Page 10 of Midnight Between Us (The Timberbridge Brothers #4)

Chapter Seven

Keir

Breathing hurts.

It fucking hurts.

Even without the tube, my throat feels like someone dragged barbed wire through it.

Every inhale burns, and every exhale tastes like blood and rust. I lie still—not because I want to, but because I’ve already learned what happens when I try to move.

Pain owns me now, waiting for even the thought of resistance.

The machines around me beep in soft, steady rhythms. One hisses with every breath, a reminder that something artificial still helps me stay here.

My body is beginning to register it all. The fact that I’m alive. That I’m in a bed. That someone’s been trying to keep me that way.

The head of the bed’s been raised higher.

I feel an ache in my neck from the angle, the stiffness in my shoulders from lying here too long.

There’s no cushion behind my knees—just careful positioning and a dull ache throbbing down my left side where the rest of me starts to remember what it survived. If only my brain could catch up.

My leg is numb in some places, stabbing in others, and unbearably heavy. Braced, maybe. I’m swaddled in surgical dressing and pain that hasn’t even peaked yet.

These adjustments—they weren’t made for comfort. They were done with intention. Someone has been monitoring, watching. Keeping me tethered.

And somehow, that feels more intimate than anything I know.

The door creaks open again, and it’s her.

She wears a white coat, with blue scrubs beneath, auburn hair pulled back like she barely had time to care.

Not in a stylish way—more like she pulled her hair back while the world was burning around her kind of way.

Her eyes are tired. Her mouth has forgotten how to smile.

But the difference this time is . . . she doesn’t look at me.

Not right away.

She studies the clipboard like it’s more important than me. As if she’s here to update medications, chart vitals, and move on. Like I’m just another patient.

But she’s lying.

I know it—before she even opens her mouth.

Because her voice is burned into me. Not the one she uses now, clipped and professional. The other one. The voice I heard in the dark, calling me back like it cost her something to say it.

“Hi,” I rasp. It barely registers as a word—just breath and sound, scraped together by effort.

She freezes. It lasts only a second, but I catch it—the way her breath falters.

Then she straightens. The mask slips back on. “You shouldn’t talk yet. Your throat’s still raw.”

I swallow. It burns. “Why am I here?”

Her gaze finally lifts to mine, and for the first time, she actually sees me.

It’s not warm. It’s not even angry. It’s wary—like I’m a live grenade in her hands, and she’s still calculating how far she can toss me.

“We already went through this,” she states. “There was a crash. You were found unconscious. You’ve been here for several days.”

I try to nod. It feels sluggish. Off. Like my body’s half a second behind everything else.

She takes a cautious step closer.

“You had a traumatic brain injury. Emergency surgery was necessary. We sedated you afterward to manage swelling and stabilize you.”

“Who . . . found me?”

She hesitates.

Not long—but just enough for the silence to stretch and scrape against the inside of my chest.

“A rescue team,” she finally says. “Sheriff’s department got a call about a wreck on Route Seven.”

She says it as if it’s just another fact, and somehow her professional voice bothers me. Still, something shifts when she says Route Seven, like she’s holding something back, like there’s more she isn’t letting me have.

Panic scrapes raw beneath my skin, rising fast enough to leave me gasping. Did someone die while I drove?

Did I lose someone?

I try not to react, to keep my breathing even. But I’m doing a shitty job. My heart pounds harder, faster, like it knows more than I do.

“Was I . . . alone?”

The words barely make it past my throat. Maybe the voice I keep hearing isn’t mine at all. Perhaps it belongs to the person I left behind.

“Yes,” she says, simple and sure, and somehow, I believe her.

“Do I know you?”

Silence stretches out between us. I let it sit there for a while, but eventually she answers, “No.”

Another lie. I can feel it in my chest.

She turns to the machines, as if they need her attention more than I do, fiddling with one of the monitors just to avoid the space between us. Her hands move, but her mind’s somewhere else. She’s already retreating.

And maybe I should be grateful to be alive. I should accept what I’m given and let her go. But I can’t. There’s a pull I don’t understand—something that twists inside me every time she walks into the room.

“I dreamed about you,” I blurt without even thinking. “Before I woke up.”

She goes still. Her spine straightens like it’s bracing for impact.

“I saw you,” I continue. “You kept calling me back. You begged me to stay.”

She doesn’t move.

Then, finally, she speaks. “That was probably just your brain organizing sensory input. You might’ve heard someone calling you while you were coding. A nurse . . . or maybe I might have told you to hang on.”

It makes sense, on paper. The explanation is logical, delivered in that calm, clinical way doctors are trained to speak when they need you to stop asking questions.

But it’s bullshit—every word of it. I can’t explain how I know—I just do.

“Do I have a family?”

“Yes.”

“Do they know I’m here?”

Her lips press into a line. It’s the first thing she does that feels remotely honest. “They will.”

That doesn’t sit right. “You didn’t call them?”

She doesn’t answer.

“Why not?”

Her tone sharpens. “I’m keeping you alive. That’s my job. That’s what matters.”

But it’s not the only reason.

My gut tells me that she’s holding back—a truth she won’t let anywhere near the surface.

“Did we know each other?” I ask one more time, this time my voice is less demanding.

Her mouth opens like she might say something. Then closes.

“No.” Her voice holds, but something else doesn’t. “The neurologist will be here soon to do some testing. After that, we’ll be leaving.”

She turns and walks out without another word, leaving me alone with the machines, the beeping, and the ache in my chest that isn’t just pain—it’s loss.

Something I don’t remember.

Someone I can’t name.

But it’s like I’ve already lost it—or maybe it’s her who I lost.