Page 60 of Hide From Me (Chaotic Love #3)

“Do I look like I’m joking?” I motion to myself—sling, knee brace, healing incisions under my hoodie, and about one brain cell left before I unravel completely. “You think I want to be out here at one in the morning, digging up my girlfriend’s past trauma like it’s a goddamn time capsule? ”

The night goes still around us, except for the faint rustle of the trees and the faint hum of music coming from inside Raylen's house.

“This is illegal,” Jasmine hisses, looking at the tree line like the cops are about to jump out from behind every trunk.

I cock my head, giving her the most unimpressed look I can muster. “You really wanna lecture me about illegal? After everything we’ve done together? After everything you covered for?”

My voice softens, my grin creeping back. “And besides... You can’t stay mad at me. I’m still hurt.”

I lift my bandaged arm in a pitiful little wave, my best kicked-puppy face on full display.

“Oh for fuck’s sake,” Sam mutters, already jamming his shovel into the ground, dirt crunching under the blade.

“Uhhh… wrong spot.” I can't help but laugh even though it sends a searing pain up my side.

“I'm the one that did the bloody surveillance and wiped the footage of little miss five foot digging a hole right–” Sam cuts himself as he looks around. “God damn it!”

Jasmine groans but follows Sam, who is muttering curses under his breath as he walks not even five feet to the left. I should've let him dig a few feet before correcting it.

Cordelia hesitates longer, shooting me a death glare so sharp it could peel the paint off Caspian’s SUV. But she steps forward, her grip tightening on the shovel like she’s imagining my head at the end of it.

Caspian stays where he is. His eyes are on me, dark and heavy. He’s not mad—he’s worried . That quiet, deep worry that Caspian never says out loud but you feel anyway.

“We shouldn’t be doing this.” His hands clench at his sides. “This is going to break her. ”

My chest tightens. I know he’s right. Of course he’s right.

Lance was all she had for a long time, and in some corner of her heart, in that part of Raylen that forgives too much and clings too hard, I know there’s still a piece of him.

The piece that remembers when he was the only one she could count on, even if it were in the most unconventional ways.

“I’ll try to fix her when it does,” I whisper, silently praying to every god I’ve ever ignored that I can.

I look at the dirt beneath my feet. The grave. The past. The part of her I’m about to destroy so she can finally be free.

I'm half tempted to start googling a way to bring him back to life just so I can kill him myself, but before I can even follow through with the thought, the front door of the house bursts open, the sound cracking through the stillness like a gunshot, and my head jerks towards it.

Raylen .

Barefoot, hoodie half falling off one shoulder, a flashlight clutched in one trembling hand, its beam swinging wildly as she stumbles forward. Her breath clouds in the cool night air like smoke, and for a second, she doesn’t look real—like a memory I summoned out of guilt.

“What the fuck are you doing?!” she screams, her voice cracking, breaking apart on the edges of grief and rage. Her eyes go wide as they land on the shovels, the fresh churned dirt, the SUV’s headlights painting a scene out of a horror film across the tree line.

“Don’t—don’t fucking touch it!”

She moves fast despite the tremor in her steps, almost tripping over a root in her desperation to get to the gravesite. Her tears are already streaking down her cheeks, catching glints of silver in the moonlight.

I rush forward before she reaches them, cutting her off. “Raylen—wait. Just—wait.”

She slams a fist into my chest, not hard enough to hurt, but enough to feel the weight of everything she’s been holding in.

“What are you doing?! Why—why now?!” She screams as she throws another punch at my chest. I grunt but I dont stop her because some fucked up version of me believes I deserve it.

Just like every scar I carry across my skin from every mission that took a piece of me that I don't let others see.

Like somehow, by being handed the life I was given, I needed to pay, so I've given it in pain and hidden it with smiles.

“Because I love you,” I say, breathless, catching her wrists gently before she can fall apart completely. “Because I need you to stop carrying this weight alone. You’ve carried it long enough.”

“You don’t understand,” she whispers, eyes frantic. “You don’t—”

“I do,” I say quietly, steadying her. “Maybe not every piece. But enough. Enough to know you didn’t deserve to bury him by yourself. That you don’t deserve to live like he’s still out there, in the shadows, haunting every step.”

She’s shaking now—hard. Her hoodie slips further off her shoulder, the flashlight falling from her grip and landing in the dirt, beam flickering toward the trees like a signal for ghosts. Her arms hang limp at her sides for a beat, then curl back into fists, tight and trembling.

Behind us, the digging continues—shovels scraping stone, voices hushed and tense. I keep her eyes on mine, willing her to hold on just a little longer.

And then, for the first time since that night, she lets me hold her. Not fully—but enough. She collapses against me in a tangle of fear and exhaustion, and I catch her, arms tightening around her like I can physically hold her together.

“Shhh,” I whisper into her hair, pressing my lips to her temple, her breath ragged and uneven against my throat. “I’ve got you.”

“No,” she croaks, her voice hoarse, broken. She pushes against my chest with shaking hands, but there’s no fight behind it. “Moe, please—”

“I’m right here. I’m not going anywhere,” I murmur, brushing a lock of hair from her damp cheek. My fingers cradle her jaw, guiding her gaze up to mine. “Look at me, Ray. Just me. ”

Her lashes flutter, trembling like the rest of her. She blinks up at me—eyes red-rimmed, soaked in salt and agony and too many sleepless nights. The kind of look that rips through me, that makes every inch of me scream to go back in time and take this burden from her before it ever got this far.

“I didn’t mean to kill him.”

The words fall between us like glass shattering on concrete. Fragile. Sharp. Final.

“You didn’t,” I say quietly, cupping her cheek again, grounding her in the weight of my hand. “He chose to hurt you. You defended yourself.”

Her head shakes once, small, jerky, like she can’t quite believe it, like her body wants to reject the truth even if her mind already knows it.

“He wouldn’t stop,” she whispers, voice hollow. “He—he was supposed to love me.”

My chest caves in.

Fuck .

“I know,” I say. It’s the only thing I can say without unraveling myself. “I know, sunshine.”

“I didn’t know what else to do,” she murmurs, more to herself now than to me. “I just… buried him. Like trash.”

“No,” I growl, firmer this time. “Don’t you dare say that. Don’t you dare . You were surviving. You were protecting yourself. You did what no one else did for you.”

She swallows hard, throat bobbing as she sags into my arms. Her body is limp with exhaustion, but the tension hasn’t left her. It’s still buried deep beneath her skin, like barbed wire coiled around every nerve ending.

“I couldn’t sleep after it,” she says after a while, voice flat. “Not for weeks. Every time I closed my eyes, I heard his voice. Felt his hands. I had to scrub the floor three times just to get the smell out. And it still lingers.”

She leans into me like it’s the only thing keeping her from collapsing altogether .

“I’d do it again,” she admits softly, like a secret. “That’s the part that scares me.”

I don’t speak for a beat. Just breathe. Just listen. Just try to be what she needs right now.

“You did what you had to,” I say finally. “And you shouldn’t have had to do it alone.”

“I don’t want this to define me,” she whispers, hoarse. “I want to be more than this.”

“You are,” I promise, my gaze flicking over every feature I've come to love and every detail I want to memorize. “You always were. You’re more than this house. More than that night. More than anything he ever made you believe about yourself.”

A tear slips free. I catch it with my thumb.

The air is still around us now. The kind of stillness that only comes after a storm, where the ground is wet, the sky is heavy, but the worst of it has passed. There's peace in it, or maybe just exhaustion. Either way, we sit in it.

“I thought you’d hate me,” she says eventually, eyes fixed on the dirt.

“I love you,” I say, without hesitation, without apology, without flinching. “There’s no version of this where I walk away from you.”

Behind us, Sam grunts as his shovel strikes something heavier than soil.

“Jesus Christ, how deep did she—?” He growls.

“Just shut up and dig,” Caspian hisses sharply.

Raylen stiffens in my arms. Her whole body tenses like a live wire, like she’s about to bolt. Her fingers grip my shirt so hard the fabric stretches beneath her nails.

She can smell it now. So can I.

The scent rises thick and acidic, a rotting punch to the gut that no one was prepared for. Her breath hitches, turning frantic.

“Oh God,” she whispers, her voice tiny and cracking.

I move fast, pulling her face into my chest, shielding her. My palm comes up gently over her eyes, careful but firm.

“Don’t look,” I whisper. “Don’t even think about it. Just listen to me, sunshine. Just breathe.”

Her breath stutters again, fast, broken. “I—”

“Shhh.” I rock her just slightly, back and forth, trying to soothe her like my mother did me when I first started having panic attacks.

Jasmine gags. It’s almost impossible not to make out the shifting weight of bodies and fabric, the dull, heavy thud of something being laid to rest in the tarp that follows.

“Got him,” Sam mutters. “Fuck, he’s—”

“Don’t say it,” Caspian snaps. “Get him into the tarp—fast.”