Page 16 of Midnight Between Us (The Timberbridge Brothers #4)

Chapter Thirteen

Keir

The ambulance’s siren isn’t on. There’s just the low grumble of the engine and the intermittent rattle of the wheels every time we hit a crack in the pavement.

No music. No talking. It’s almost as suffocating as the hospital room I was trapped in—though I still don’t know how long I was in there. Days? Weeks? Longer?

All I know is this: I hate it. All of it.

The ache in places I can’t name.

The helpless feeling makes me want to jump out of my skin. Somehow, I know this isn’t me. I find solutions. I fix. I don’t let people do anything for me, but right now there’s nothing I can do. I’m broken, mind, body . . . and maybe even the parts of me I don’t understand are broken too.

But perhaps the one thing that I hate the most is the look on her face like I’m already gone. No, it’s more like she doesn’t know how to rid herself of me and is resigned to being around. Why does she hate me?

The stretcher’s bolted in, but it still shifts just enough to make my ribs feel like they’re trying to climb out of my chest. My leg’s braced. My arm’s strapped. My dignity is probably somewhere back in the clinic, curled up next to the rest of my past.

Simone hasn’t said a word since we left.

She hasn’t even looked at me. Her hair’s pulled back the same way it was earlier—tight, too precise—like it’s the only thing she can still control.

However, a few strands have come loose, clinging to her cheek.

I wish I could reach out and move them behind her ear and kiss her. Fuck, where did that come from?

I shake my head, trying to remember why it is that she’s the only person I can remember. If I could, I’d ask her, but would she answer my questions?

She’s focused on the monitor in front of her, eyes locked on the rise and fall of my heart rate as if it’ll answer a question neither of us is ready to ask.

I don’t know what to say. I want to ask what we’re doing.

Why she’s the one bringing me wherever this is?

Why does it feel like I’m being handed off to someone or something I can’t see?

I want to ask if this is about money. If I have any. If she wants some. If she’s been told to keep me alive or make sure I disappear.

Mostly, I want to ask why her voice feels like it carved its way inside me before I even knew her name.

But I don’t.

Because I’m afraid of what she’ll say.

Or worse—what she won’t.

A fresh jolt of pain slices through my body when the ambulance hits a dip. My leg lights up, fire under my skin, and I groan without meaning to. My fingers twitch, tugging at the IV line. It’s small, but it stings.

That’s when she moves.

Just a light shift forward—barely anything—but it steals the air from the room. Her hand checks the IV, the tape. Then the other lands gently on my forearm, grounding and clinical, but something about it doesn’t feel like protocol.

It feels like a memory.

Her thumb brushes just beneath the edge of the tape, and something stirs within me—something I can’t name but recognize like it’s always been there. My lungs stop moving. My thoughts fracture.

She’s not looking at me, yet I feel her. Her presence, her pulse, the way she knows this touch, even if she won’t admit it. Something buried deep inside me rises as if it’s been waiting for her hand to wake it up.

Suddenly, I’m not in the ambulance anymore.

I’m inside of a memory. At least I can distinguish them now from reality.

I see myself lying on a blanket by a lake.

The night is warm, wrapping around us like a secret.

My flannel sleeves are rolled up, and her mouth finds the inside of my wrist. Simone is laughing—quiet, breathless—intoxicated by moonlight and something softer.

Her lips land where her fingers rest now, in the ambulance, as if time has folded in on itself and brought everything back.

She kisses the spot gently, then murmurs something against my skin.

“I know this part of you by heart.”

“My heart knows everything about you,” I wished I had whispered, because it felt true. It was true.

Somehow, I’m aware that there were many things I wanted to tell her but just kept them inside because it felt safe. Saying things, confessing . . . that wasn’t allowed. Not between us, at least not on my part.

But back then she didn’t care about what I didn’t say. She just grinned as if it were natural to say something and then move on.

“We shouldn’t be here,” she said that night, glancing toward the road. “It’s too late. If my grandparents find out?—”

“They won’t,” I cut in, rolling toward her, catching her fingers and bringing her hand to my chest. “Midnight belongs to us, Sims. I can’t not be with you right now. It’d wreck me.”

She sighed into my collarbone, her laugh softening into something gentler. Something like yes. And for that hour—the one we always stole—it was just us.

Her. Me.

What we didn’t say.

What we meant anyway.

It’s always been her. Even when I convinced myself I didn’t get to want her.

Even when I left her.

Even when I rejected her . . .

I belonged to her. Maybe I always did.

That part hits now—full force.

I walked away.

I don’t remember how. Or why.

But I know I did.

Back in the ambulance, my body jolts. It’s small, but it pulls me out of the memory.

Simone glances up.

Her eyes widen just a little—like maybe she felt it too. But she doesn’t say anything. She simply smooths the tape down and shifts her focus back to the monitor.

Still pretending I’m just another patient—someone else who didn’t share . . . how much did we share?

The silence returns, and with it, her scent drifts across the space between us. Faint. Clean. A hint of something citrus—grapefruit or bergamot. It’s not perfume. It’s shampoo. And it’s the same scent from another life.

I close my eyes, and I’m back in a church.

She’s in my shirt. Knees pulled up to her chest. Her hair still damp from the river. That same scent wraps around her like a question I never answered. We aren’t talking. Just existing. But her head rests on my shoulder, and I remember thinking—this is what it feels like to belong somewhere.

Which is probably why I ruined it.

Not because I didn’t care—maybe because I did too fucking much. I can feel it like a bruise in my chest.

“Vitals are holding,” she murmurs to no one in particular.

Her voice slices through the memory, but it doesn’t sever it. If anything, it roots deeper—my hand clenches, weak but deliberate. My jaw locks.

“I remember something,” I say, my voice hoarse.

She doesn’t look at me. Not at first.

“What do you remember?” she asks, carefully neutral.

“Midnight. All the midnights between us.”

That does it. Her eyes cut to mine. Her spine goes rigid. Her mouth opens, then closes like she’s just swallowed something bitter. She doesn’t speak. Doesn’t need to.

“I remember your wrist under mine. You stealing my flannel shirts.” My words tumble out like they’ve been waiting. “You asked if I’d take you with me. I didn’t answer. But you knew, didn’t you?”

Her grip on the edge of the monitor tightens.

“You knew I’d leave you behind.”

She doesn’t deny it. Doesn’t blink.

“I’m remembering in pieces,” I admit. “But they all come back to you.”

Simone finally meets my gaze.

And I see her, the girl I left, the woman she became—the one who has every right to hate me. She looks at me like I broke it.

“You should rest,” she says, her voice soft but frayed at the edges.

I shake my head. “Pretty sure I’ve done enough of that.”

The ambulance begins to slow. I feel it—not just in the brakes, but in the shift beneath us, the way the road starts to feel different, textured in a way that means we’re almost somewhere.

“Where are we going?” I ask, though deep down I already know she won’t hurt me. No matter how badly it ended—whatever it was—she wouldn’t hand me over. Not to the people who want me gone.

“My place,” she says.

The words hit differently—not crushing, but settling into me like a stone dropped into still water, the ripple of it moving through everything I am.

“Why?” I ask quietly.

“Because they told me to keep you safe. Because no one else knows what’s at stake. Because the people who want you gone won’t care who they have to go through to make it happen.”

“Then don’t take me with you,” I say, trying to sit up, wincing as I do. “Send me somewhere else. Somewhere you’re not. I don’t like knowing you’re in danger. You need to stay away from me.”

Even as the words leave my mouth, I know it’s deeper than logistics. I know—with a strange certainty, I can’t explain—that I left her once. That I walked away not because I didn’t care, but because I did.

Because the worst thing I could’ve done to her . . . was stay.

Before I can say it, someone speaks from the front of the rig. Probably the driver—his voice cutting through the haze. “We’re almost there. But there are people waiting. What do you want me to do?”

There’s a beat where neither of us moves. Then Simone exhales hard through her nose.

“It’s probably Malerick. Or Atlas,” she mutters. “I swear to God. The Timberbridges are the bane of my goddamn existence.”

“Which is why you have to stay away from us,” I say because it finally hits me. Keir Timberbridge.

“I’m Keir Timberbridge,” I say again, and this time the name feels like it fits inside my ribs, like it’s always been mine.

Suddenly, I know everything. I know why I left her, why I’m lost and why I shouldn’t be here.