The Oath We Give (The Hollow Boys Book 5)

coraline

What used to be a curated safe haven for me has been turned into a twisted reflection of the turmoil that lives in me. Every inch of this place is now a reminder of how much I have to fear. I’d allowed myself to drift too far from the plan. Had let Silas pull me further into him and away from danger he could not protect me from.

Stephen Sinclair has ripped through my apartment.

I can feel his presence everywhere. His malice lingers in every smashed dish. Unhinged possession exists in every shredded piece of fabric. Black paint splattered across every wall is marked with his fingerprints.

As I wander through the ruins of my home, the smell of Old Spice makes my eyes burn. He has seeped into every memory I created here, contaminating the life I’d built after him just because he could.

I barely flinch as I step over a pile of broken glass, walking toward my bedroom while Lilac talks in the background to Silas. Their voices are static, white noise.

The door creaks open with a screech. I refuse to cry, not with people here, but when I see the state of my room, I’m tempted. Not from sadness but the wrath that is boiling in my stomach, overflowing into my veins.

All of my current projects are demolished. Slashed, burnt, and wrecked beyond saving. The feathers from my pillows are spread across my broken bed. My clothes had been ripped from their places, torn and soaked in paint.

But it’s the single canvas resting on an easel sitting atop the chaos that seals my fury.

Written in red acrylic paint across a piece I’d already started, a piece that used to look starkly familiar to Silas, is Stephen’s scrawly handwriting. The newspaper clipping of our marriage is nailed to it, with a note beneath it.

He will never rid your body of my memory. If you’re in me, then I refuse to leave you. You’ll never escape me, Circe.

“Cora?” Lilac’s soft voice echoes behind me.

I am blinded by rage, red seeping into my vision from every corner. I can only feel the anger pounding through my veins, beating in my ears, pumping through my heart.

Did he not take enough of me in that basement? He had to remind me that I still had a heart, just so he could destroy the last bit of it.

There is a roaring in my ears, so intense that it nearly blinds me.

It wasn’t enough to take just a part; he had to have it all. With callused hands, he broke my ribs one by one, ripping the foolish organ from my chest cavity so he could feed on it.

He was never going to fucking stop, not until he devoured me whole. Until all of me once again belonged to him, even if I wasn’t alive.

I remember the night when I pleaded from the rooftop with Silas on the phone. When I begged to go back and die in that basement, left so empty I didn’t want to live. All I wanted was for it to take what was left of me and leave my body in the harsh earth to rot in peace.

I suppose the stars were listening that night, and they had granted my wish.

“Hey.” I feel Lilac’s gentle hand on my shoulder. “We can still salvage some of these things. I know it looks bad—”

“Don’t touch me,” I grunt, ripping my arm from her touch. I don’t bother turning to see the sadness ripple across her face. I don’t have the energy to make her feel better right now. “Leave me alone.”

“Coraline. I can’t imagine what this feels like, but we’ll figure it out together, okay? The police said they were able to catch one of the men fleeing the apartment. It’s going to be alright, I promise.”

“Lilac,” I say on a ragged exhale, “I’m asking you to give me some fucking space before I say things I don’t mean.”

“I—”

“Your happy-go-lucky bullshit is not going to help me right now!” My body whirls around as I toss my hands up. “I just want you to leave me alone.”

She flinches, my words growing hands and smacking her, and she retreats toward the door with glassy eyes. I’ve never spoken to her like that before, never so much as raised my voice in her direction.

There is just so much anger in me, so potent that I almost feel drunk from its power. I’m a volatile human being right now, and I’m afraid anyone who comes in contact with me will be left just as shredded as I feel.

“She didn’t deserve that.”

Silas comes into view, leaning against the doorframe, just watching me with those dark eyes. Eyes that see far too much, more than I want him to see.

“If I wanted a lecture on my behavior, I’d ask for it.” I grind my teeth. “I know I’m a bitch, and I know what she didn’t deserve.”

“You’re not a bitch, Coraline. You’re just hurting, that’s all,” he says.

I hate how he sounds so sure of himself. Like he knows it for a fact.

Like he’s positive I’m not an awful person, as if he knows me at all.

“You made me come once, and suddenly you know me?” I laugh incredulously. “Get fucking real and get out.”

His eyes slit, arms crossing in front of his chest, standing his ground. “You need somewhere to put all that anger, Hex? Put it on me. Give me the best you got.”

I turn away from him, distracting myself by trying to find anything in this room that might be worth saving. I kick papers and clothes around to see what’s beneath the rumble.

My mouth tries to seal itself; if I had glue, I’d force it to shut to keep back the venom that is coursing through my veins, threatening to spew from my throat toward anyone who comes too close, who tries to help.

No one can help me. No one will understand that I hate myself for the way I want to hurt other people because of the way I was hurt. Not because it makes me feel better or more powerful; it makes it feel like shit afterward, but it gives all this anguish somewhere to go.

“You’re stubborn. You don’t want to hear it, but I know what you’re doing. I can see it in your eyes, all that pain just festering beneath the surface. You cannot keep it in forever, Coraline. It’ll kill you.”

“You don’t know shit about my pain, Hawthorne.” My words are laced with poison, with intent to wound, to force him the fuck out of this room. I don’t care if it hurt his feelings. I don’t care if he hates me. I just want him far away from my path of destruction before I take all the good in Silas and swallow it whole.

I point my finger at him, eyes burning with rage. “Your girlfriend died. Cry about it. My orbital socket was shattered because I didn’t open my mouth for his dick fast enough. Our stories are not the same.”

I want to be alone with my fury, hidden away so I can ache in peace. I don’t want someone here to watch me fall apart. The entire world watched me lose my mind on national television. I was the story of the century, millions of eyes seeing me erupt into shards of tiny glass only to make it worse by feeling sorry for me.

So I cut them. I let them step all over me with their bare feet, and I burrowed myself into their heels like tiny razor blades.

I want to break. I want to cry and throw things all on my own with no eyes on me, in a silence where the only thing I can hear is my own heartbeat.

“My best friend spent his entire life swallowing his pain like rusty nails just to turn it into a weapon. I watched it eat him alive, and now I’m watching him in the aftermath,” he tells me. “Being mean? It won’t make me leave, Coraline. I’ve withstood storms much more violent than you. You are not what the world tells you. You are not a bitch. You are a girl. A girl who was abused. A girl just trying to survive.”

My chest feels like it might cave in on itself, the empty space where my heart used to be only a black hole that sucks up all the kindness in the room just to spit it back out.

“Fuck you, Silas.”

He walks further into the room like my words are an invitation. He stands atop my demolished room, in the rubble of my home, like a statue. A stunning piece of sculpted art in a space of pure malice.

“If you don’t learn to accept that you were a victim before you were ever a curse, all you’ll do is continue cutting people who didn’t hurt you.” His head tilts, watching me. “Is that what you want? To cut everyone out so you’re left with no one?”

“I wasn’t the victim,” I snide, feeling the tears slip down my cheeks. I’m exhausted, tired of Silas always finding me so broken. “Can’t you read a newspaper? I was in love with him. I wanted to be there.”

I pick up shreds of canvas like they’re the tattered pieces of my heart and toss them in the air, watching them rain down on me. My voice is almost a scream. “That’s not a victim. I’m not broken—all of my money put me back together. Can’t you see that? I asked for it, Silas. I asked for all of this.”

You asked for this.

You love me. Say you love me.

You want to stay here with me forever, right?

You’re fortunate you have money, girl. It’s awful for the ones that don’t.

It could’ve been worse, ya know?

You’re one of the lucky ones.

Stephen’s words and the cruel barrage of accusations from everyone around me echo in my ears, a thousand little hammers pounding away at my mind. I’m so close to exploding with a rage that could consume the world, so close to ripping apart the earth with my teeth.

But then something miraculous happens.

Silas’s fingers push a piece of hair behind my ear, palm lingering on my cheek, soaking up the tears that I had been desperately trying to contain. I look up slowly at him, eyebrows furrowed. He stares down at me before his lips turn up in a soft smile.

For the very first time since I’ve known the name Silas Hawthorne, he smiles.

An actual fucking smile. It’s sad, heartbreaking, and unmistakably genuine. As if he knew in this moment, I needed something warm, something kind more than anything else.

He is looking at me, the mess that I am, like I’m someone worth smiling at. It’s a gift that he gives to very, very few people. A gift that silently tells me I’m worthy of his kind of grace, of his kindness.

“No, Hex,” he whispers, shaking his head. “You did what you had to do so you could stay alive. That never made you weak. It never meant you asked for it. It makes you a survivor.”

A sob escapes my throat.

I’m scared.

Scared of what I’ll do to the people I care about. Innocent lives are destroyed by damaged people who were hurt before they had a chance to heal. I’m the example in this art of destruction.

I went through something horrific, I lived, and everyone told me I was lucky.

But no one showed me how to live with it. With this weight, this pain, these memories.

“You’re still living in survival mode. You just have to learn to turn it off, baby.”