Page 51 of Hide From Me (Chaotic Love #3)

Twenty-Six

Raylen

B&B

Are missions supposed to take this long?

I don’t know. I mean, I hardly knew what a normal soldier’s schedule was before all this—what is a hidden one’s schedule supposed to be?

How long do heroes wrapped in shadows and secrets disappear for?

I don’t have an answer. I don’t even have the right questions.

All I know is that it’s been endless hours, and I’m still here.

Awake. Alone .

Even though my body is exhausted, I haven’t slept a single minute.

My mind won’t let me close my eyes—not even to blink for too long.

I haven’t touched the card Moe left on the counter either.

It’s still there, right where he put it, as if it’s watching me.

As if it knows I’m too much of a coward to pick it up, because if I do and I use the money on it, then it’s an invitation to pretend everything is okay.

It’s an opportunity to fall back into that pattern I was finally getting comfortable with—learning that he’s not Lance and that I’m safe.

Instead, I’ve thrown myself into cleaning, disassociating, and cleaning again. Like maybe if I scrub hard enough, I can erase the memories clawing at the edges of my mind. Like maybe if I make the house spotless, the truth will stop feeling so dirty.

The rising sun slices through the living room window, its light thick and hazy, painting everything in that sickly orange glow that makes the world look like it’s bleeding.

It spills across the table I’ve scrubbed raw.

I’m hunched over it, nails ragged, fingers aching.

My hand trembles as I scrub at a dark ring in the wood grain—over and over, until the skin on my knuckles burns, until my stomach twists into knots of acid and grief and nausea that won’t let go.

The sandwich I tried to force down earlier sits abandoned on the counter, a limp, pathetic thing. I glance at it and feel that bitter twist again, like even my food is judging me.

Mocking me for thinking I could eat.

There’s no guidebook for this. No checklist. No blog post. Believe me—I checked. At some point, desperate for something, anything, I typed a mess of words into my cell:

How to survive confessing to murder while your boyfriend vanishes on a mission you don’t understand.

The screen went black.

There was no crash, no freeze, and no warning—just darkness, as if the universe itself were telling me: You’re not meant to ask. You’re not meant to know.

When the screen flickered back on, there was no sign that I had typed anything at all. No search history, no proof. It felt as if my own phone were conspiring to gaslight me. A chill crawls down my spine as I remember that moment, because either I’m being watched, or I’m losing my mind.

Suddenly, the phone rings, and I launch for it so fast that I nearly knock over a chair, my heart slamming against my ribs . Please let it be him. Let it be his voice. Let it be—

Her name blinks across the screen like a punch in the chest. After everything—after she dropped the entire “secret military faction” bomb on my lap and then hung up like we were gossiping about the weather—now she calls?

Now?

My thumb hovers above the screen, trembling. I don’t even know what I would’ve said if it had been Moe.

Where the fuck have you been? Why didn’t you tell me? Are you alive ?

Maybe I’d scream, or cry, or fall to my knees and beg him to just say something. To tell me this wasn’t all a lie. That I’m not the only one sitting in this burning house of a relationship.

Over time, I’ve given him pieces of me. Slowly. Quietly. Hesitantly. But he gave me shadows. Part of me wants to believe I'd scream at him for it. Another part is louder, knowing the only thing I want is to hear his voice and have the proof that he’s still breathing.

I swipe the call before I can think better of it. “What?”

There’s a pause on the other end before a chaos of voices rumbles through. It creates a kind of tension that cuts through my gut even before she begins to speak.

“Ray—hey, uh—” Her voice shakes. It’s not her usual cocky, breezy tone. This is different. This is bad .

I freeze mid-scrub, the cleaning solution in the rag dripping onto the floor.

“Laura–”

“Look, I’m gonna be there in a moment, okay?” she rushes out.

My brows furrow and my jaw clenches. I'm so sick and tired of being thrown into the dark and expected to find my way out. “What do you mean?”

“We were already coming, but there’s been an—”

“Incident,” a man interrupts, his voice clipped, efficient, like this is just another Wednesday.

My heart stops. My entire body locks.

“What incident?” I demand, but I barely get the words out—

Tires screech outside, and my head snaps to the window. For a second, my brain can’t catch up. I think I’m hallucinating again. I'm convinced my mind has decided to give me a mirage to cling to before it completely shuts down.

Moe stumbles out of the car, dragging one leg behind him, the other barely holding him up.

His shoulder is gripped tightly with one hand, a makeshift bandage already soaked through and oozing dark red.

His shirt is torn, blood smearing down the curve of his neck, his arm, his chest—like it’s painting his sins across his skin.

His eyes burn with intense focus, as if he is forcing himself not to fall while he limps up the steps. He doesn’t slow down for a second, and it makes me wonder if he even feels any pain at all.

The door slams open with such force that it rattles the frame.

“ Sunshine! ”

His voice breaks as he calls my name, cracking wide open like he has been holding his breath for a lifetime and has finally let it go. His eyes—oh, those eyes—search the room until they find me. The moment they do, everything about him softens.

All that fire, all that fight, all that torment—gone in an instant.

He looks at me as if I am the only thing keeping him upright.

“I—I figured it out,” he pants, stumbling toward me, one hand braced against the wall, leaving a smear of red on the paint like a signature. His body shakes with the effort of staying on his feet.

“Ray, I—fuck—”

I want to move–I want to run to him–but I can’t. My feet are glued to the floor, my heart breaking out of my chest as the smell of smoke, iron, adrenaline, and something wrong punches me in the nose.

“Jon. It’s him. Jonathan. He’s my father. And you know what that means? That means I’m not like them. Not like my mother. Not like my grandfather. I’m not some cursed ticking time bomb.”

He says it like it’s salvation but all I see is him falling apart right in front of me and I don’t know how to save him.

His hand drops from his shoulder, and blood pours like a faucet turned on, but he doesn’t stop. Doesn’t even seem to notice.

“I’ve been so fucking scared that the madness in my mother would eat me alive. That the violence in my blood was all I’d ever be. ”

His voice trembles with a mix of awe and desperation, a frenzied revelation that makes the room feel even smaller.

“But I’m not—I’m not them. I’m his son, and he’s good. He’s a leader. He has honor. That means maybe... maybe I’m not too far gone.” His grin stretches too wide, teeth blood-stained and cracked with adrenaline. His eyes are glassy, wild, too bright to be sane.

“You’re bleeding,” I manage, barely louder than a breath.

He laughs—really laughs, a choked sound full of disbelief, like he doesn’t feel the pain or thinks he deserves it. Or maybe he just doesn't care. His chest heaves with exertion and something deeper, something unraveling beneath the surface.

“I finally feel sane. You understand? I finally feel like I have the answers.”

Sane.

He says it like he’s won something.

I don’t move. My feet might as well be nailed to the floor. The cloth in my hand slips, falls to the ground without a sound as I stare at this man in front of me—his body broken and bleeding, voice strung out, trembling from loss and hope all tangled together—and I don’t recognize him.

Who the hell are you?

His smile falters. Just a flicker—but it’s there. His eyes drop, tracing past me to the coffee table. To the NDA file I left open. The classified words that spilled everything he wouldn’t.

He stills. The energy drains from him in an instant, like the sight of that paper pulls him back to earth. His voice drops to a whisper that feels like it’s meant for just me.

“Baby…”

I flinch. God, I flinch so hard I feel it in my bones. I didn’t mean to. I didn’t want to. But the word hits like a bruise, and my body reacts before my mind can stop it.

His face crumples—not with anger. Not with frustration. Just hurt. A hurt so raw it carves new cracks into the man already falling apart in front of me .

“I was going to tell you, I swear. But this—” he gestures to himself, to the blood, to the carnage stitched into his skin, “—this is what I come from. And I thought if I told you, if I let you see all of it too soon, you’d run.

Do you—do you know how hard it was choosing between the family that raised me and you? ”

I want to scream at him. Tell him that he doesn’t get to make that choice for me.

That he doesn’t get to protect me by keeping me in the dark and then expect me to light the way for him when he stumbles home half-dead.

Yet, even in my fury, some twisted part of me understands.

His world is brutal. Secretive. It chews people up and spits them out soulless. It made him this.

He steps forward.

I step back, and it makes him pause like I just hit him.

“I know how this looks—God, I know how it looks. But this doesn’t make me him . I’m not bad.”

My lips part, the edges of words forming—but I don’t get to speak. The front door slams open with a crack of splintered wood and torn hinges.