Page 17 of Midnight Between Us (The Timberbridge Brothers #4)

Chapter Fourteen

Simone

The moment he says it—”I’m Keir Timberbridge”—something drops in my stomach.

Not in that cliché way people always describe, like falling down an elevator shaft or slipping off a cliff.

No, this is entirely different. A slow-motion scene where there’s a shift in the ground.

As if something you were never ready to carry suddenly shifts in your arms—and you realize you’ve been holding it all along.

I don’t look at him. My eyes remain fixed on the monitor like the numbers matter more than the way my chest just cinched tight.

He remembers.

He fucking remembers.

Not just his name. The way he said it—as if it settled into him—tells me more is coming. Not all of it, maybe, but enough. Enough to turn whatever fragile peace I’ve been clinging to into rubble.

I don’t respond. I can’t. My throat’s too closed up, and my thoughts are already sprinting ahead—racing toward the next impossible moment.

When he asks what happened. When he remembers how it ended.

When he looks at me, he doesn’t see a stranger anymore, but the girl he left without a second thought.

Someone to fuck while he was in town. Nothing more.

He doesn’t know it yet, but the only reason I’ve been able to sit next to him, breathe near him, and touch him is because he didn’t remember what he broke.

Now, he probably does.

And I have no idea how to keep going without punching him in the throat instead of timing his next round of meds.

Luckily—or not—the ambulance jerks to a stop.

And maybe I cursed myself by thinking it couldn’t get worse because the back doors fly open, and there they are.

Atlas and Malerick Timberbridge.

I swear these men are like slow-burn Armageddon—less screaming, more psychological warfare. Malerick’s arms are crossed, his stance rigid and unmovable. He doesn’t need to speak for me to know exactly what he’s saying: Try me .

I don’t move. I don’t blink. I should’ve known this was coming.

“You’re not taking him in there,” Malerick says, nodding toward my house. “He belongs with us.”

I want to laugh because really, he belongs to us?

Since when are the Timberbridge brothers an “us”?

They never gave a fuck about each other.

If anything all they shared was hate among them.

It’s not something I should bring up because their messy business is theirs.

Not that I wasn’t involved while growing up.

I was the one who made Keir feel like he belonged, even when he didn’t want to be a part of me.

I almost snort, but I control myself. This is just so stupid. Me fighting to keep a man I don’t want to be involved with like . . . well, never again.

“He doesn’t belong anywhere right now,” I fire back. “He just remembered how to breathe. He needs care. A plan’s already in place. You put him in your house, and every eye that’s been waiting to erase him finds him in five minutes flat.”

And maybe I don’t even know why I’m arguing.

Finnegan Gil’s already made the call. I’m just the one executing it.

I shouldn’t have to explain that to people who think sharing their DNA with Keir equals .

. . what? That they have some ownership over him?

Ha, like Keir would let them make any decisions.

Malerick might be the oldest, but Keir’s the bossiest one. I’m about to say something, but what makes me pause—what chills me a little—is the way Atlas looks past me, his eyes landing on something inside the rig.

I turn, slow.

Keir is propped slightly on the gurney, gaze locked outside the ambulance. Not dazed. Not confused.

Present.

His eyes move across both of them—his brothers—and something clicks behind them. His jaw sets. His breathing shifts.

I know that look. I know him. And I know what just hit him. He remembers more than I want him to.

More than just saying, “Midnight belongs to us.”

That’s what he said.

Us.

I want him to stop. I want him to forget. Because if he remembers everything—he’ll remember why he walked away and the self-imposed truce is over. I’ll hate him more, and I won’t be able to treat him like a patient deserves.

I should tell him to lie back. To let the doctors manage it. That this isn’t the time to step into a past that’s barely stitched together. But I don’t.

I just watch him hold it in, eyes forward, like the memory hurts, but he’s not going to let anyone see the wound bleed.

“What the hell did you do to him?” Malerick snaps. “He looks weak and like a lost puppy.”

Obviously, Mal doesn’t know his brother the way I do, and I’ll use that to my advantage.

“I fucking saved him,” I say flatly. “Twice.”

“By isolating him? By keeping him from his family?”

“I kept him alive,” I snap. “You want the truth? He didn’t even remember his name when he woke up.

When we found him, he coded in my arms. I brought him back.

He coded again during surgery. And I’m the reason he’s here now.

So don’t you dare stand there and pretend I’m the problem.

I’ve been following orders while also cleaning up your family’s mess. ”

Atlas’s expression barely shifts, but he speaks, and it’s worse than yelling. “You don’t even want to be with him.”

It’s not a question. It’s a statement. I could argue with him, but that’s pointless.

Atlas knows how much I resented Keir for how he left me—and he doesn’t even know the whole truth.

The rejection, the months that . . . I stop myself from thinking further.

He might believe I’m jaded because I can’t get over a broken heart.

This isn’t about my feelings. Not about love or loss or whatever this thing is that’s still tethering me to a man who’s breaking himself all over again.

This is about protecting him—from them, from the people after him, and from the version of himself that might still be dangerous.

“I want to go with them,” Keir says.

The words hit like a slap.

Who the hell does he think he is? Waking up after weeks of being silent and deciding his fate like this is a conversation he’s earned the right to have.

He doesn’t get to choose. Not this time.

I do.

He clearly hasn’t realized I’m not that girl anymore—the one who waited. The one who could’ve forgiven him.

He wants to go with them. Maybe I should let him. Just let him walk away and keep walking until the past forgets we ever touched.

But something in me resists. Flares. Because what the hell? If he really remembers, then he should also remember who actually took care of him the nights he had to be away from home. Who tended to his wounds. Who held him after his father knocked the fight right out of him. It wasn’t them.

It was me.

Always me .

And now he wants to go with them.

Malerick doesn’t hesitate. He steps forward like he’s just been waiting for the green light. “Let’s go, then,” he says to the EMT, voice low and sure. “We’ll take it from here.”

And though I wish to say, “Sure, take him with you, and don’t let the door knock you in the ass,” I can’t. Duty calls. I have a job, and there’s a reason—even if I don’t like it—why he has to stay with me.

“No.” Then I glance at Keir. “You don’t get to decide where you’re going.”

Keir doesn’t flinch. He just watches me with that unreadable calm.

Atlas hasn’t moved. His arms are still crossed, his stance quiet, yet his gaze shifts between us like he’s watching a fuse inch toward something that shouldn’t explode but always does.

“You heard him,” Malerick growls. “It’s his choice. Don’t make this difficult because I’ll use my badge.”

“I’m not making it difficult—only impossible,” I hiss. “Did he choose to get shoved into a trunk like garbage? Did he choose to forget his name? Did he choose to wake up full of fractures and stitched together with no one but me keeping him alive?”

I step forward—not toward Keir. Toward Malerick.

My voice doesn’t rise, but it doesn’t shake either.

“He remembered his name today. Not a week ago. Not last night. Today. His brain is still recalibrating. His body’s running on instinct and adrenaline.

And you want to yank him out of the only controlled space he has because he said one sentence that sounded like consent? ”

“You don’t think people will notice if he stays with you?” Malerick shoots back.

“No one cares what I do,” I say flatly. “Even if I didn’t live on the outskirts of town, I’m still the town’s disappointment.

I could host a naked parade in my front yard, and no one would show up.

But if he’s seen with you—with either of you—he becomes a headline. People will know where to find him.”

There’s a pause. Then Atlas finally speaks. His voice is low but certain. “She’s not wrong.”

Malerick whips around. “You’re siding with her now?”

“I’m not siding with anyone,” Atlas says. “I’m trying to keep him breathing while we figure out who’s trying to make sure he doesn’t. You have a job to do. It might be best if we keep him away from anyone—even Hop and our women.” He turns to Keir. “Do you even remember what happened to you?”

Keir shifts on the stretcher. He winces, like the pain in his leg just caught up to the pressure in his chest. His mouth opens, then closes. When he speaks again, his voice is clear and distinct.

“I remember.”

It’s not loud. He doesn’t look at me. But the second I hear it, something cold threads through me.

Like someone just walked through my future and erased it.

Atlas stills. Malerick frowns. “What do you mean you remember?”

Keir’s eyes drift toward me—and this time, they stay.

His gaze isn’t searching. It’s sentencing.

Then he looks at Malerick. “You and I were on the phone. Talking about the sale of the company. I heard noises—” he pauses, then takes a deep breath— “I knew they were getting desperate because we wouldn’t sell.

That made us a problem. They had threatened me and—all of us. That’s why I was urging you to do it.”

Then he turns to Atlas. “We need to leave Birchwood. You can’t keep me with Sims. They’ll kill her.”

Something snaps in my spine.

Oh, hell no.

Who gave him the right to decide that? To say, who gets protected and who gets left behind?

He doesn’t get to make decisions. Not about me or my life.

Malerick doesn’t wait. “He comes with us. He’s not safe here.”

“No,” I say. “He’s not safe there. You don’t have a plan, Mal. You have a last name and a badge. That’s not the same thing.”

“You’re in over your head,” he spits.

“Probably,” I admit because I’m not telling him that this place has security, that inside there are agents, and soon there’ll be doctors and even when there’s a full house it’ll look like it’s just me. I just say, “But at least I’m in it with him.”

Atlas’s jaw tightens. He doesn’t speak right away. He looks at Keir, long and thoughtful, then turns to me. “Call your boss, tell him about the situation. I’ll make a few calls too. I don’t like any of this.”

“I’m not calling him.”

“Finnegan Gil needs to know,” Atlas says. “We’re sitting ducks. That fire at The Honey Drop wasn’t random. Keir is right. They’re getting desperate.”

“Who?” I ask. “Who’s getting bolder?”

Keir flinches but answers. “Some investors. Wants to buy half the town. Gentrify it. Own it. Control it. I don’t know names yet, but when I said we wouldn’t do it they began to threaten me. I had one last chance.”

Atlas shakes his head, and something tells me that Keir has no idea who we’re honestly dealing with. Finnegan Gil wouldn’t be concerned about an investor. He fights criminals.

Mal mutters something under his breath, then growls, “I swear they don’t pay me enough for this shit.

” He rubs a hand down his face, furious and wrecked.

“I told everyone to stay away from this fucking town, but did you people listen? And now look at us. All back here. Like any of you gave a fuck about Birchwood before it started burning.”

I’m not here because I want to save this forsaken town, but because they made me. I narrow my gaze, and I wonder if that’s what’s happening with him. Maybe that explains why he went from being an FBI agent to just the sheriff.

Why were we dragged back to town?