Page 47 of Hide From Me (Chaotic Love #3)

Twenty-Four

Raylen

B perhaps a language I was never meant to read.

Were they from his past? His family? His brother? A psycho ex with a penchant for knives and no regard for boundaries?

Or was it something else? Something worse?

Maybe he seeks it out. Perhaps pain is the only thing that makes him feel real, like he’s still alive, like something inside him isn’t numb anymore.

I don't know what to think, and that's what really frustrates me—the uncertainty. After everything, there’s still a wide, gaping canyon between us, filled with blank pages, missing chapters, and unspoken words that are beginning to accumulate in the silence.

I glance down at my phone, lowering the brightness as I pretend to scroll through my ebook. I'm not really taking it in. The main character's stalker is whispering about how love justifies obsession, and yes, that should unsettle me—but honestly? I’m already spiraling too deep to care.

I want to wake him. I want to shake him. I want to ask him.

I want real answers, not the playful banter we use as a smokescreen, not the sarcastic exchanges that keep us both feeling safe. I want the truth—the kind that peels away the layers of your secrets and dares you to stay anyway.

“He gets the girl,” Moe murmurs, his voice low and thick with sleep. It’s the kind of rasp that sends a shiver down my spine, a mix of velvet and gravel.

I blink, startled. “Huh?”

“He gets the girl. Not just physically. He sees her—understands her. They make sense.” His voice is lazy, but the words are too precise to be accidental.

He shifts, throwing a knee over my leg like some big, sleepy, clingy creature. It’s so Moe that I could scream.

I glance down at him, half-asleep, hair a tangled mess, arm flung over his eyes to block the light. He looks so damn soft like this, sweet even—like he buys girls flowers just because he thinks they deserve something pretty for simply existing .

I know better than to ignore the signs. There’s something darker inside him—something wild and waiting. It's that part that makes me hesitate, even now.

“And how would you know that?” I ask, raising an eyebrow.

He squints his eyes open just enough to meet mine. “I read both the first and the second. It’s a duet, sunshine.”

He grins as if I should be impressed, but all I do is stare at him, horrified. “There’s a second book?”

He laughs quietly, smug and unbothered. I mentally note that for later—something to panic about once I deal with the anxiety knot currently residing in my chest.

I can’t keep pretending that everything is okay. Not really. Not when I'm on the verge of completely falling apart.

“Moe?” My voice comes out a lot quieter than I care to admit, so I toss my phone onto the nightstand, hoping it will divert his attention from the vulnerability in my tone.

He immediately shifts to his side and props himself up on one elbow, his lazy smile fading into something more serious, alert, and focused.

“Yeah, baby?”

I hesitate, swallowing hard, afraid that this might be the moment where I might ruin everything.

“There’s something I haven’t told you.”

His brow furrows, and the drop of his smile slices clean through me.

“When Jack was checking on my house, the front door was cracked. The cops said it looked like forced entry, but nothing was taken—no money, no jewelry, not even the electronics. Everything was exactly where I left it.”

“What?” His voice is low and sharp, like a blade pulled halfway from its sheath .

“I didn’t think it was serious,” I rush to explain. “I thought it was just Sharkie and Jasmine again. I didn’t want to distract you, not while we’re here. I didn’t want to be selfish.”

“You thought someone broke into your house, and you didn’t tell me?”

It’s not a shout; it’s worse. Cold, clipped, and filled with a controlled fury buried beneath restraint.

I nod, my throat tight. “I’m sorry.”

“No, no, don’t apologize. It’s just… fuck…

” His hand flies through his hair, giving me a glimpse of the pacing thoughts rushing through his head that aren’t landing fast enough.

His eyes dart across the room, as if he’s trying to find something solid to hold onto.

Occasionally, they catch mine, and I can see it—he’s trying not to scare me.

He’s bottling it up again, the way he does when he realizes his anger might make me flinch. He folds it inward, swallowing the heat like it won’t burn his chest on the way down.

It's both dangerous and safe, and I don't want to lose it.

“I swear to God, if it’s your ex…”

“It’s not—”

He cuts me off, scrubbing a hand over his face and reaching for his phone, as if it has betrayed him. The way he yanks the charger loose makes my pulse spike.

“Fuck. I didn’t want to do this…”

“Do what?” I shift onto my knees, bracing a hand on his shoulder as I reach for the phone. “Moe—what are you doing?”

His head turns slowly, controlled. His jaw is tight, and one brow raised just enough to serve as a warning: Don’t stop me.

“Moe,” I say again, softer this time. “Talk to me.”

“I’m calling Caspian.”

“No.” The word bursts out of me like a sob. “No, you can’t.”

His body goes still.

“Why not?” he asks, his voice calm.

Too calm.

The kind of calm that only exists at the center of a storm.

“Because he’s in the woods,” I blurt out, the words tasting like blood and gravel.

Silence fills the room, thick and suffocating like plastic.

His gaze remains locked on me, unwavering. “Who is?”

Why does his voice always drop to a whisper when it should be raised?

My stomach twists in knots. I bite my bottom lip and look away—anywhere but at him. Dread crawls up my spine like cold fingers, reminiscent of that tense moment in a haunted house just before the jump scare. You know it's coming, but that doesn’t matter. You scream anyway.

“Lance.”

Another pause hangs in the air. There's a slight tic in his jaw, but nothing else.

“He came home late that night. I got him a beer and forgot the coaster. He flipped out, started screaming, and then he was choking me. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t think. No one ever helps me, Moe. Not once. So, I grabbed the closest thing to me.”

My chest aches. My throat tightens. “I blacked out. When I came to, he wasn’t moving. So, I... I dragged him out. It was an accident, I swear.”

“Does anyone else know?” he finally asks.

“No. Just you. But–”

He nods once, cutting me off. It’s not slow or quick—just decisive. “Then it stays that way.”

“Moe–”

His alarm goes off.

The shrill sound cuts through the moment like a guillotine.

He reaches for it, shuts it off, and stands up—just like that.

Calm, composed, and efficient. As if I hadn’t just handed him my ugliest, blood-soaked secret.

“Moe?”

Another pause. He leans forward and presses a kiss to my forehead—soft, slow, reverent. It feels as though I had confessed to cheating on a test instead of manslaughter.

Just like that, he walks away and begins to dress. There’s no yelling, no fear, no flinching. Just silence.

“Moe…”

“We’ll talk when I get back,” he says, as if we’re simply picking up a grocery order. Like I didn’t just peel myself open and lay the mess at his feet. Like, he doesn’t scare the hell out of me in all the wrong ways with how calm he still is.

Like maybe, just maybe … he understands.

I don't cry. Not because I don't want to—God, I really do.

I want to do a lot of things. I want to scream until my throat is raw, sob until I can't breathe, and maybe even bury myself so deep under the covers that I can pretend none of this ever happened.

I want to believe that Moe will walk through the door any second, with that crooked grin of his, acting like everything's fine and making me forget what I said.

But I can't.

The tears won't come. My chest is too tight, like I'm being squeezed in a vice. My throat feels raw from holding everything in, and my eyes… my eyes are dry. Bone dry. It's as if my body is too stunned to catch up to what my mouth finally admitted.

I killed a man. I said it out loud, and now it feels real in a way it didn't before .