had everything I couldn’t offer.Though you made it difficult—so fucking difficult.I couldn’t even sign the papers at first.”
My stomach knots.“What do you mean?”
“Since I didn’t have your permission, they couldn’t adopt him right away.We had to take a different route.Pria and Jacob fostered Lyndon while the state worked on terminating my rights and confirming you were—well—nowhere to be found.”She shakes her head, more tired than angry now.“I hated you more for that.Not because you weren’t there—but because he couldn’t start his life right away.I was scared they’d give up.That they’d stop waiting.That he’d lose them too.”
She sighs.“They assured me that was impossible.Lyndon was already theirs.They loved him and would wait an eternity if that was necessary.”Simone presses her lips together and lets out a loud breath before she says, “I got him something neither one of us had.A loving family, caring parents, brothers, sisters and ...he has a big family that adores him.”
I try to picture her then.Young, alone, holding a baby she already loved too much to keep, terrified that the only safety she could give him might vanish while she stood in limbo.
But something still doesn’t add up.
“I thought I heard you talking to him earlier,” I say, the confusion thick in my voice.
She doesn’t answer right away.Then—suddenly—her lips curl into something soft.Her smile lights up with such radiance that it rewrites the grief from her face.
“Every Sunday.”Simone clears her throat.“We’ve had video calls since he was two.”
She shrugs like it’s nothing, like it didn’t take everything in her to make that happen.
“I stayed in Washington for college just to be closer to him.They allowed me to visit him as often as I wanted—but I restrained myself.Med school was in California, so that was harder, but his parents sent texts.Pictures.Updates.I’d send him postcards, little souvenirs from wherever I was.Stuff a normal person would buy for a nephew or a godson.”
I watch her carefully.“He knows you’re his mom?”
She exhales, slow and deliberate.“He knows I gave birth to him.But I’m just Sim.His mom is Pria Decker.”Her voice is soft but not broken.“He’s a good kid.Going to college now.Making good choices so far.”
Good choices.Then there must be very little Timberbridge in him.
