Page 44 of Midnight Between Us
I want him to stop.I want him to forget.Because if he remembers everything—he’ll remember why he walked away and the self-imposed truce is over.I’ll hate him more, and I won’t be able to treat him like a patient deserves.
I should tell him to lie back.To let the doctors manage it.That this isn’t the time to step into a past that’s barely stitched together.But I don’t.
I just watch him hold it in, eyes forward, like the memory hurts, but he’s not going to let anyone see the wound bleed.
“What the hell did you do to him?”Malerick snaps.“He looks weak and like a lost puppy.”
Obviously, Mal doesn’t know his brother the way I do, and I’ll use that to my advantage.
“I fucking saved him,” I say flatly.“Twice.”
“By isolating him?By keeping him from his family?”
“I kept him alive,” I snap.“You want the truth?He didn’t even remember his name when he woke up.When we found him, he coded in my arms.I brought him back.He coded again during surgery.And I’m the reason he’s here now.So don’t you dare stand there and pretend I’m the problem.I’ve been following orders while also cleaning up your family’s mess.”
Atlas’s expression barely shifts, but he speaks, and it’s worse than yelling.“You don’t even want to be with him.”
It’s not a question.It’s a statement.I could argue with him, but that’s pointless.Atlas knows how much I resented Keir for how he left me—and he doesn’t even know the whole truth.The rejection, the months that ...I stop myself from thinking further.He might believe I’m jaded because I can’t get over a broken heart.
This isn’t about my feelings.Not about love or loss or whatever this thing is that’s still tethering me to a man who’s breaking himself all over again.
This is about protecting him—from them, from the people after him, and from the version of himself that might still be dangerous.
“I want to go with them,” Keir says.
The words hit like a slap.
Who the hell does he think he is?Waking up after weeks of being silent and deciding his fate like this is a conversation he’s earned the right to have.
He doesn’t get to choose.Not this time.
I do.
He clearly hasn’t realized I’m not that girl anymore—the one who waited.The one who could’ve forgiven him.
He wants to go with them.Maybe I should let him.Just let him walk away and keep walking until the past forgets we ever touched.
But something in me resists.Flares.Because what the hell?If he really remembers, then he should also remember who actually took care of him the nights he had to be away from home.Who tended to his wounds.Who held him after his father knocked the fight right out of him.It wasn’t them.
It was me.
Alwaysme.
And now he wants to go with them.
Malerick doesn’t hesitate.He steps forward like he’s just been waiting for the green light.“Let’s go, then,” he says to the EMT, voice low and sure.“We’ll take it from here.”
And though I wish to say, “Sure, take him with you, and don’t let the door knock you in the ass,” I can’t.Duty calls.I have a job, and there’s a reason—even if I don’t like it—why he has to stay with me.
“No.”Then I glance at Keir.“You don’t get to decide where you’re going.”
Keir doesn’t flinch.He just watches me with that unreadable calm.
Atlas hasn’t moved.His arms are still crossed, his stance quiet, yet his gaze shifts between us like he’s watching a fuse inch toward something that shouldn’t explode but always does.
“You heard him,” Malerick growls.“It’s his choice.Don’t make this difficult because I’ll use my badge.”
“I’m not making it difficult—only impossible,” I hiss.“Did he choose to get shoved into a trunk like garbage?Did he choose to forget his name?Did he choose to wake up full of fractures and stitched together with no one but me keeping him alive?”
