Page 42 of Midnight Between Us
“I remember something,” I say, my voice hoarse.
She doesn’t look at me.Not at first.
“What do you remember?”she asks, carefully neutral.
“Midnight.All the midnights between us.”
That does it.Her eyes cut to mine.Her spine goes rigid.Her mouth opens, then closes like she’s just swallowed something bitter.She doesn’t speak.Doesn’t need to.
“I remember your wrist under mine.You stealing my flannel shirts.”My words tumble out like they’ve been waiting.“You asked if I’d take you with me.I didn’t answer.But you knew, didn’t you?”
Her grip on the edge of the monitor tightens.
“You knew I’d leave you behind.”
She doesn’t deny it.Doesn’t blink.
“I’m remembering in pieces,” I admit.“But they all come back to you.”
Simone finally meets my gaze.
And I see her, the girl I left, the woman she became—the one who has every right to hate me.She looks at me like I broke it.
“You should rest,” she says, her voice soft but frayed at the edges.
I shake my head.“Pretty sure I’ve done enough of that.”
The ambulance begins to slow.I feel it—not just in the brakes, but in the shift beneath us, the way the road starts to feel different, textured in a way that means we’re almost somewhere.
“Where are we going?”I ask, though deep down I already know she won’t hurt me.No matter how badly it ended—whatever it was—she wouldn’t hand me over.Not to the people who want me gone.
“My place,” she says.
The words hit differently—not crushing, but settling into me like a stone dropped into still water, the ripple of it moving through everything I am.
“Why?”I ask quietly.
“Because they told me to keep you safe.Because no one else knows what’s at stake.Because the people who want you gone won’t care who they have to go through to make it happen.”
“Then don’t take me with you,” I say, trying to sit up, wincing as I do.“Send me somewhere else.Somewhere you’re not.I don’t like knowing you’re in danger.You need to stay away from me.”
Even as the words leave my mouth, I know it’s deeper than logistics.I know—with a strange certainty, I can’t explain—that I left her once.That I walked away not because I didn’t care, but because I did.
Because the worst thing I could’ve done to her ...was stay.
Before I can say it, someone speaks from the front of the rig.Probably the driver—his voice cutting through the haze.“We’re almost there.But there are people waiting.What do you want me to do?”
There’s a beat where neither of us moves.Then Simone exhales hard through her nose.
“It’s probably Malerick.Or Atlas,” she mutters.“I swear to God.The Timberbridges are the bane of my goddamn existence.”
“Which is why you have to stay away from us,” I say because it finally hits me.Keir Timberbridge.
“I’m Keir Timberbridge,” I say again, and this time the name feels like it fits inside my ribs, like it’s always been mine.
Suddenly, I know everything.I know why I left her, why I’m lost and why I shouldn’t be here.
ChapterFourteen
