Page 43 of Midnight Between Us
Simone
The moment he says it—”I’mKeir Timberbridge”—something drops in my stomach.
Not in that cliché way people always describe, like falling down an elevator shaft or slipping off a cliff.No, this is entirely different.A slow-motion scene where there’s a shift in the ground.As if something you were never ready to carry suddenly shifts in your arms—and you realize you’ve been holding it all along.
I don’t look at him.My eyes remain fixed on the monitor like the numbers matter more than the way my chest just cinched tight.
He remembers.
He fucking remembers.
Not just his name.The way he said it—as if it settled into him—tells me more is coming.Not all of it, maybe, but enough.Enough to turn whatever fragile peace I’ve been clinging to into rubble.
I don’t respond.I can’t.My throat’s too closed up, and my thoughts are already sprinting ahead—racing toward the next impossible moment.When he asks what happened.When he remembers how it ended.When he looks at me, he doesn’t see a stranger anymore, but the girl he left without a second thought.Someone to fuck while he was in town.Nothing more.
He doesn’t know it yet, but the only reason I’ve been able to sit next to him, breathe near him, and touch him is because he didn’t remember what he broke.
Now, he probably does.
And I have no idea how to keep going without punching him in the throat instead of timing his next round of meds.
Luckily—or not—the ambulance jerks to a stop.
And maybe I cursed myself by thinking it couldn’t get worse because the back doors fly open, and there they are.
Atlas and Malerick Timberbridge.
I swear these men are like slow-burn Armageddon—less screaming, more psychological warfare.Malerick’s arms are crossed, his stance rigid and unmovable.He doesn’t need to speak for me to know exactly what he’s saying:Try me.
I don’t move.I don’t blink.I should’ve known this was coming.
“You’re not taking him in there,” Malerick says, nodding toward my house.“He belongs with us.”
I want to laugh because really, he belongs to us?Since when are the Timberbridge brothers an “us”?They never gave a fuck about each other.If anything all they shared was hate among them.It’s not something I should bring up because their messy business is theirs.Not that I wasn’t involved while growing up.I was the one who made Keir feel like he belonged, even when he didn’t want to be a part of me.
I almost snort, but I control myself.This is just so stupid.Me fighting to keep a man I don’t want to be involved with like ...well, never again.
“He doesn’t belong anywhere right now,” I fire back.“He just remembered how to breathe.He needs care.A plan’s already in place.You put him in your house, and every eye that’s been waiting to erase him finds him in five minutes flat.”
And maybe I don’t even know why I’m arguing.Finnegan Gil’s already made the call.I’m just the one executing it.I shouldn’t have to explain that to people who think sharing their DNA with Keir equals ...what?That they have some ownership over him?Ha, like Keir would let them make any decisions.
Malerick might be the oldest, but Keir’s the bossiest one.I’m about to say something, but what makes me pause—what chills me a little—is the way Atlas looks past me, his eyes landing on something inside the rig.
I turn, slow.
Keir is propped slightly on the gurney, gaze locked outside the ambulance.Not dazed.Not confused.
Present.
His eyes move across both of them—his brothers—and something clicks behind them.His jaw sets.His breathing shifts.
I know that look.I know him.And I know what just hit him.He remembers more than I want him to.
More than just saying, “Midnight belongs to us.”
That’s what he said.
Us.
