Page 52 of Midnight Between Us
I’d just had a confrontation with my father.More like he used me like his punching back while Malerick had taken the kids away before he beat them, too.We protected them as much as we could until we couldn’t any longer.
Simone was already there, just as she used to be.Curled up with a book on top of a blanket and a thermos right next to her with tea.This time, she wasn’t sitting.She was pacing.Barefoot in the grass.It was summer.Her hair twisted up like she didn’t care.Wearing one of myflannel shirts—too big on her, sleeves pushed past her wrists.
“You okay?”I asked.
She nodded, then looked at my face and flinched.Sometimes she did a brilliant job at hiding the pain it caused her to see me like this.
“You should see the other guy,” I joke, kind of because lately I wasn’t just taking the blows.I was giving them just as well.
“This isn’t funny.”
“No, but you could make it better.”I winked at her.
I did the only thing that made sense.
I kissed her even when my lip hurt.
It was a mistake, but it was the only thing that ever felt right.Her mouth crashed into mine like she’d been waiting.Like she was just as angry.Just as scared.She tasted like every good memory I tried to bury.Sweet and sharp and mine.
Her hands fisted in my shirt.Mine were already in the flannel, pulling it up and over her head.We didn’t talk.Didn’t slow down.I laid her out on the blanket.
She looked up at me as if I was everything.And that scared the fuck out of me because I wasn’t anyone—I’m still a fucking nobody and Simone always gazed at me like I was her world.
She let me in.Let me take her.We moved as though we were drowning and neither of us cared if we surfaced for air.
She wrapped herself around me as if she couldn’t let go.Sounded like she was breaking every time I kissed her neck, every time I told her she was mine without using words.
I made her come more than once that night.I didn’t want it to end.Not because of the sex—though, fuck, it was everything—but because of her.Because it was Simone.Because no one ever saw me like she did.
When she fell asleep, tucked against me, her hand resting right over my ribs like she could feel the way I was holding on—I told myself I’d have to leave her soon.I was beginning to become just like him.Simone didn’t deserve to go down with me the way my mother and the rest of his children did.Nope.I promised she would have a chance at a better life.
But did she?
ChapterEighteen
Simone
I don’t wakeup to an alarm.Or a phone.Or the rhythm of agents shuffling down the hallway with status updates and tired eyes.I wake up because Keir is screaming.
They are guttural, raw screams tearing from somewhere deep.A fractured sound caught between memory and pain like his body is trying to expel the past one ragged breath at a time.
By the time I reach his room, he’s upright.Sweat-soaked, shirt clinging to him, chest rising in short, uneven bursts.One hand grips the edge of the mattress like he’s bracing for another collision.The other is fisted against his chest, knuckles ghost-white.
I don’t hesitate.I cross the threshold and sit beside him as I used to—back when we were young, reckless, and the world hadn’t cracked open beneath us yet.
“You okay there?”
He doesn’t look at me, doesn’t even acknowledge me.Not at first.
“I was in the trunk again.”His voice is frayed.
“You’re not anymore,” I say gently.“You’re safe, Keir.In a room on the outskirts of Birchwood Springs, safe.”
His eyes remain locked on some point across the room, fixed and vacant.“It smelled like gasoline.And rust.And something else.Sweet.Coopery.Rotten.”
I nod, throat tight.“Blood.”
He swallows hard.“You were in it too—in the trunk.Not at first.Later.I kept trying to scream for you to wake up.We were going to drown, but I couldn’t move.”
