Page 58 of Midnight Between Us
I thought pushing her away was noble.I thought I was protecting her.I didn’t realize I was just repeating my father’s cycle in a softer tone.I became him in disguise.Using silence and distance to create space where love should’ve lived.That’s a mistake I made several times, beginning with her, then with my mother, and now with my brothers.
And now she’s right to hate me.But I’m not sure she does, really.Or maybe there’s that delusion again hitting me in a way that shouldn’t.If she hated me, she wouldn’t be here.Wouldn’t have kept me breathing.Wouldn’t have sat by my side when I was a name without a face.
No—this isn’t hate.
This is worse.
This is grief.
Grief for the life we didn’t get to live.For the words we never said.For the future, I stole because I was too scared to stay.
And maybe it’s time I stop pretending that survival is the same as redemption.It’s not.Getting out of that trunk half-alive didn’t absolve me of all the damage I left behind.It just gave me a second chance to look it in the eye.
Which is precisely what I intend to do.
If she’ll let me.
“I knew I would find you here.”I hear his voice and when I turn around, I see him.Atlas.
“What the fuck are you doing here?”I snap at him, not because I don’t want to see him but because he’s putting himself in danger just by entering this place.
He snorts.“Fucking friendly as usual.”
“If you wanted friendly, you should’ve visited Hopper.”
“Yeah, left my baby and wife on their ranch so I could come to check on you,” he says, lowering himself beside me with a grunt.His gaze drops to my leg.“Heard you don’t want to use the crutches.”
“They’re fucking useless.”
“No.”His voice cuts through the morning stillness.“You think you deserve the pain.Like getting your ass handed to you was some kind of penance.Like it proves, you were right to keep pushing everyone away.”
He pauses.Then adds, quieter now, but with something raw beneath it—something that doesn’t let up, “I keep telling Simone you need therapy.Someone to talk to.About our childhood.About that bastard, we used to call Dad.”
He’s not wrong.
I’ve spent a lifetime pretending that part of me doesn’t exist.That it can no longer touch me because he’s not around, because I’m older because ...it’s simply, over so why rehash the past?
I remember being seven years old with a scraped-up knee and a stomach full of dread, standing between him and Hopper like I could stop a hurricane with a bare hand.I remember hiding Ledger under the stairs when he was too little to understand why the yelling turned mean.I remember taking hits that weren’t mine because if it was me—if I was loud, if I fought back—it meant the others got to stay safe.
I remember learning to hurt before I learned how to ask for help.
So yeah, maybe he’s right.
Perhaps I believe the pain is the price of survival.
Perhaps I believe I don’t get to walk away clean when Simone was the one who kept trying to hold me together, and I chose silence instead.
Because that’s what I do—lock it down, grit my teeth, and pretend it doesn’t burn.Pretending I don’t ache for the woman who still shows up, even when she won’t look me in the eye.Pretending that her absence hasn’t hollowed something out of me I don’t know how to get back.
But none of that means I’ll admit it out loud.
So I shrug, eyes on the lake.“Therapy’s for people who have problems.I’m fucking fine, just a little battered.”
He sighs.“No, Keir.Therapy’s for people who deserve peace.”
I could say therapy is for the weak, but honestly I respect the fuck out of people who go and reach out for help.They are aware of the problem and attempt to solve it.
“There’s nothing to fix, Atlas,” I growl because this isn’t what I need.I don’t need my youngest brother trying to give me some fucking lecture about life while I’m trying to figure out why the fuck I’m still alive.
