Page 43 of Midnight Between Us (The Timberbridge Brothers #4)

It’s true. I vanished. Took a fake ID and went north to Alaska, joined a fishing crew, bounced between jobs that didn’t ask questions.

I flirted with death more times than I can count because life had gone tasteless.

Numb. Meaningless. I eventually made it back to New York.

I started college like nothing happened.

Of course, I continued to fight because it brought me money, but it also numbed everything I felt inside.

But she needs to know it wasn’t noble—it was just stupid.

“I don’t know what to say,” I admit.

She nods. Just once. “Okay.”

One word, but it lands like grace. Like a door cracking open, even if just a little. It gives me permission to stay here beside her, while my chest pulls tighter under the weight of everything I never gave her, never asked, never stood still long enough to face.

So I stay quiet. For one breath. Then another. I don’t want to break this by speaking too soon.

But I’ve learned—too late, like most things—that silence doesn’t save anyone. Silence is what drove her to write those letters.

“I didn’t know how to love you without wrecking it,” I say quietly. “I thought getting close would ruin you.”

She pulls her arms tighter around her knees, curling in on herself like she’s the only one holding her together.

“Stop, Keir.” Her voice is tired. “I’m over it.”

I know she’s lying.

“I lied,” I say before she slips away completely. “I fucking lied because I thought you needed to get away from me to survive.”

“Keir.” The warning is there: shut up, or I’m leaving.

“I don’t know when it happened. One moment you were my shadow. The next, I couldn’t breathe without you. You became a part of me. That first kiss—it was the only way I knew how to show what I felt for you. I was yours.”

“You told me I meant nothing to you,” she says, quieter this time. “You told me to move on. That I made it all up in my head.”

“I lied.”

“You said it so easily.”

“Because if I said it like it mattered, I would’ve stayed.” I shift slightly, resting my hands on my thighs, needing to ground myself. “And staying scared the shit out of me.”

Her jaw tightens. “Why?”

“Because I thought I’d turn into him,” I admit, and the words feel like I’m handing her something cracked and trembling. “My father. I thought if I loved you too much if I needed you too much, I’d end up hurting you.”

She finally turns to face me, her brows drawn low, her eyes shining with disbelief and fury, and something older than both.

“So you hurt me on purpose instead?”

“No,” I say quickly. “Not like that. I just?—”

“You just didn’t want to become him, so you let me become her,” she says, and her voice cuts through me like a blade.

I know what she means.

Her mother.

All the silence. The regret. The abandonment. The heartbreak passed down like inheritance.

“I was trying to protect you.” I’m ashamed of how hollow it sounds now.

She lets out a bitter laugh. “You don’t protect someone by leaving them when they need you most, Keir.”

“I know,” I say. “Fuck, I know. I know saying I’m sorry doesn’t make it right. I know it’s late—probably too late—but I need you to hear it anyway.”

She doesn’t move, doesn’t interrupt, and I take that as permission to keep going.

“I’m sorry I left. I’m sorry I never called. I’m sorry I didn’t ask what was wrong when I should’ve known without you telling me. I’m sorry I made you feel like you were alone—especially when you were carrying a life we created together.”

Her shoulders drop, slow and quiet, like she’s finally letting go of something she’s been holding just to keep herself from folding in.

“I wasn’t asking for perfect,” she whispers. “I just wanted you. The real you. Even the parts you hated and swore were broken. I loved those parts, too.”

I close my eyes for a second just to breathe through the sting behind them. She’s not saying it to make me feel worse. That’s what hurts the most—she means it.

There was a time she saw the parts of me I kept buried, the fractures I tried to outrun, and she didn’t flinch. Didn’t turn away. She just . . . stayed. Held them like they weren’t minefields. Loved me even when I didn’t know how to love myself without destruction trailing behind it.

“I didn’t think I had anything to offer,” I admit. The truth sits low in my throat, cracked and uneven. “All I saw was everything I didn’t want . . . I could only see every broken thread in the Timberbridge men. Every failure waiting to happen.”

I don’t add how terrified I was that I’d fuck up something pure. That I’d ruin her. That I already had. She probably knows.

And still—she loved me.

Even then.

Especially then.

“You had everything,” she says, eyes wet now. “And you threw it away like it meant nothing.”

My throat closes.

I want to tell her I didn’t mean it. That every word I said on that call was a lie. That I was young and angry and scared and spiraling.

But she already knows.

She lived it.

“Why did you choose adoption?” I ask.

The question lingers between us, quiet but cutting, and I already know it’s going to haunt me either way.