Page 53 of Hide From Me (Chaotic Love #3)

“I didn’t know the kid would pull a stunt like that!” someone fires back, voice raised in defense, brittle and fraying. It takes me a second to recognize it—Jonathan. But before I can make sense of what he’s even doing here, Laura cuts through the noise like a lifeline.

“Raylen—you’re in shock.” She’s crouched in front of me, her face inches from mine, eyes hard with urgency but soft with something that feels like care. “You passed out. I’ve stabilized him for now, but if you’re coming, we have to move— now .”

I blink at her, stunned. Stabilized. Passed out. Coming. That means—

Moe.

Moe !

Everything slams back into me in a rush—his blood, his hands reaching for me, the things he said, the way he collapsed. I let out a small, fractured sound that I don’t even recognize as mine and try to stand, but my knees nearly buckle.

Her hands are under my arms in an instant, trying to lift me up.

“The kid?” Caspian’s voice turns, and something in it goes lethal. The grief is still there, yes, but it’s buried under steel now. Something cold. Final. “Try saying your fucking kid.”

His voice echoes like a gunshot, causing the entire room to go still. Even the dull thump of the chopper outside seems to stall—like the world holds its breath for this moment.

Jonathan stops mid-step, the blood draining from his face so fast it looks like his soul is trying to retreat. His mouth opens—but no words come. He stares at Caspian, stunned, blinking like he heard the words but hasn’t fully absorbed them yet.

“What…?” he says finally, low and cracking. “What the hell are you talking about?”

Caspian doesn’t flinch. He doesn’t blink. He’s still drenched in Moe’s blood—his hands stained, his clothes soaked, the front of his shirt glued to his chest with red. He looks like a man who’s been carved in war and reassembled with only rage.

“Your kid ,” he spits, stalking forward, barely restraining himself. “The son you didn’t know you had. The one who nearly died— died , Jonathan—trying to live up to the name you never gave him.”

Jonathan takes a step back like the words physically hit him. He’s shaking his head now, repeating “no” under his breath like denial might rewrite the past. “No. That’s—no, that’s not possible. Caspian, you don’t know what you’re saying.”

“I do ,” Caspian snarls. “I’ve watched that boy break himself over a legacy he thought he had to carry. I’ve watched him dig his fingers into the dirt of every mistake our family ever made, thinking it was all he came from. He nearly bled out trying to prove he was more. ”

“ Move! ” Laura’s voice cuts in sharp and loud, shoving the moment forward before it can explode.

Caspian grabs Moe’s upper body, Sam lifts his legs, and together they move—quick, careful, desperate. Moe’s head lolls back, his face pale as marble, lips parted, a smear of dried blood running from the corner of his mouth.

I force my legs to move. It’s like trying to walk underwater.

My limbs scream. My heart pounds in my ears.

I’m vaguely aware of furniture crashing behind me as we push through the doorway, the wind from the chopper slamming into us like a wall.

The rotors roar overhead—deafening, apocalyptic, wind slicing through the night like blades.

Jonathan tries to follow.

“ No. ” Caspian spins, rage reborn. He drops Moe’s weight into Sam’s waiting arms and turns, shoving Jonathan back with both hands. “You don’t get to come. Not now. Not after this.”

Jonathan stumbles, stunned. His eyes go wide. He lifts a hand like he wants to plead his case, but Caspian’s not done.

“Stay the fuck back. ” His voice breaks at the edges, but he doesn’t care. “You don’t get to show up now like you earned a place in this.”

“We’ll be right behind you.” Jasmine’s voice is tight but steady as she steps between the two men—an anchor in the chaos.

She reaches out and presses a flat palm to Caspian’s chest, not forceful but firm, nudging him forward as if that small push could carry him toward his brother, toward the helicopter where Moe lies barely conscious, bleeding out.

Caspian doesn’t move.

Jon doesn’t blink.

His eyes stay locked on Moe, on the barely rising chest, on the way his blood pools against the metal floor like some kind of slow, spreading truth .

“I didn’t know,” Jon whispers. It's not meant for the room. It's not meant to be heard, but I do… No. I feel it, like a needle slipping under skin. So quiet and stunned it almost disappears into the chop of the rotors. No one else reacts—Caspian’s already turning, already replacing Sam’s position as he scrambles back into the bird, pushing past Jasmine with a wildness I’ve never seen on him before.

Like if he slows down, Moe’s heart might too.

The moment I’m nudged into the cramped metal box, Laura’s already in motion. Her hands rip through med packs with the cold efficiency of someone who’s done this too many times, but I can see the panic in her eyes—buried deep, beneath muscle memory and training.

I climb in last. For just a breath, I pause in the doorway. The wind bites hard behind me, the world beyond still spinning too fast, too loud. It feels like if I step all the way in, if I let the door shut behind me, then everything else—everything we were—will be locked outside.

But then I see him.

Moe.

His chest rising in these shallow, uneven pulls.

His shirt soaked with blood. His leg twisted slightly at an unnatural angle.

One arm limp at his side. His lips are pale.

His lashes still flecked with soot and ash.

He doesn’t even look like him. Not entirely.

Like he’s caught between the version I knew and whatever’s left of him now.

My fingers tremble as I reach out.

Just a touch at first—barely grazing the curve of his hand where dried blood has crusted and flaked. It’s tacky, sticky in some places. Cold.

God, he’s so cold.

I thread my fingers through his anyway.

Because I have to. Because I need him to feel me here. Because no matter how deep the secrets go, no matter how terrifying this truth is—how monstrous this world has suddenly become—I still want to be close to him.

I lower my forehead to our joined hands, voice splintering.

“Find your way back to me, monster,” I whisper, the end of it cracking under its own weight. “Please don’t make me go through this world knowing what it’s like to lose you.”

Caspian drops beside me, breathing like he’s running out of time.

My head tilts, focusing on his hand landing on Moe’s chest, searching for that fragile rhythm beneath the blood as he raises his other to swipe at his face, fast and frustrated, as if scrubbing hard enough might erase the tears, the fear, the guilt etched so deep into him.

“He’s still with us,” he says, like it’s a prayer he’s willing into truth. “We can save him. We will. ”

Laura doesn’t stop moving, even as her voice comes tight through clenched teeth.

“We’ve slowed the bleeding, but he’s unstable. I need IVs, a clamp on that thigh artery, and more pressure on the leg wound before it blows out again. Sharkie—hand me the bag. Keep his chest elevated—slightly, not too much. I need to see that respiration rate.”

Sharkie scrambles toward her with the gear, hands shaking so badly she nearly drops the saline line. “Come on, Moe. Don’t quit on us, you stubborn ass. Not now, not after all that drama.”

I can’t speak.

All I can do is press my palm to the side of Moe’s hand and will him to stay. I can’t even tell if the wetness on my cheeks is from the wind or the tears anymore—but they fall, unchecked, burning hot trails down skin that feels almost as cold as his.

The chopper lifts.

The earth shifts beneath us as we rise, tilting the world below into something distant and fading.

Through the open doorway, I see the little house—the one I’d started to believe in, the one where his laughter once filled the corners of my silence—shrinking into a pinprick beneath us.

Like it never existed. Like we imagined it.

I squeeze his hand tighter, a silent scream in my grip.

Please.

Please let this not be the last time I feel him breathing. Please let him come back whole—or even broken, if that’s all we get. Just come back.

And through it all—the rotors, the shouting, the chaos—I swear I feel it. The faintest pressure. A squeeze.

So small I could have imagined it, but I don’t care.

I believe in it anyway.