Page 102 of Hide From Me

“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 ofmanslaughter.

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, justmaybe… 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 itout loud,and now it feels real in a way it didn't before.

It's only been a few hours since Moe left, but it feels like days, maybe even weeks. His absence is palpable in the room—something heavy and sharp that wraps around my ribs and refuses to let go. The air feels thicker without him, as if the oxygen has changed. It's like I'm breathing in the aftermath of what I've done.

I’ve been lying on the bed, staring up at the ceiling as if it holds the answers I need. The plaster is old and cracked in places, and I find myself tracing invisible patterns in it with my eyes—lines and shapes that make no sense, desperately searching for some code, some message, some hint of what I’m supposed to do next.

But the silence is unbearable. Every second stretches out too long, and every thought in my head screams louder than the last. I can’t sit still any longer.

So I get up. Because if I stay in this bed, in this room, in this moment for even one second more—I’m going to lose it.

The B&B creaks beneath my bare feet as I wander through the space. The floorboards groan, as if they carry secrets of their own. The walls feel too close, and the air is too stale. This kind of quiet doesn’t feel peaceful; it feels haunted—haunted not by ghosts, but by ugly truths that are hard to face.

I open one cabinet, then another, hoping to find something to ground me—a book, a bottle of whiskey, a distraction. But there’s nothing. Just old mugs, dusty plates, and silence.

So I pace back and forth, fidgeting, scanning the room as if the answers might be hiding in plain sight. And that’s when I notice it.

Moe’s duffel bag. It’s half-unzipped, like he didn’t bother closing it all the way in his rush this morning. Tucked into the side, nearly invisible, is a plain envelope.

At first, I think it’s nothing—just receipts or maybe his flight information, boring work stuff. But something about it pulls at me, so I tug it free.

My stomach drops.

The envelope is thinner than I remember. I slide out the paper inside, and recognition hits me like a jolt.

The one he had me sign.