Page 130 of Hide From Me

“I’m dead serious.” I grin. “Get it…dead?”

Cordelia glares and picks up her shovel like it’s a cursed artifact, holding it away from her body with two fingers as if it might bite. “We put bodies in the ground. Wedon’tdig them up.”

“True,” I admit with a nod, rolling my shoulder out before immediately regretting it when pain lances down my bad arm. I suck in a breath but keep going, voice tight. “But we also do what we have to to protect the people we love.”

I look at each of them, letting the silence stretch between us like barbed wire. “You said it yourself, Sam—it’s a miracle she hasn’t been caught yet. And I’m scared shitless that one slip, one patrol, one nosy neighbor, is all it’ll take. Just because we wiped him from every system doesn’t mean some K-9 can’t dig up the past.”

Everyone stills.

Jasmine pales like she’s seeing ghosts already. “You’re joking.”

“Do Ilooklike 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 Iwantto 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 everythingyoucovered 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’sworried. 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.

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