The Oath We Give (The Hollow Boys Book 5)

silas

Coraline is wrapped in my hoodie when I come back into the bedroom. Tucked and hidden away within the black fabric, she sits against the headboard of the bed with her knees pulled up to her chest. 

From the door, she looks so small, this fragile, tiny soul, and I find it hard to believe anyone had ever been afraid of her. 

The warm mug in my hands produces steam as I walk toward her, sweats hanging loose on my hips as I sit on the edge of the bed, giving her space but reaching the cup in her direction. 

“I don’t drink coffee,” she mutters, wiping her face with the sleeve of the hoodie. Redness stains her cheeks, tears still falling from her eyes. 

I can’t say that had been the reaction I’d wanted after we had sex the first time, but she’s nothing if not unpredictable. It’s one of the many qualities I like about her. 

How every day feels different, and there’s always something to discover. 

“It’s lavender tea.” I clear my throat. “Lilac mentioned it’s the only thing that helps you sleep. Fresh lavender, not the fake shit. Her words, not mine.” 

She blinks her bleary eyes, and my fingers have to fight not to reach out and wipe the tears away. The only way I want to comfort her is the last thing she needs. 

I want to hold her, touch her, physically make her feel safe, but touch is a trigger for Coraline. It’s a hard line to walk when all I want to do is touch her. 

“I thought I was out.” She tentatively reaches out, taking the mug from me and tucking it against her chest. 

My hand reaches behind my neck, scratching lightly. “I bought a plant.” 

“You bought a fucking lavender plant? Why?”

I refrain from laughing, because that’s what Rook said when I first told him. My head bobs up and down, a slow nod, confirming her words.

“Because you like it.” 

When is she going to realize there is nothing I won’t do for her? That if it’s what she desires or it benefits her well-being, I’ll do it. I’ll get whatever it is. She wants a garden of lavender? I’ll get her two. 

She deserves that.

“This is fake, Silas.” 

Like she’s trying to remind herself of that, like she’s trying to force herself to believe it when I don’t think we’ve ever been fake. Not once have I ever faked anything with her.

“But it feels real, doesn’t it?”

“That’s what scares me.” She lifts the cup to her lips, taking a sip and staring at me over the rim, her face covered by the shield of the hood.

I turn my body completely, hanging one leg off the bed. “Why are you so afraid of hurting me?” 

There is a beat of silence where she searches my eyes, and I can’t read her. I have absolutely no idea what she wants to say. The blank stare in her eyes breaks my heart, knowing whatever it is that makes her push me away scares her this badly. 

“I know what I am about to tell you is going to make me sound crazy. Like I’m making it up or it’s all in my head, and maybe it is, but it’s real to me. It’s real enough, and if I tell you…” She inhales deeply, sniffling. “When I tell you, I need you to believe me, Silas. Promise me you won’t make me feel like I’m insane.” 

Coraline has absolutely zero idea just how much I understand. The desperation of needing someone, anyone, to validate what is happening in your mind. She has no clue how far I had to go to twist the truth so it would fit other people’s view of me.

No matter what she says, I’ll believe her because I know how painful it is when no one else does.

“I promise.” 

And that’s all it takes. My word is enough for her to start talking. I let her, for the very first time, share her story with ears that understand what it’s like to keep a secret. To withhold the truth, carry it on your back like a hundred-year war.

It’s a story that starts with meeting a boy at a wedding when she was young, who gave her a flower and was the first person to say he loved her. A story that ended with that boy dying in a car accident the same night.

The cursed one’s first victim.

“I forgot about him, like he meant nothing, like he was a blip in my memory. I grew up, and I didn’t think about him again until I was in middle school. Until I met a guy named Riley.”

My brows furrow as I listen to her speak. I find that asking questions when people have a lot to say is fruitless. When you give others the space to talk, they will tell you everything you need to know.

Coraline only needed a trusted ear to spill her sorrows to; the rest would come.

“We dated in sixth grade. He had this gap in his teeth that I thought was the cutest thing I’d ever seen. He kinda looked like Justin Bieber.” She laughs, like she can still see his face in her mind. “On the last day of school before summer break, he kissed me in the stairwell. It was quick, cute, sweet. Everything you expect for a first kiss. Just before he left, he muttered an I love you so quickly I didn’t even have a chance to say it back. I can’t remember if I would’ve meant it or not. I waited by my phone that night for hours, waiting on a text or call from him, but it never came. My father told me the next morning that Riley had drowned in his neighbor’s pool. Just like that, he was there, and then he wasn’t.”

I distantly remember that, a guy in our grade dying in a drowning accident. Things like that don’t go unnoticed by the rumor mill. I just never knew Coraline was dating him.

Her silent tears turn to sobs, her hands frantically trying to wipe the tears away as her shoulders shake. Now that I’m sure her crying after sex wasn’t because of a traumatic flashback, I close the distance between the two of us.

I grab the mug of tea from her, setting it on the nightstand before gathering her into my arms. My back rests against the headboard, and I place her small body on my lap.

Whether she’s tired of fighting me or just physically exhausted from today, she slumps into me. Gives in, melts, and drops her head to my chest. I let her seek refuge here, in the shelter of my arms.

“And then Emmet, God, Emmet—” She chokes on the words, and my heart fucking shatters for her.

I hold the back of her head to my chest, the other running up and down her spine, soothing her. My lips press to the top of her head. All I want is to protect her from this, to shield her from this hurt, because no one else fucking had. No one looked out for her, and that both infuriates and breaks me.

“In 1997, Deep Blue became the first computer to defeat a world chess champion,” I say softly, hugging her tightly to my body. “Deep Blue traded its bishop and rook for Gary Kasparov’s queen after sacrificing a knight to gain position on the board.”

Coraline hiccups in my arms, listening intently as I continue.

“It’s my favorite match of all time because Kasparov had a chance. He was in a playable position, but he resigned, the first time in his career he conceded defeat. When he was asked about it, he said he’d lost his fighting spirit.”

I feel Coraline relax slightly against me, and I pause to press a gentle kiss to her temple, my voice the softest it’s ever been.

“There is no defeat when you refuse to lose. We can only be beaten when we give up on ourselves, Coraline.”

She turns her head, looking up at me, her chin sitting on my chest. “How do you know so much about chess games?”

“When I was young, I kept chess matches on a loop in my headphones. It calmed me down when I had too much to say but no space to speak.”

We sink into my steel-gray comforter, listening to each other’s breathing. It’s nice knowing that something that brought me comfort as a kid can do the same for her now.

For several moments, we sit just like that until she looses a breath and continues to talk, finishing her story with her long-term high school boyfriend, Emmet, who committed suicide just after she’d broken up with him.

“Stephen was only confirmation, the only one of them that I actually wanted dead, and he got to live. He’d always been so adamant that it was my fault I ended up in his basement. That there was something in me that turned him into an obsessive monster, made him feel like he had to have me or he’d die.”

“That’s why he calls you Circe,” I breathe.

What was once a fucked-up joke Regina used to throw in her face turned into a very real thing for her. Coraline genuinely believed she was cursed. That she’d been jinxed to ruin the men and boys who chose to love her.

It’s why she’s so scared to let me in, because she’s terrified she’ll hurt me. Which in and of itself tells me all I need to know about Coraline. Something that she doesn’t even see in herself.

She is not cruel or unkind.

She’s willing to live her life alone if it means not hurting other people.

“If you value your life, I’d stop trying to make me fall for you,” she mumbles against my chest.

I chuckle, the foreign noise deep in the back of my throat, a rumble of unused sound.

Her eyes widen, sparkling with a little more light than she had earlier.

“You should laugh more, Silas. Why are you so intent on hiding it so much?”

“I made a promise to someone, one I swore to protect. An oath I’ve held on to for a very long time, Hex.”

“A promise not to speak?”

I bite the inside of my cheek. “Something like that.”

This prompts her to sit up, straightening her back and straddling my lap, both of her knees outside of my hips. My hands fall behind my head, and I feel the warmth between her thighs.

“Give it to me.”

“Give you what?” I arch an eyebrow, flicking my gaze to her naked lower half.

“Not that.” She rolls her eyes, smiling. “I gave you my word to be your secret keeper. You took an oath, kept a secret. Now you can give it to me.”

“It’s my oath to give,” I say honestly. “I don’t know if you’ll believe me.”

“Silas.” She tilts her head, hair spilling out from the hood on her head. “I may suck at this emotional stuff and connecting with people. I get that. But one thing I can promise you is that no matter what, I’ll believe you. Your voice is the sound I trust most in the world.”

What a contradiction to everything I’ve heard my entire life. I meant it when I said I don’t know if it’s my promise to give her. I don’t know, and I can’t ask the person for permission because they are dead.

I don’t like assuming what Rosemary would want because no one knew her like she knew herself. But if I had to guess? Coraline is who she’d want me to share it with.

The only other person in my life who has spent their years depicted as something they’re not, living in a story that wasn’t written by our mouths.

I felt that the moment I saw Coraline. Knew that there was something in us no one else would ever be able to understand.

I look at her, knowing how much it took out of her to tell me her past. To share those parts of her with me. This is why she’s dangerous for me, not ’cause she’s got a bad track record with men but because I want to talk.

I want to take the leap of faith, to see if she’ll return the favor of belief. I’m so fucking tired of carrying this on my shoulders alone. Tired of the world seeing me as one thing and knowing who I am on the inside.

And I know she’s the one who needs to know the truth because as I sit here, looking at her, there isn’t an ounce of fear in my bones. There isn’t that rattling what-if bouncing in my head like there is with the guys. I know when I say what I’m about to say, she’ll trust.

Because it’s Coraline.

I’m the voice she needs. She’s the ears that I want to speak to.

“I’m not schizophrenic.”

Her eyes widen, and to her credit, she recovers well. It’s better than what I expected her initial reaction to be. I feel like I’ve unplugged a drain in me, and the water I’ve kept locked up begins to flood out.

It rushes out of me like blood from split veins.

“When I was twelve—” I clear my throat. “—I had been seeing a psychiatrist for a few months. My parents were freaked about how reclusive I was. They thought talking to someone other than them would be good for me.”

Even all these years later, I can see the small version of myself going into those appointments, spending hours just sitting on a leather couch, playing chess and talking about nothing.

There wasn’t anything wrong with me. I was just quiet.

“I had finished my session for the day and was waiting on my mom to pick me up when I heard a girl crying. I thought she might be in trouble, so I followed the sound. Followed it until I found my doctor abusing a little girl.” I flinch, turning my eyes away from Coraline for a second, remembering the flashes of what I saw. “I panicked, so I started screaming. I just wanted to help her, gain someone’s attention so they’d make him stop. But I only ended up learning just how far vile people in Ponderosa Springs will go to cover up their secrets.”

I tell Coraline about how they sedated me, and when I woke up in the hospital, I was listening to that scum of a doctor telling my parents that they had a son who was schizophrenic.

Rage boils within my veins as I relive the memories of that moment, feeling the sting of betrayal on my lips as I pleaded for them to listen to me, a twelve-year-old kid begging his own parents to trust him.

I died that day. Not when Rosemary was killed, but that very day, I died.

The son they knew, the one they raised, was gone. I had died and been replaced with something that didn’t belong. I became a fucking corpse, and no one could smell my rotting soul but me.

The worst part? I can’t be upset at them.

Not when they had no choice. There was a medical professional telling them everything I saw that day had been a hallucination. The thoughts in my head were now tainting my reality. My mother and father were terrified for me. All they wanted was to help.

“For a while, they actually made me believe it. That I made it all up.” I rub my hands down my face. “Then I met Rosemary.”

Then I met Rosie, and everything changed.

“She was the girl you saw, wasn’t she?” Coraline asks, scooting closer to my stomach, her hands caging in my face before her nails scratch along my scalp.

I nod. “She never would’ve told me about the abuse had I not seen it. Never told me why she was seeing the psychiatrist in the first place. Rosie was good at keeping secrets. Even from me.”

I don’t know how we never ran into each other before we were fifteen, but it was like the universe knew we needed each other to survive.

“I made her a promise that I’d never tell anyone, and she promised to believe me when I told her there weren’t voices, that I wasn’t losing my mind.”

I lived my entire life with a misdiagnosis of schizophrenia to keep her secret. To keep her safe. Because she was the only person I had, and I didn’t want to lose her.

“My psychotic break after Sage came back was real. All the trauma of losing Rose, it just—” I exhale, leaning into Coraline’s hands. “It fucked me up, but the hospitalization was the best thing for me. If it didn’t happen, I wouldn’t be here. I wouldn’t have found out the truth for myself.”

There is no headache, just complete relief.

Dams collapse upon themselves inside of me. I no longer feel trapped in my own head. I’m a rushing river, flowing, feeling.

“The guys,” she mutters. “They don’t know?”

I shake my head. “Telling them back then would’ve meant betraying Rosie. I couldn’t do that to her.”

Even though I’d wanted to. Even though I’d begged her to let me tell them, just so my closest friends would know me for who I really was and not who this town told them I was.

But she refused, and it was my secret to give them. I couldn’t make them believe Rosemary’s truth. So I swallowed it, chewed it down like nails, and lived with them stabbing my throat every time I opened my mouth.

Until I just stopped talking because it hurt too fucking much to lie to them.

“When you’re ready,” she hums, a yawn stealing her voice, “you’ll tell them. I’ll go with you. We can do it together.”

I look at her, lifting my palm to her cheek, rubbing a thumb just below her eye. A small smile tugs at the corner of her lips. Seeing her this way, vulnerable and open, fills me with heat.

This woman is not a curse, never has been.

She is a fucking gift.