The Oath We Give (The Hollow Boys Book 5)

silas

“Will you stop chewing so fucking loud?” Alistair says as he kicks the shit out of Rook’s rolling chair next to me with a loud thud.

I look over, watching Rook smirk as he eats another Dorito, chomping his teeth loudly just to be a dick. His fingers are dusted with cheese dust, feet kicked up on my desk. I shake my head, thinking about how many times he’s done this exact thing over the years of our friendship, holed up in whatever cave I’ve created, eating a snack while I fuck around on a computer.

My keyboard glows deep blue beneath my hands. The faux typewriter clacks echo as I turn my head slightly to look at one of the smaller screens to the left of the large, illuminated monitor in front of me.

“What exactly are you doing, and why do I need to be here for it?”

“Bonding, Thatcher. Don’t act like you didn’t miss me,” Rook says, gesturing to the screens in front of him. “And he’s doing something cool with technology. Wormholes and digital smokescreens.”

Thatcher rolls his eyes. In the reflection of one of the screens, I watch him cross his arms, leaning back against the metal table behind him. “Do you even know what those words mean?”

“Nope.”

I huff out a laugh. He’s been around this stuff long enough. I’m surprised that’s all he’s picked up on.

Green numbers cascade across the screen to my right, a smirk tilting my lips. After weeks of tracking emails and analyzing IP addresses, the web he’s spun is unraveling with every keystroke.

I feel myself relax into my work. Everything around me seems to slow, the soft hum of the servers and blinking lights fading into white noise that envelops the basement of my apartment. It’s a temporary solace from reality. The shelves of cables and circuit boards cast neon hues along the glass-and-metal desk in front of me.

My playground. My safe haven.

For weeks, I’ve filed through received lines and analyzed each IP address in reverse order. In a matter of minutes, if I’m lucky, I’ll have the sender’s original email server.

I won’t be able to track their location, but I’ll be able to do the next best thing.

There are rules you must follow with technology, codes and sequences that are unchangeable. But once you master them, understand the way they work, it’s yours for the taking.

When I was young, my father told me that every self-respecting man needed to know how to play chess. It was while learning that game that I fell in love with computers. He would rattle off moves using algebraic notation. Pawn by pawn, knight is taken.

Hacking is one big chess game. It’s why I’m so good at it.

Coraline’s face appears in my mind, fingers slowing down a little on the keys as I recall the feel of her tight, warm body pressed into mine three days ago. My tongue runs across the front of my teeth, the smell of her still lingering in my nose.

Lavender and honey.

Simple ingredients, addictive on her skin.

She’s ignored every signal one of my texts since then, minus today when I sent her the time to be at the courthouse in Ponderosa Springs, which got me a simple Ok.

Not even the full word.

I can’t tell if she’s avoiding me because she hated what happened in the elevator or she liked it, which scares her. Everything about her is an enigma. There is a softness that shows, only to be combated by a regal hardness that echoes across her sharp tongue.

Like her brain feels herself being vulnerable and sends bots to shut it down, choosing to snap at anyone who dares get too close to breaking her walls. I know she feels it, that connection between us.

“Speaking of your fiancée,” Rook says. “What’s up with that?”

I turn toward him a little, arching an eyebrow.

He moves his feet from the desk, leaning forward and resting his elbows on his knees. “Does she know about your schizophrenia?”

Do you? I want to ask.

This guy has been my best friend for years. He forced me to eat when all I wanted to do was wither away. Stood by me while I was bitter, celebrated when I healed.

There’s never been a moment, good or bad, without Rook Van Doren in it.

Yet, he still doesn’t know me.

Not entirely, not fully, not the way I know him.

“She grew up in the Springs, didn’t she?” I retort.

Rook grew up in a violent home with a father who instilled in him that anguish would be his way of repenting. Every day, even when I don’t see him physically, I know he struggles to not chase the high of pain. It’s RVD’s favorite drug.

The bite, the sting, the rush of suffering.

It festers in him like a bad habit, and he’s fighting through recovery.

We used to race each other through the woods around the Peak when we were kids. I’ve been beside him while we ran from the police. I know he’s terrified of losing the good things he has in his life.

Sage. The boys.

Smiling to hide his darkest secret of all. That sometimes, he’s not happy. Sometimes, the nightmares of his past still creep into bed with him and hold him hostage.

“I just want to make sure she knows about your meds. That way, you don’t—”

“I don’t need a fucking caretaker, Rook.” My voice is harsh, cold, and cutting. The sad thing is I’m not even mad at him.

I’m frustrated at the situation.

I don’t blame him for his hovering. I know he’s only afraid of losing me after everything we went through, but it also makes him impossible to talk to.

The one person I want to tell more than anyone else, and I can’t because he’ll be the first one to check me back into the hospital.

My computer screen flashes at me, the original sender’s IP address displaying across the front. I bite the inside of my cheek, feeling a little relief that the hard part of this is done.

“It’s not Easton,” I mutter.

The IP address he gave us doesn’t match. Which means destroying Stephen’s old office while Easton watched after we held him at gunpoint was fruitless.

All we found out was that Wayne Caldwell is, in fact, footing the bill for his mistress and her only son. I know Alistair says it doesn’t bother him, schools his features and moves forward.

But I know him.

I know the young boy in him that never got the childhood he deserves from his father is hurt. Which is exactly why when I went to pick him up today, Briar was in a foul mood, and he was beating up a punching bag.

The wounds a parent leaves on their child never go away.

They only grow with them into adulthood.

“Is it Stephen?”

I shrug, looking over my shoulder at Alistair. “Probably. I don’t know for sure. Either way, whoever sent it is about to have their entire hard drive wiped.”

The custom software I’ve spent years building was built for things like this. A few minutes on, the clock ticks by before I deliver a malware to their system. They won’t even have time to know it’s there before it destroys their system and erases itself.

“It’ll erase the video?” Thatcher asks from behind me.

I nod, leaning back in my chair and placing my hands behind my head. “Unless they made a copy, which I doubt, considering how shitty their firewalls are, it’ll be gone in the next twenty seconds.”

One problem down, several more to go.

At least me burning a body won’t be on national news.

“Feel like celebrating this little victory?”

Three heads whip toward Alistair, curiosity passing through each of us.

“Briar wants to play a game,” he mutters, shoving his phone into his leather jacket pocket.

A game.

The Graveyard. The Labyrinth. The Gauntlet. The Peak.

All hosts to a different wicked game at least one of us has partaken in the past several years, varying in danger and always unhinged.

We were fifteen when we competed in the Gauntlet for the first time. The first day of spring, West Trinity Falls and Ponderosa Springs go to war. The games and locations change every year, but the adrenaline remains. The game that year was Fugitive. You had some kids driving cars, playing as cops, and the other half were your escaped prisoners. The goal was to steal something of value from the opposing team’s town and make it back to your home limits without getting caught.

We’d won after we stole a police cruiser from West Trinity’s local department. That was also the first time Rook’s dad had to bail us out of jail.

We’d been playing games since we were kids. It’ll always be something that pumps adrenaline through our veins like liquid fire.

Rook snorts, a smirk adorning his lips. “I’m sure that has nothing to do with your primal/prey kink the two of you are into.”

“Fuck off, Van Doren. You branded Sage’s ass. With a lighter.” Alistair lifts his middle finger in his direction, but Rook’s response is simply to stick out his tongue and wink like a child. “Plus, it wasn’t Briar’s idea. It was Lyra’s.”

Thatcher chuckles under his breath, a rare sound that only comes out when his girlfriend is around or mentioned. He presses his thumb and forefinger into his eyes, shaking his head.

Lyra is sneaky, going to the girls knowing Thatch would say no. Not because he doesn’t want to play but because with everything going on, his main priority is protecting Ponderosa Springs’ favorite bug queen.

“Loner Society initiation for Coraline,” he says.

Despite the years that had gone by, we’re still held hostage by the same captivating hunger for rebellion, our souls intoxicated for the thrill of what happens at nightfall.

We are creatures of the night always, bleeding chaos and untamable.

No matter where we went or how far apart we drifted, we would remain forever at the mercy of the darkness.

“What game?” Rook asks.

“Hide-and-seek.” Alistair’s mouth curls into a sinister smirk. “At Hollow Heights University.”

My blood runs hot through my veins at the thought of seeking her out, proving that no matter how good of a fight she puts up, she can’t escape that connection between us.

I can still feel her nails clawing into my shoulders, her trembling beneath my touch in the elevator. She wanted to melt and bend beneath me, but her mind refused.

Getting stuck in that elevator with her was only further confirmation of something I already knew in the marrow of my bones. A thought I’d tamped down and tried to deny since the moment I walked out of her hospital room two years ago.

I want Coraline Whittaker. 

That ominous and painful thing inside of her that scratches and bites? The one that scares her? I want it to leave marks on me. It screams for me when she lets me in close, begging me to run my tongue along every square inch of her taut skin.

Her futile attempts to put distance between us only feed my hunger. Coraline wants me to fear her, as if that lovely, dark thing inside of her is something to run from. She’s the only one who can’t see that it’s a siren’s call.

It’s not her looks that pull men to the depths of her sea, drowning themselves for a chance to touch her.

It’s the aura of mystery that shrouds around her every move. That untouchable, intangible force buried in her bones.

She can fight it if she likes. It won’t change anything.

Whatever she dishes out, I’ll swallow whole.

“We need masks.”