Page 32 of Midnight Between Us (The Timberbridge Brothers #4)

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Keir

It’s not what I expected. Again.

This one isn’t about me. Not exactly. It’s not pleading or poetic. It’s a confession. A list of small rebellions, stacked like bricks in a wall she was desperate to build between herself and whatever hell she was trying to escape.

What did you do, Sims?

She lied to her grandparents. Lied to get out of Bible school. Lied just to survive long enough to leave maybe.

And that’s what stuns me most.

She was planning her exit like it were a prison break, and I didn’t even know she needed one. I would’ve taken her with me if she had told me the problem. No, I would’ve fixed her problem because that’s what I did.

I lived to make sure she was okay—always. I left her so she could be okay.

There’s no way she got in trouble between the time I left and when she escaped which it sounds like it was immediately.

Simone was always so composed—so fucking strong.

But these letters? They’re full of the kind of fear that doesn’t shout.

It whispers. It hides between jokes about damnation and fake illnesses.

She was scared.

And I wasn’t there.

Not because I didn’t want to be—but because I never fucking saw it. I would’ve waited until things had settled.

How did I miss this?

What else was she going through while I was too wrapped up in my own war to see hers?

She didn’t run because she wanted to. She ran and it feels like her entire existence depended on her leaving Birchwood Springs. Is this why she hates me—because I didn’t fix her problems in the end?

It enrages me a little, though. She should be old enough to realize that I wasn’t responsible for her and her future.

Fuck, give me a break. Yes, I was an asshole for not saying goodbye and for telling her to fuck off, but maybe she should be a little more lenient with that poor asshole who was just trying the fuck out of here alive—and without committing a crime.