Page 84 of Midnight Between Us
“Do you regret it?”I ask.
“Having him?”
“No.I meant?—”
“Giving him a different life?”she cuts in before I can finish.“No.I was a scared kid trying to survive and figure out how to be a person.I doubt becoming a single mother at sixteen would’ve helped him thrive.”She pauses, her voice dipping into something softer, more self-aware.“I mean ...maybe it would’ve worked out.But I was so damn afraid I’d turn into Nina.End up back in Birchwood Springs with a baby I couldn’t care for while my grandparents did all the raising.”
I could argue with her.Maybe my mother would’ve stepped in.If she raised Atlas like her own, she probably would’ve done the same for my son.But I don’t say any of that.It’s irrelevant now.It’s all part of the past that can’t be rewritten and a version of us that’s long gone.
What could I say after that?
Nothing.
Not right away.
Simone doesn’t cry.Doesn’t flinch or lash out.She just folds in, quiet and spent, like someone who’s been carrying too much for too long and finally set it all down, only to realize her hands don’t know what to do without it.
“I kept telling myself you’d come back,” she says, voice barely audible.“Even after that phone call.I kept writing because I didn’t know how to stop needing you.”A breath.“Not really.It was a long learning process.”
I want to reach for her.Want to say something that might soften the fractures or blur the sharpness of what we became.But there’s no fixing this with touch.No balm for what’s been torn and taped over a thousand times.
“I didn’t leave because I didn’t love you,” I say, and it scrapes something raw open inside me.“I left because I thought I’d ruin you.Look at me.I’m not someone who gets to be whole.”
“This is why Atlas insists you need therapy so bad, isn’t it?”she says, so plainly it almost makes me laugh.
I groan.“Fucking Atlas.Can’t he just let me rot in peace?”
She levels me with a look.“You were a victim of that man’s abuse, Keir.Your father’s words—what he did to you—they’re still lodged in you like shrapnel.When someone—someone who’s supposed to love you unconditionally—tells his kid they’re worthless, over and over, that stuff doesn’t just fade with time.Of course, you believed it.Of course you still do.”
Her voice lowers to a softer tone.“Do you know how many ten-year-olds jump in to defend a girl they don’t even know from two guys twice his size?”
“I wasn’t going to let them hurt you,” I mutter.“That doesn’t make me a hero.”
“You were to me,” she argues with the same fire she would tell me that I wasn’t becoming a monster back then.“After that, I made it my mission to take care of you too.I couldn’t stop your dad from hurting you, but I could take care of the aftermath.That much I could do.”
A breath catches in my chest.She lets out a laugh—soft, real, nostalgic.“That stuff was disgusting.Del’s abuela swore by it.Said it healed everything except stupidity.”
“I almost killed him.”The words rip out of me before I can stop them.“That night.The one before I left.”
Simone stills.Silence swells between us, thick and brittle.This is the first time I say it out loud.Before ...Malerick knows just because I called him and said,I have to leave, Mal.I have to.He understood.
“It seemed like just another nightly fight.I hit him.I hit him hard.He was coming at me—drunk, foaming at the mouth, screaming as usual.I—I saw red.For a second, I wanted to kill him.”
The memory flashes behind my eyes.The broken chair.The smell of bourbon and rage.My breath is coming too fast.His blood on my knuckles.He was on the floor, bleeding and groaning, and I wanted to finish him.It would stop everything.Hopper, Ledger, and Atlas wouldn’t have to fear him again.
I just couldn’t do it.
I still recall his words.“Coward.Finish me, or I’ll finish you when I can stand again.”
“Malerick once told me that if it ever got that far ...if I ever came close to ...”I pause, trying to slow my breathing.“I had to get the fuck out.That’s why he left too.”
My voice drops to a whisper.
“I.Almost.Killed.My.Father.”
I don’t say it for shock.I’m not looking for her pity or some scripted absolution she doesn’t owe me.This isn’t about making her see me differently.
It’s just the only way I can explain why I vanished without a goodbye.Why leaving felt like the only way to keep her safe because maybe one day, the rage would take over me and I’ll start hitting her.I ...I just couldn’t.The thought of doing anything like that to the only person I loved made me sick.
