The Oath We Give (The Hollow Boys Book 5)

silas

The air smells like rain, touched with a buzz that lets you know lightning is coming soon.

“You think she’ll show?”

I drag my tongue across my bottom lip as headlights appear from between the trees. Coraline’s car hesitantly pulls through the already opened ironclad gates that lead to Hollow Heights University.

Alistair snatches the cigarette between my fingers, taking a long drag before expelling several smoke rings that drift into the darkness.

“Yeah.”

My black long-sleeve shirt stretches across my back as I cross my arms, leaning back onto my car.

I’m pleasantly surprised, considering when I texted her with the proposition of tonight’s game, she left me on read.

Stubborn girl.

She carefully pulls into one of the many open spots in the student lot, turning her car off and opening her door.

My teeth sink into my bottom lip when she steps out, the wind catching her hair immediately. It blows back from her head in a curtain of brown tendrils, and she tucks my favorite two pieces behind her ears.

“I love the smell of breaking and entering.” Rook howls as he slings an arm over his girlfriend’s shoulder.

Getting used to seeing Sage Donahue was one of my hardest challenges after I got out of the ward. She’s the twin of my dead ex-girlfriend. For the longest time, all I ever saw when I looked at her was Rosemary, but time had been a secret blessing.

I no longer flinch when she comes around or avoid looking at her. All of their differences in appearance started to become more clear. She’s snarky and sometimes overdramatic, while Rose was more relaxed. Their hair is separate shades of red, eyes different colors, noses various shapes. She slowly became just Sage, no longer a mirror image of the love I’d lost.

It brought me peace that a part of Rose, no matter how small, got to live on in her happiness. I know it would make her sister happy to see her becoming the person she’d always thought her twin could be.

“It’s not breaking and entering if you have keys.” Alistair shakes the keys in his hand with a smirk before shoving them into his pocket.

“Is that my shirt?” Briar says, tilting her head to look at Sage’s outfit.

“You literally have on my jeans.”

I shake my head in amusement and let out a little puff of air from my lips as I look back over to Coraline, slowly making her way across the lot toward our group. The girls rush to her side, smiling while Coraline looks terrified from the attention. Nervous even, as if she’s not already one of them.

She’d been accepted the moment she punched a grown man in the face for Sage.

I watch them interact, drowning out the sound of the guys, her shoulders starting to relax, a smile tugging at her lips before her laugh echoes to my ears.

Coraline could be happy if she believed long enough she deserved it.

When they start to walk a little closer, her eyes flicking to mine, I let her watch me drink her in.

Her sun-kissed limbs are displayed in her barely there black shorts. A tight matching black Thrasher crop top stretches across her tits, putting a graphic image of my dick wedged between them in my mind. My cock stirs behind my jeans at the thought.

This town tells me I’m dead. For a while, a part of me was.

Coraline Whittaker has woken something up in me.

Desire, longing, need.

An ache I’ve never felt for anyone before. I don’t need her to love me. It isn’t about love.

I need her to be mine.

“Rook has the same shirt,” Thatcher says when she gets close enough to hear him over the howling wind, leaning on the car next to me, Lyra falling into his chest as he wraps his around her front.

“Must have good taste, then,” she snips, adjusting the leather jacket on her shoulders.

“Debatable,” he mumbles before pressing his nose to the side of Lyra’s head, burying his nose into her loose curls like a psycho. I joke that he’d live inside of her body if he could.

Which turned into a long-winded debate about a vore kink.

“Now that everyone is here, let’s go over the rules.” Lyra rubs her hands together. “We get thirty minutes to hide. When the time is up, we each send a text message to our seeker with one clue. If you can’t find the person hiding, you’re allowed to call them for some direction. But they can only say hot or cold.”

“Who’s looking for who?” Coraline asks, crossing her arms in front of her chest and looking around at the group for someone to give her an answer.

When her gaze stops on me, the realization dawns on her.

“It’s a couple thing, got it. Stupid question,” she says as she nods. “So you’ll be—”

“Hunting down my fiancée.” I pull my bottom lip between my teeth, preventing a smirk.

Lightning cracks across the sky, breaking across the horizon like a jigsaw puzzle, accompanied by roaring thunder, warnings for the storm rolling closer.

“You guys have thirty minutes to find us,” Briar says, continuing the rules, “and you can’t help each other. You gotta hunt all alone, boys.”

Coraline raises an eyebrow. “What do the winners get?”

“That’s between you”—Rook points in her direction before jerking his thumb at me—“and the silent one.”

The couples around us began to disperse, prepping before the girls spread out to hide. Coraline takes a step closer to me, standing just inches from where I rest against the hood of my car.

Her eyes are dark, the kind of dark that looks inviting. Lures you in.

“Was starting to think you weren’t going to show.”

“I wasn’t.” She rolls her lips together, a blush tinting her cheeks. “But then I remembered hearing about all the infamous games you four played in high school. The teenager in me wouldn’t let me say no to a chance of living out a fantasy I had of being invited.”

My eyes squint a bit as I tilt my head, biting the inside of my cheek with amusement.

“You had a crush on one of the nightmarish Hollow Boys in high school, Hex?”

Her eyes roll, but the blush on her face remains. I was just teasing, but something tells me I might just be on the money with my guess.

“You wish,” she scoffs, playing it off. “So what do I get when I win?”

I push off my car, taking another step forward, and look down my nose at her with my hands tucked into my pockets. Everything about her is small compared to me.

“What do you want?” My voice is a gruff grunt, huskier than normal.

Coraline hums in the back of her throat, debating her options. I glance down at her hands, fingertips tinted blue, stained from paint.

She fixes her gaze on me, eyes determined.

“You have to tell me a secret,” she says finally, sure of herself in her words. “Something no one else knows about you.”

The howling wind carries all the whispered truths I’ve never said aloud. A thought passes through my mind without my consent.

Would you believe me?

Do I have enough faith that if I told her, she’d trust my words without physical proof? Or would she be just like everyone else, placed inside a box in my life, a box that’s just beyond my reach but I can never touch.

“And when I win?” I ask.

“If,” she points out, slitting her eyes at me with a challenge. “I’ll give you the same in return.”

She says that likes it’s enough. Like one secret of hers is all I want from her.

“Timer starts in one minute!” Lyra shouts from where she stands.

I turn my upper body, grabbing the mask that rests on the hood of my car and holding it in one hand as I shake my head.

“Nah,” I mutter, determination setting in. “I don’t want one secret from you, Hex. I want them all.”

I slip the black balaclava over my face, leaving only my eyes visible. She’s about to speak again, ready to argue, but I lean in closer, my mouth right next to her ear, the smell of lavender in her hair.

Her body shivers under my touch, making me smirk behind the thin fabric that covers my face.

“When I find you, not if, I’ll let you know what I want,” I whisper, dragging my mouth across the shell of her ear. “Start running.”

Coraline

Hollow Heights University is a creep show during the day, plucked straight from the pages of a Victorian ghost story.

When the sun sets? It’s a nightmare.

The hairs on my neck stand up as I sprint through the colonnades of the Kennedy District. The rain splatters against the cobblestone, thunder rumbling in the distance.

Shadows from the Ponderosa Forest in the distance shift in the night, their trunks twisting in the wind like gnarled fingers beckoning me forward. Wails from the rushing Pacific scream from just next to me, the saltwater breeze pouring in through the archways. Gargoyles standing guard over the campus illuminate when the lightning strikes and seem to move when they are plunged back into darkness.

We invite success, the decades-old university motto reads.

The only invitations ever sent out for this place are to hell.

It is built on bones and cracked teeth. Bloody secrets soak the pages of books in the Caldwell Library. Travesty and betrayal leak from every statue and fountain on the grounds.

This is where people send their children to become great leaders, only to be surprised when they become corrupt, money-hungry animals instead.

A part of me is glad I never graduated from here.

It’s eerily silent when I push through the heavy mahogany doors. Each footstep echoes for miles down the dark corridors. It smells like dread, and I’m afraid to admit that I’m scared to slow down in fear of catching a glimpse of a ghost.

The alarm on my phone almost makes me leave my skin. The resounding noise piercing the silence reminds me that I’m out of time to hide. Quickly, I dip into one of the closed classroom doors on the first floor of the English department.

The door slams behind me as I move across the room. It’s an auditorium-style classroom, with endless rows of seats to my left. Knowing I have to send Silas a clue soon, I decided to hide behind the professor’s desk.

My train of thought is that Silas will be opening doors, peering inside each of them to find me. So I slide my back down the side of the desk, letting the large piece of wood hide me from the door.

It does, however, leave me facing a wall of tall windows that looks out onto the campus square. Surely, he wouldn’t walk around outside in the rain.

With no time to change my mind, I open my phone, shooting him a text. My pulse is in my thumb as I type, heartbeat thudding in my ears. I hadn’t expected this to be so fucking intense, but once we all took off from the parking lot, it turned into more than a game.

I’m being hunted.

Stalked and tracked by an apex predator rumored to stop at nothing to get what he wants.

“Rumor says if you walk where I’m hiding at midnight, you can hear the screams of a girl whose unrequited love made her take her own life.”

The whoosh of my text being sent rings out in the quiet room.

I quickly remove my leather jacket, feeling stupid for wearing it, knowing I’m going to be running, and toss it in front of me. I place my phone to my chest, listening to my heart beat in my ears, trying to catch my breath, and my head tilts back, hitting the wooden desk behind me.

My eyes focus on the show of electric light dancing across the sky, the sweeping darkness and wind that dance outside Hollow Heights’ courtyard.

There was no real reason why I agreed to this. Not a good one anyway.

I was sitting on the floor scattered with paint-stained tarps, staring at a blank canvas while trying to decide if I should just order Thai food and watch The Great British Baking Show, when Lyra sent yet another text message. I wasn’t going to come.

And then, this little thing.

A sparkle.

It flared and shot across my chest like a falling star. A glimmer of hope that maybe, just maybe, I could forge friendships. That this could be a chance to not be so fucking alone.

When I tried integrating back into my old life, visiting past friends, trying to move forward, I kept messing it up. I was too quiet or too harsh for friends I’d known since middle school. I wasn’t fun anymore.

This relieved a brutal truth about my future.

I’m not deserving of the life I once had because I’m a different person.

A meaner, colder version.

My isolation from people was from fear, the fear I saw in the mirror every morning when I woke up. It lived beneath my skin, roaches burrowing into my flesh, and only I could see it. Fear that I was not deserving of anything good, because I’m not good.

So many women I’ve met through Light are kind. Giving, nurturing hearts that smile through the horror of their experiences. They flourish like beautiful flowers, and people admire their strength. I admire their strength to still love and trust this world after what it did to them.

No one commends what I turned into.

I am not a tulip you can pluck from the earth, sit in a vase, and admire until it wilts.

I became barren land. A desolate valley where no life could thrive. You could not scoop me into your hands without me eating away at whatever cage you tried to put me in.

They judge, they criticize me, they tell me I should be thankful and learn to heal. As if my anger isn’t the result of me trying to shed old skin and mending scars. As if my fucking anger isn’t me learning how to heal.

I deserve my anger, and it deserves me.

My phone’s ringtone blares loudly, and I scramble to answer, needing it to shut up before it gives up my hiding spot.

“Hello?” I whisper, not having time to check the caller ID before hitting the neon green button.

“Coraline.”

That fucking voice. His fucking voice.

It’s criminal.

The way he says my name is like sinners who plead hallelujah. It rolls off his tongue, a prayer that he savors, letting it linger on his lips. His voice reverberates around the room, clinging to the air as if he didn’t want to let it out of his mouth, wanting to keep me there.

“Cold,” I murmur, remembering the rules Lyra had spoken earlier.

He could only get temperature directions. Cold when he was far away, warm when he got close, hot when he was about to find me.

“You’re not cold, Hex,” he rasps through the speaker. “I felt you burning beneath my hands just the other day.”

My stomach drops, making me swallow nervously. This conversation takes me back to that night on the roof when Silas wasn’t Silas. He was only a voice.

A voice that heals, soothes, and makes my thighs tighten.

I find it ridiculous that a person who is known to not speak talks to me. That an outcast with mystery riddled throughout lets his voice be heard by someone like me.

The man who they said was a soundless void possesses a voice that turns me inside out.

Apparently, my pussy is voice activated.

It’s just worse now because I have a concrete image of what he looks like now.

Silas Hawthorne has been lethal in the looks department since high school, lean and toned, moving like he owned the ground beneath him. While my friends and I used to joke about their reign of terror, my breath always hitched when he came into a room.

Now? He’s a man.

Arms thick with muscle, tall and imposing in the biggest of rooms, everything about him twitches with power. He’s carved from granite, built for wars in the name of the Roman Empire, but carries the heart of a Greek poet, dripping tragic love with every split vein.

A door slams in the distance, making me gasp. The empty halls make everything sound closer than they appear, like he’s right next to me.

“Is your heart racing, knowing I’m going to find you?”

I scoff, lying through my teeth. “Colder.”

My ears pick up on the sound of him releasing an exhale, like he’s chuckling. A short, quick secret laugh.

“Did you just laugh?” I whisper, unable to help myself from asking.

“Scream for me, and you can find out.” His breath hisses out, mocking me.

Another door slams, ricocheting down the hall to the room I’m in. Fear prickles down my spine, but not the kind I’m afraid of. It feels more like the kind of fear people chase down. The kind adrenaline junkies want to bottle up and swallow when they are bored.

“Wanna know what you’re going to give me when I win, Hex?” It’s spoken like a threat, just before another slam thunders in my ear. “A taste of that witchy mouth.”

My tongue traces my bottom lip at the thought, knowing he’d devour me with his mouth if I let him. I don’t know much about Silas Hawthorne, but he doesn’t do sweet in the bedroom.

There is an undeniable energy that lets me know I’d leave his bed with bruises on my throat and scratches on my skin.

He wouldn’t just kiss me; he would devour me whole, and fuck if I don’t want to let him.

My thighs press together, rubbing up and down, forcing my jean shorts to rub against my damp panties. The little spark of friction makes me want more, making me want it all.

I bite down on my tongue as the hand not holding the phone makes a trail down my body. My palm rubs against my breast, and my nipples tighten around the metal piercing them, making me arch my back into my own touch.

“Warmer,” I hum when my ears pick up on the sound of his boots touching the ivory floors.

I let my hand skim my stomach, legs outstretched as my eyes close. In the dark of this classroom, I let my mind wander, let it think about Silas peering down at me, watching me.

How his eyes would drink me in, like they did when I got out of my car tonight.

“Do you taste sweet, Coraline? If I was a betting man, I’d say yes,” he whispers, a wicked promise in the back of his throat. “You’re going to drip like honey on my tongue, aren’t you?”

His voice grows electric, tangible hands lighting me up, practically forcing me to slip my hand beneath the hem of my shorts. I try to bite back the whimper in my throat when the pads of my fingers drag across the middle of my panties.

I’m wet, soaking the thin fabric, and all I can think about is Silas licking it up.

The sound of his shoes drifts away, and my ears strain, trying to listen for another door opening, but I hear nothing. My insides feel like a coil waiting to snap, only his breathing on the other side of the line when my fingers sneak into my underwear.

“Are you hiding somewhere no one can see you touching yourself?”

My eyes snap open, panicked, as I whirl my head around the desk, looking at the closed door. There isn’t any other point of entry, and when I look toward the tall windows, it’s nothing but rain. Not a single hint of movement.

“How—”

“If you moan a little louder next time, I’ll be able to find you, Hex.” There is a smirk on his lips—I hear it in the way his words curve and wrap around me.

“Cold,” I gasp when my middle finger slips between my folds, sending a shock wave of pleasure from the tips of my toes to my spine. An ache radiates from my core, begging me for more, begging him for more.

“When I find you with your hand still in your panties, are you going to let me replace your fingers with my tongue?”

My breath catches in my throat when his teasing banter turns into something more primal, a low growl in his mouth with every word. With my eyes shut, it’s almost as if he’s right in my ear, his lips rubbing against the sensitive skin of my neck, muttering every filthy word.

“Ice-cold,” I tease, rubbing tight circles around my clit.

I’m anything but cold. My body is burning, mind whirling with lewd images. Flashes of Silas winding his hand in my hair, jerking me backward as he leaves red marks on my ass from fucking me so hard from behind. The look in his eyes when he sees my pierced nipples for the first time, how full I would be with his cock buried to the hilt in my body.

“Tsk. Tsk.” Silas clicks his tongue. “Don’t lie to yourself, baby. Don’t pretend you don’t want me between those thighs, eating your pussy until you drench my face. ’Cause that’s what I’ll do if you just let me find you.”

Lightning cracks outside, followed by harrowing thunder. My back arches, hips pressing into my finger more as I rub myself harder. My cunt drips onto my hand, a broken moan mingling with the storm outside.

I want his dark eyes gazing up at me from between my legs, bringing me to the edge of pleasure and watching me fall right off the cliff.

“I’ll spread you open, fill your dripping cunt with my fingers. Stretching you open so it’s nice and fucking ready for my cock. You’ll be nothing but a tight hole for me to use, yeah?”

His words make me tremble, hips jerking as I chase the friction from my hand. My legs spread open as if to make room for his wide shoulders, as if he’s already here.

This is so fucked, but my body has already surrendered to his voice. I’m a puppet on his vocal cords, letting him string me up and play me as he sees fit. I’d let him use my body like a little toy, nothing but a thing for him to use and abuse until he’s finished with me.

“Am I getting closer?”

“Hot,” I gasp, my body fucking my fingers with vigor. “So fucking hot.”

“I bet you are close, aren’t you, baby? I can hear that tight pussy making a mess.” He groans as if it physically hurts him. “Tell me where you are, pretty thing.”

Sweat drips between my breasts beneath my shirt as I work myself over, the intense waves of pleasure from my clit making me shake. I fumble to put him on speakerphone, falling on all fours as the phone clatters to the ground, unbothered by the idea of him finding me, bent over with my hand in my pants.

My hips grind against my hand, the echoes of my moans and wet cunt ringing out in the classroom. I’m so close I can taste the aftermath of my climax on my tongue.

“What if I finish before you get here?” My throat constricts around the words, ending it with a desperate whine, practically begging him to find me so he can fuck me until my body breaks open for him.

“Then you’ll have been such a good girl for me, Hex.”

The feeling is indescribable. The way that sentence bounces off the walls around me, a direct line to my clit. My hips shove forward, taking me over the edge. It hits me like a freight train, my heart pummeling into my chest.

“Silas…” I whimper as the pulsations echo throughout my entire nervous system. My cunt clenches and unclenches around nothing, wishing it were him.

I twitch, rocking through the aftershock that sends little shocks through my stomach. My chest heaves as I drop my head between my shoulders, trying to catch my breath.

“That’s the easiest orgasm you’ll ever get from me.” His tone is menacing, laced with unquenchable lust. “You’ll work much harder for the rest.”

I shiver at the threat, hand slipping from my shorts as I lean back onto the backs of my legs, kneeling in the darkness.

The alarm goes off on my phone. A grin lights up my face, a little laugh falling from my lips. An orgasm and a win. A surge of teenage pride wells up in me. I’d just defeated a Hollow Boy at one of their own games. “I win,” I say on an exhale. “Pay up, Hawthorne. Give me your secret.”

I wonder if the rest of the girls won or fell into similar circumstances as me.

“I love watching you come.”

My eyebrows pull together, confused. The satisfaction I’d felt moments before collapses like a deflating balloon, the room too silent once again.

Then I hear it, my ego shattering. A sound that chills me to the bone, a distinct tapping noise that draws my gaze toward the wall of windows.

There is more than darkness outside now.

Just beyond the glass is Silas, illuminated by the lightning that cast an ominous shadow across his face, letting me see his eyes burning into mine.

“Get the fuck up off your knees with your mouth open like that, Coraline, before I break this glass and make you choke on my come.”

He watched the whole thing. He won and didn’t say anything just so he could see me come on my hand.

Slowly, he traces letters onto the window with his index finger, spelling out a word with measured strokes that make my heart quicken.

Zugzwang.

“English?” I snap, chewing a hole through my tongue as I stare at him, using the desk behind me for support to stand to my feet. My knees still shake, but I refuse to show him that.

“German,” he grunts, a tone full of sarcasm. His voice is rough and hoarse from lack of use, and I hate the way it tickles my spine. “Any move you make will only worsen your position.” 

“Another chess term? So? What does that mean for me?” 

This entire thing was a huge fucking mistake. Coming here, doing this with him. I’ve fallen into a hole that I’ll never be able to dig myself out of. Tomorrow, I’m marrying this man. Tomorrow, it’ll be a fight to keep every remaining wall protecting him from me intact.

Tomorrow, the war to protect his heart really begins.

“Inevitable checkmate.” He’s staring at me with hooded eyes that see all the lies I’ve tried to shove deep. He knows that what we just did broke a wall I’ll never be able to rebuild.

“It means you’re mine now, Hex.”