Page 34 of Midnight Between Us (The Timberbridge Brothers #4)

Chapter Thirty

Keir

She made it.

That should feel like a relief. And maybe part of me is relieved—because at least I know she got out of what seemed like an impossible situation. But the rest of me? It’s just gutted.

I left before she could say anything.

She was waiting for me to notice. To ask. To give her the opening she never learned how to take.

And I didn’t.

She shouldn’t have had to write these letters to feel less alone. She shouldn’t have had to run to Seattle without telling anyone what she was afraid of. And I sure as hell shouldn’t have made her feel like silence was her safest option.

But she did. She wrote to me, clinging to the version of us that made her feel heard, even if I never actually gave her the space she needed.

I talked. You listened.

That line wrecks me.

Because now—finally—I’m listening.

But she’s already lived through the part I missed. A part that changed her so much that she’s practically unrecognizable even when I can see little pieces of my Sims. Did something happen to her under my care?

The thought lands hard in my stomach.

I protected her from everything. Everyone.

At least I thought I did. I . . . what happened that I didn’t notice?

What did I miss?

No, seriously, what the fuck did I miss?

As much as I try to rewind that week, try to replay it frame by frame, all I can conjure is the sick ache in my gut. The dread that came the second I realized she was gone. That final night—when I felt something unravel inside me before I even knew what it was.

I couldn’t breathe without her. Couldn’t sleep. Couldn’t move.

It made me physically sick, knowing there wouldn’t be more midnights between us. It was the beginning of a sickness from which I’ve never fully recovered.

I set the letter down with care, smoothing the crease before reaching for the next envelope.

That’s when I see it.

I’m putting away the letter carefully. Opening the next envelope, I realize that next to it’s a picture, right between the next two letters.

“What the fuck are you doing with that?”

Her voice slices through the air. I jerk back, hand still frozen around the stack of envelopes. Simone’s standing at the doorway, her eyes wide with something worse than rage—like betrayal and fear collided and didn’t leave room for breath. I feel like I’ve been caught committing a crime.

She moves fast. Rips the box from my hands, clutching it so tight her knuckles go pale.

Some of the letters spill to the floor in the scuffle, pages fanning out like they’re trying to escape the moment.

I glance down again. One of the pictures lands near my feet, face-up.

Simone, younger, looking almost exactly like the girl I left.

There’s a difference, she looks tired and she’s holding a baby.

Both of them blurry at the edges, like the moment couldn’t sit still.

My breath goes still.

In the corner, written in her handwriting: Lyndon.

The photo doesn’t lie.

Newborn. Swaddled in a blue blanket. Face soft, scrunched up like it had just entered the world. Blurry at the edges, but the moment is unmistakable. Intimate. Sacred. Private.

And I wasn’t there.

I wasn’t anywhere.

I left. When she found me, I told her to forget me. This, having a baby as a teenager would make her just like Nina. Her grandparents would’ve destroyed her the way they did with their daughter. This would . . . fuck, I left them.

My throat burns. I can’t take my eyes off the handwriting at the bottom of the photo.

Lyndon. A date. Nearly twenty years ago. The name doesn’t mean anything to me. Not really. But it lives in her pen like it meant everything. Then I remember the call she had just now before I began to read the letters. Lyndon is not a baby, nope. He’s a nineteen-year-old probably in college.

Fuck.

“You had a baby?”

The words tear out of me—low, stunned. Not an accusation. Not quite. Just a brutal truth I’m trying to wrap my head around.

“What the fuck are you doing here? Reading something personal?”

Her voice slices through the air, sharp enough to stop my pulse. I freeze, fingers still wrapped around the picture and the next envelope.