Page 26 of Midnight Between Us (The Timberbridge Brothers #4)

Chapter Twenty-Two

Keir

Atlas is the youngest Timberbridge—and easily the most infuriating among the five of us. He’s always had this uncanny ability to make people want to throw him out a window and hug him in the same breath. Hate is a strong word, but, fuck, he drove me crazy from the second he stepped into our lives.

He was six. Tiny. Malnourished. All bones and wide eyes, like he’d been surviving on scraps and secrets. I remember thinking our father was going to snap him in half the first time he lost his temper. They introduced him as our brother—same father, different mother.

All four of us hated that his entire existence hurt Mom. If there was anyone we ever truly loved, it was her—Therese Smith. Yes, she was never a Timberbridge. She made that distinction clear, even when the rest of the world didn’t.

Malerick couldn’t stand that there was another kid to protect when we were already failing to keep two safe from Dad’s fists. Then we discovered those trips to Boston—the ones we thought were for work. They were for his second family—Atlas and his mother.

Of course, once she died, Dad brought the bastard home. That was the end of our fragile peace. No more quiet time. No more breaks between the drunken storms.

It was just more noise, more bruises, and broken bones. Needless to say, we resented Atlas. I began to loathe him with everything I had.

Hopper . . . I’m not sure what it was exactly that made him hate Atlas.

Maybe it was the way he looked at us—like he expected something from us we couldn’t give.

And Ledger? He loathed Atlas from the moment he realized someone had taken his place as the baby of the house.

That resentment only got worse when our mother started treating him like he was her son.

Almost like she wished he had been hers all along.

It wasn’t until a few years back, when Mom got sick and I learned that he cared for her more than any of us had in our adulthood that I let the resentment go.

Still, there’s something about him that makes him annoying as fuck.

It’s probably that he got his shit together before any one of us could.

Not long ago, when Malerick came to my place for a quick visit he said that it’s probably because he had what we didn’t.

A loving mother who didn’t pay more attention to the family business, and a version of our father who didn’t drink through his rage. Atlas had examples. We had warnings.

Mom worked herself raw at the Timber company. And Dad? He was a bottle and a bad decision waiting to happen. I still don’t know why she stayed with our father. Maybe I’d get it if I ever let myself sit on a therapist’s couch long enough to talk it through.

Atlas’s words come back, “I hadn’t worked on myself, I wouldn’t have been able to have this. A life, my family.” That has settled like grit in my chest because I don’t get to have any of it.

I don’t envy him, not at all. I just know it’s not written in my future.

And there’s the self-loathing sneaking out when I don’t need it. No one should be surprised that I believe I don’t deserve anything good.

I live like that every day of my life. Not even when I make descent money do I treat myself to . . . well, anything. I still live the same way I’ve done since I moved out of Birchwood Springs.Small. Unassuming. No frills.

Because deep down, I still see myself as that kid—doomed to become him. Bitter. Alone. Swallowed by silence, cheap liquor, and everything I never said out loud.

I won’t raise my hand to a wife or a child.

Not because I’m better than him—but because I promised myself I’d never love anyone enough to get the chance.

Okay, I might love someone enough for that but I always kept her away from me. That’s the same right?

Fuck. A therapist would probably laugh if they heard me say that out loud—then hand me a worksheet about self-worth and the lies we tell ourselves.

What’s the point of working this hard if I never let myself enjoy any of it?

To prove something to a man who never saw me? To show my old man that I could be more than the failure he predicted?

But am I?

Most days, I still see the same nobody in the mirror. A man who’s just one bad night away from becoming him. Drunk and mean.

Drunk and hollow.

Drunk and forgetting how to be anything else.

Maybe that’s why Atlas dropped me in here. Just to find a damn self-help book and figure it out on my own since I refuse to go to therapy.

Yeah, why did he bring me here? The better question is why has no one brought me to this room? I like books and peaceful places where I can lose myself and not thing how fucked up my life is.

Light pours through tall windows and spills across worn floors. The shelves stretch impossibly high, crowded with books organized in a way only she would understand—by mood, by memory, by some inner compass she never had to explain.

The air smells of linen and dust, with a faint trace of lavender. There’s a blanket tossed over the arm of a reading chair, a pen resting inside an open book, and on the sill, a half-drunk mug.

Simone isn’t here, but the room still holds her. It’s almost as if she locks her essence in here so nobody in the world can see who she really is.

It might be a stupid theory, but this is where I feel her the most. In this quiet, curated world where she probably lets herself be soft.

It’s like stepping into the part of Simone that disappears while wearing scrubs. The version I knew really well. The one who cried at novels and wrote in the margins. The version that once let me hold her after midnight without saying a word.

I walk around, letting my fingers brush the cover of her favorite book. I close my eyes.

And for a breath?—

I don’t feel lost.

I feel her.

My leg still throbs if I stand too long.

I drag my fingers along the shelves, eyes scanning for something familiar.

That’s when I finally understand how she’s arranged her books.

Fiction grouped by region and decade. Medical texts stacked low enough to reach easily.

A few graphic novels tucked near a reading nook.

Then my fingers catch on a familiar spine.

The Evernight Series which she loved so much.

Sometimes she would tell me about it. Others, she’d read it out loud.

Somehow now that I think about the plot, Luca’s self-hatred and fear of becoming a monster can be mirrored by my feelings about my father and the way I believe I infect everything I touch.

Maybe that’s why I was so absorbed in it when she first introduced me to it?

Who knows, I left too early and never figured out what happened.

I should read the entire series and see how it ends.

I open the book and pull it out, wondering if it’s the exact same physical copy as back then.

She used to read it in the summers. It sat next to the thermos she always carried when we escaped to the lake—the one with her grandma’s name scrawled in cursive along the bottom.

Simone would underline things with a pencil, whispering them out loud when she thought I wasn’t listening.

Once it’s in my hands it feels a lot lighter than I remember and that’s when I hear it.

Not a sound—more like the absence of one. A shift in balance. The hollow thud of something loosening behind these books.

I lean in. Tilt another book forward. The back panel of the shelf clicks slightly out of place. It’s barely noticeable—so precise I wouldn’t have caught it if I hadn’t leaned just right. I press against the seam. It gives.

There, behind the false panel, lies a shallow nook. A small box rests inside—cream-colored, wooden, the finish worn at the edges, like it’s been held more often than it’s been stored. I hesitate. Not out of fear. A pull in my chest I don’t have the language for.

I reach for it anyway.

The lid resists for a second, then gives with a soft sigh, like it remembers being opened.

Inside, a bundle of letters sits tucked with almost surgical precision. They’re tied together with a bluish-gray ribbon, frayed and faded in some areas.

They faintly smell of old paper and lavender. There are so many envelopes, kept with the same care Simone gives to everything—as if even her secrets deserve to be protected. Some old picture paper seems to be caught in between them.

My eyes fall to the top envelope.

My name is on it.

Not my initials. Not KT. Not some ironic nickname scrawled during a high school summer. No, this is written in full. Keir Timberbridge. With her handwriting which is unmistakable.

I stare at the ribbon, wondering if I should untie it—if I should read the one letter that has my name on it.

Then I do something I haven’t done since I got here.

I stop.

Not out of pain or exhaustion but because something in this moment calls for stillness as if the room is holding its breath and waiting with me.

I lower myself onto the bench by the shelves, careful with the brace.

My movements are stiff and uneven. I set the box with the stack of letters beside me like artifacts from a life I can almost reach—but not quite.

I stare at them but don’t touch them. Not really.

My hand hovers over the ribbon, fingers trembling just slightly. It’s not fear. Not quite. It’s something older than fear. Reverence, maybe. Guilt. Whatever it is, it makes me press the lid back into place, raise from my seat, and return the stack to its home before I lose my nerve.

I make sure it’s exactly as I found it. The book goes back. The panel slides into place. When I step away, there’s no trace of what I just saw.

But I feel it.

Like I just turned a page I was never meant to read.

Like a wound I didn’t know was still open.

Like a truth someone buried and hoped wouldn’t resurface.

She wrote to me.

And not recently. These letters appear to have been folded and refolded. Carried. Stored. Carried again.

What did she say?

Did she write me when I left?

When I told her to get lost?

When did she miss me?

Who else did she write to?

I don’t know how long I stand there, rooted in front of the books that hide secrets. Eventually, I move. Make my way back down the hall like I haven’t just found proof that a part of her keeps me tucked somewhere in her soul, even after I broke us.

Can I read them? I mean they’re addressed to me. Technically and legally, they’re mine. If I ask, would she let me read them?

No, I know what she’d say. She’d say it doesn’t matter. The past is over. She’ll even tell me that I don’t get to claim the words she wrote when I wasn’t brave enough to hear them.

And maybe she’d be right.

But that doesn’t mean I can forget they exist.

It doesn’t mean I won’t come back.

And when I do?

I’m going to read every single one that she addressed to me.