Page 7 of Midnight Between Us (The Timberbridge Brothers #4)

Chapter Four

Keir

I’ve been sitting on this rock for . . . who the fuck knows how long.

I’m freezing, yet I don’t feel anything. This cold . . . it’s not normal. It’s the kind that makes your teeth chatter or your hands shake. This one’s deeper. Thicker. Like something’s crawled inside my bones and decided to fill every pore with it so I can’t move my body.

It’s raining. Not a downpour—just that unpredictable drizzle that clings to your skin and seeps through everything, making the world feel heavier than it already is.

I can’t tell where I am.

Or when.

Or how long I’ve been stuck here.

The air smells off—metallic, like rust and old blood, layered over the bitter sting of asphalt that has been baked under the sun and left to rot in bad weather. None of it makes sense. None of it feels right.

I glance down at my boots—industrial, thick-soled, caked in mud as if I walked through hell and never made it back. The laces hang loose, half-untied, as though I gave up halfway through trying to hold myself together.

My fingertips are raw.

There’s dried blood crusted along my knuckles. Not a lot. Just enough to know something happened to me . . . or did I do something? I haven’t fought in a long time. Not since I could afford my rent and food with an office job. Then, what the fuck happened to me?

A light throbs in the distance, weak and stuttering. Neon, maybe—red or pink, or just some half-dead bulb struggling through the fog.

I think about moving toward it, but my body refuses. My legs feel bolted to the stone beneath me, every nerve locked tight.

Somewhere ahead, footsteps break through the stillness, each one slow and measured, as if whoever is coming knows precisely what they are walking into.

Then she steps into view.

Her dark, auburn hair is pulled back like she’s been raking her hands through it all night.

There’s a smear of something across her jaw—mud or blood, it’s hard to tell in this light—and a faint crease pinching her brow, like her face forgot how to relax.

Her cheekbones are high, her jaw tense, her mouth pressed into a line that looks like it has held back more truths than it ever let slip.

But it’s her eyes that stop me. Dark, worn, and full of things I can’t quite grasp. She looks like someone who’s been running on fumes, like sleep is something she gave up on months ago.

And still, there’s something behind all of it—an intensity I can’t explain. As if she once knew how to love me and is now trying to forget she ever did.

I think I know her. I feel it deep. That split-second feeling before a crash—right before the world turns inside out. I just can’t remember her.

Before I can ask her anything, she says, “Impressive, you’re still here.” Her voice is flat with a hint of surprise.

“Am I supposed to leave?” I ask. I don’t let her see how much effort it takes to get the words out. I don’t want her to see how stuck or fearful I am.

Weakness doesn’t save anyone.

Weakness shatters those who are already broken.

Weakness gets you erased.

“Honestly, I thought you’d die.” Her words land like she’s the one who left me here and expected me to disappear.

“Is that what you wanted?” I ask because maybe that’s her end game. She doesn’t care. She just wants to see me suffer. “To see me like this? To see me die?”

I glance down at my hands again. Still bleeding. Still shaking.

“You did this?”

She lifts one shoulder like it’s not worth answering. “You did it to yourself. Everything that’s happened to you—they’re called consequences.”

I want to argue. Shout. Something.

But I can’t.

Because the truth hits fast and cold:

I don’t know what she’s talking about.

I don’t know what I did.

I don’t even know who I am.

Everything I remember when I first found myself on the rock is slowly fading. I could taste my memories, hear my name. Now . . . Then, a voice. Distant, muffled. Like it’s fighting its way through water.

“Keir.”

My name. I think.

Another voice now, sharper. Closer. Urgent.

“Keir, stay with me. Don’t you fucking die on me or I swear . . .”

I turn toward it, but there’s nothing there. Just fog. Her face. That same look—too much emotion behind it, not enough explanation.

“I don’t know what’s happening,” I say. “Tell me who I am.”

She stares at me, her voice quieter now. “You forgot?”

The rain keeps falling. The light keeps blinking.

“I’m trying,” I whisper. I’m not sure who I’m talking to anymore. Her. The voice. Whatever’s beyond this place.

I try to stand. I can’t.

“Keir.”

The voice cracks through the haze. Urgent. Real.

I squeeze my eyes shut. Try to hold onto it. Cling to anything that might pull me out.

But nothing comes.

So I stay. Trapped in a body that won’t move. In a dream, I can’t escape.

Staring at somebody who I might use to know.

Waiting.

Maybe dying.