Page 44 of Midnight Between Us (The Timberbridge Brothers #4)

Chapter Thirty-Nine

Keir

There’s a pause. Not long enough for it to be silence. It’s just long enough to feel like she’s weighing how much truth she wants to give me.

“Giving him up isn’t the right phrasing,” she finally says, and the quiet strain in her voice does more damage than if she yelled.

“I gave him a better life with a family that had everything I couldn’t offer.

Though you made it difficult—so fucking difficult.

I couldn’t even sign the papers at first.”

My stomach knots. “What do you mean?”

“Since I didn’t have your permission, they couldn’t adopt him right away.

We had to take a different route. Pria and Jacob fostered Lyndon while the state worked on terminating my rights and confirming you were—well—nowhere to be found.

” She shakes her head, more tired than angry now.

“I hated you more for that. Not because you weren’t there—but because he couldn’t start his life right away.

I was scared they’d give up. That they’d stop waiting. That he’d lose them too.”

She sighs. “They assured me that was impossible. Lyndon was already theirs. They loved him and would wait an eternity if that was necessary.” Simone presses her lips together and lets out a loud breath before she says, “I got him something neither one of us had. A loving family, caring parents, brothers, sisters and . . . he has a big family that adores him.”

I try to picture her then. Young, alone, holding a baby she already loved too much to keep, terrified that the only safety she could give him might vanish while she stood in limbo.

But something still doesn’t add up.

“I thought I heard you talking to him earlier,” I say, the confusion thick in my voice.

She doesn’t answer right away. Then—suddenly—her lips curl into something soft. Her smile lights up with such radiance that it rewrites the grief from her face.

“Every Sunday.” Simone clears her throat. “We’ve had video calls since he was two.”

She shrugs like it’s nothing, like it didn’t take everything in her to make that happen.

“I stayed in Washington for college just to be closer to him. They allowed me to visit him as often as I wanted—but I restrained myself. Med school was in California, so that was harder, but his parents sent texts. Pictures. Updates. I’d send him postcards, little souvenirs from wherever I was.

Stuff a normal person would buy for a nephew or a godson. ”

I watch her carefully. “He knows you’re his mom?”

She exhales, slow and deliberate. “He knows I gave birth to him. But I’m just Sim. His mom is Pria Decker.” Her voice is soft but not broken. “He’s a good kid. Going to college now. Making good choices so far.”

Good choices. Then there must be very little Timberbridge in him.

“Do you regret it?” I ask.

“Having him?”

“No. I meant?—”

“Giving him a different life?” she cuts in before I can finish.

“No. I was a scared kid trying to survive and figure out how to be a person. I doubt becoming a single mother at sixteen would’ve helped him thrive.

” She pauses, her voice dipping into something softer, more self-aware.

“I mean . . . maybe it would’ve worked out.

But I was so damn afraid I’d turn into Nina.

End up back in Birchwood Springs with a baby I couldn’t care for while my grandparents did all the raising. ”

I could argue with her. Maybe my mother would’ve stepped in. If she raised Atlas like her own, she probably would’ve done the same for my son. But I don’t say any of that. It’s irrelevant now. It’s all part of the past that can’t be rewritten and a version of us that’s long gone.

What could I say after that?

Nothing.

Not right away.

Simone doesn’t cry. Doesn’t flinch or lash out. She just folds in, quiet and spent, like someone who’s been carrying too much for too long and finally set it all down, only to realize her hands don’t know what to do without it.

“I kept telling myself you’d come back,” she says, voice barely audible. “Even after that phone call. I kept writing because I didn’t know how to stop needing you.” A breath. “Not really. It was a long learning process.”

I want to reach for her. Want to say something that might soften the fractures or blur the sharpness of what we became. But there’s no fixing this with touch. No balm for what’s been torn and taped over a thousand times.

“I didn’t leave because I didn’t love you,” I say, and it scrapes something raw open inside me. “I left because I thought I’d ruin you. Look at me. I’m not someone who gets to be whole.”

“This is why Atlas insists you need therapy so bad, isn’t it?” she says, so plainly it almost makes me laugh.

I groan. “Fucking Atlas. Can’t he just let me rot in peace?”

She levels me with a look. “You were a victim of that man’s abuse, Keir.

Your father’s words—what he did to you—they’re still lodged in you like shrapnel.

When someone—someone who’s supposed to love you unconditionally—tells his kid they’re worthless, over and over, that stuff doesn’t just fade with time.

Of course, you believed it. Of course you still do. ”

Her voice lowers to a softer tone. “Do you know how many ten-year-olds jump in to defend a girl they don’t even know from two guys twice his size?”

“I wasn’t going to let them hurt you,” I mutter. “That doesn’t make me a hero.”

“You were to me,” she argues with the same fire she would tell me that I wasn’t becoming a monster back then. “After that, I made it my mission to take care of you too. I couldn’t stop your dad from hurting you, but I could take care of the aftermath. That much I could do.”

A breath catches in my chest. She lets out a laugh—soft, real, nostalgic. “That stuff was disgusting. Del’s abuela swore by it. Said it healed everything except stupidity.”

“I almost killed him.” The words rip out of me before I can stop them. “That night. The one before I left.”

Simone stills. Silence swells between us, thick and brittle. This is the first time I say it out loud. Before . . . Malerick knows just because I called him and said, I have to leave, Mal. I have to. He understood.

“It seemed like just another nightly fight. I hit him. I hit him hard. He was coming at me—drunk, foaming at the mouth, screaming as usual. I—I saw red. For a second, I wanted to kill him.”

The memory flashes behind my eyes. The broken chair. The smell of bourbon and rage. My breath is coming too fast. His blood on my knuckles. He was on the floor, bleeding and groaning, and I wanted to finish him. It would stop everything. Hopper, Ledger, and Atlas wouldn’t have to fear him again.

I just couldn’t do it.

I still recall his words. “Coward. Finish me, or I’ll finish you when I can stand again.”

“Malerick once told me that if it ever got that far . . . if I ever came close to . . .” I pause, trying to slow my breathing. “I had to get the fuck out. That’s why he left too.”

My voice drops to a whisper.

“I. Almost. Killed. My. Father.”

I don’t say it for shock. I’m not looking for her pity or some scripted absolution she doesn’t owe me. This isn’t about making her see me differently.

It’s just the only way I can explain why I vanished without a goodbye.

Why leaving felt like the only way to keep her safe because maybe one day, the rage would take over me and I’ll start hitting her.

I . . . I just couldn’t. The thought of doing anything like that to the only person I loved made me sick.

“Is that why Mal left without saying goodbye too?” Simone asks as if everything I said is normal.

“Yeah.”

“Did you tell Hopper to do the same?”

I shake my head. “Nope. Mal made sure our mother knew he had to go to college. Push him out of the door as soon as he receives his diploma. I think she knew better by then.”

Simone rises from her seat without a sound.

Her legs unfold like her thoughts are still catching up to her body.

She looks at me then—really looks at me—like she’s trying to match this version of me to the boy I used to be.

Her eyes scan my face, not in judgment. Fuck, I wish I knew what she’s thinking but for now I have to stay quiet and be patient.

She turns away, looking out at the yard like she’s trying to memorize it. Like she’s not sure she’ll stay long enough to see it change.

“I think I need some time,” she says finally. “Not forever. Just . . . space. To think. To feel something that isn’t buried under twenty years of silence and what-ifs.”

Something in me twists, low and deep like I’m being asked to let go of something I only just realized I still wanted. I nod because what else can I do when she’s asking for space, and all I want is to stay close. The response comes faster than expected.

“You could tell your boss I need to be transferred,” I offer, and the words taste like surrender. “Say I’m an asshole or make something up. I’m sure you can figure out how to get rid of me.”

She lets out a dry scoff and half-laughs under her breath. “This is the safest place he can keep you right now.”

“I can handle myself.”

“That’s the problem, Keir.” Her voice doesn’t rise, but it hits anyway. “You’re his little cousin’s sperm donor. He can’t just throw you to the wolves and hope you come out breathing. In a way, you’re family.”

That’s . . . not what I expected her to say.

“I thought you said you owed him?” I blink. “Now I’m fucking lost.”

She lifts her chin, eyes tracing the sky like she’s debating how much to reveal. Then she looks at me again, giving me that lopsided, almost-apologetic smile like this whole thing is both absurd and deeply personal.

“I was part of one of their programs,” she says. “They paid for school—tuition, housing, books. Everything. In exchange, I agreed to work for them after graduation.”

She shrugs, casual in a way that feels anything but.

“Then came the fellowships. The job offers. The years. I never went back. Never gave it a second thought.”

Her smile tilts, a little too self-aware.

“Then Finnegan found me. Said I still had a debt to repay and he was collecting. So now I patch up whoever they send my way. No questions. Most days it’s fine. Sometimes it means uprooting my life to work in a small-town clinic I swore I’d never set foot in again.”

“You could have said no,” I insist.

For fuck’s sake, she gave them our child, not that he’s for sale, but . . . okay, maybe I’m conflating everything, like a transaction, because that’s how my brain works.

I don’t deal with people or emotions, only numbers and money.

“It’s not that easy. Not when you know that you’re making a difference, but also, you’re giving back to the people who took you when you were alone, vulnerable, and thinking the world was about to end.”

Simone stands slowly, brushing the grass from her palms. I stay seated. If I stand now, I’ll try to stop her. I’ll say too much. Want too much. She steps past me.

“You should finish the letters.”

Then she disappears inside, barefoot and silent, like a ghost that finally decided to stop haunting me.

But the ache she leaves behind?

That stays.