The Oath We Give (The Hollow Boys Book 5)

silas

Red and blue police lights illuminate the front of Alistair Caldwell’s childhood home.

I think this is the first time he’s stepped foot on this property since he left Ponderosa Springs two years ago. There was nothing that lived inside those walls worth visiting, no matter how many times his mother and father tried to beg him to come home, come back and take his rightful place so they had a son to pass their legacy on to.

As if they hadn’t treated him like a body bag of spare parts since he was born. As if they hadn’t created him in a petri dish just in case something happened to his older brother, Dorian.

If only they knew how much they’d regret choosing his older sibling as their heir.

“Fucking coward! Can’t even come out and face me?”

The thud of Easton Sinclair’s body being slammed into the side of a police cruiser echoes as I climb out of the front seat of my car.

I glance over at Rook, the two of us a few steps behind Alistair and Thatcher.

What does the Caldwell family have to do with this? Of all places for Easton to show up, here is where he chooses?

Thatcher slides next to the officer with his arms around Easton, trying to force him into the back seat with the cuffs locked around his back.

“Mind if we have a few minutes before you take him in?” He lifts several hundred-dollar bills up between his fingers, waiting for a few seconds for the older cop to take it from him, pocketing the cash.

“You’ve got twenty.”

He slams the car door before spinning Easton around to face us, letting him rest on the side of the vehicle as he steps away to give us our paid time.

Easton’s eyes are bleary, skin pale and sweaty. I’m not sure how long it’s been, but if I had to guess? It’s been months since Easton Sinclair was sober.

The smell of booze rolls off him in vile waves, my stomach curling at the scent of filth and alcohol.

“Of course you four would show up.” He bares his teeth. “Wayne Caldwell call you to rescue him?”

“What the fuck are you doing here, Sinclair? Stephen send you here to try and fuck with us?” I ask.

“Why don’t you ask Alistair?”

Easton Sinclair has always been predictable. He follows orders like a beaten dog and rarely derails from the path laid out before him.

I don’t know this guy. He’s not the person I’d grown up hating. This person? He’s a stranger. Which makes him far more dangerous than before. Before, I could predict his next stupid move. Now? There’s an air of uncertainty.

But it’s not him that blindsided me.

It was the person I’d called a brother.

“Who told you.”

Something changes when Alistair speaks. Everything becomes tight, making it difficult to breathe in, turning the hot-blooded energy into vindictive cold.

Thatcher’s shoulders stiffen as he looks at our friend, eyebrows twitching with confusion, and so quick, like a fleeting star, hurt passes through his eyes before he returns to passive Pierson.

“Stephen was nice enough to call me today just to tell me that I’ve been carrying the wrong last name for my entire life. He felt like it was time.” Easton spits the words out like they burn his tongue. Eyes sharp as knives, the pure hatred emanating from his gaze is palpable, disdain and disgust pouring out toward Alistair.

“Your father doesn’t even have the balls to come out and face the son he never claimed.”

The air around us thickens, charged with tension as the bond we’d spent years cultivating frays. I can feel the thread connecting the four of us snapping and coiling. A warning that we are on the verge of breaking something we might never be able to repair.

These are the moments when you are truly tested. Choosing to stand by someone ever after they’d deceived you.

A true test of loyalty.

I just never expected it to be Alistair Caldwell to give us that test. I’d always thought it would be me.

“What the hell are you talking about—”

“Wayne Caldwell is my father, Van Doren. Learn to read the fucking room, dumbass,” Easton snaps, leaning up from the car like he might try and go for him, but he stumbles, too drunk to stand on his own. “A druggie heir. A rotten spare. And a bastard. The completed trio for the king of Ponderosa Springs. How fucking ironic.”

Even though I try not to, I turn my gaze to Alistair for a brief second just to see his face, only to find it as solid as ever.

“Where is he, Sinclair. I know he didn’t call to rehash old memories,” he asks, ignoring the revelation about his new brother, ignoring it because he’d already known about it. This isn’t a shock to him like it is to the rest of us.

“Don’t you mean Caldwell, bro?” Easton spits, painting Alistair’s black shirt with saliva before grinning, proud of himself.

The sound of glass shattering rings out as Alistair grabs the front of Easton’s shirt, slamming him into the side of the police car with so much force it breaks the back window.

“You’re still a sick fucking piece of shit, Sinclair. You will never be family to me.” Alistair seethes, knuckles white as he grips the material of his shirt. “You want a chance to bond with the dad you never knew about? Then I’ll ask again. Where the fuck is Stephen.”

They say blood is thicker than water.

Whoever they were didn’t grow up in Ponderosa Springs.

“I don’t know where he is right now.” He swallows, flicking his eyes to me, the pain in his back dulled by the booze, I’m sure. “But I know where he’ll be on the day of your wedding.”

The entire space seems to go quiet as the officer returns, taking Easton away from us and to jail for the night to cool down, leaving us with more answers than questions and broken faith.

“I—” Alistair starts, but Rook interrupts him.

“You want to talk? You can do it at the Graveyard.”

My dark boots meet the weathered and cracked asphalt pockmarked with weeds that grow through the splits, pitted with decades of abandonment. Despite how empty it is, the smell of gasoline and blood still hits my nose, reminding me of high school.

The Graveyard is a barren, dead space that gave birth to anarchy, an abandoned race track that the children of Ponderosa Springs turned into a haven for rebellion. Illegal fights, unsanctioned races, and pure adrenaline.

I’d spent most of my weekends here, fought in this very grass circle in the center of the track I stand in right now.

I’d grown up watching Rook and Alistair fight. It’s not a novelty for a kid who lives for inflicting pain and another who needs the hurt to survive.

But this is the first time where it was meant with malice.

Rook’s knuckles are split open as he sends another fist into Alistair’s jaw. When he rears back to attack again, I wrap my arms around his middle, picking him straight up from the ground.

He fights me like a child, jerking against my hold.

“How long!” he screams toward Alistair, who is sitting on the ground, wiping his hand across his bloody mouth. “How fucking long!”

I sling Rook to his feet, putting my hands on his chest to keep him from charging again. His hair sways in front of his face, rage that looks like hurt morphing his face as he points behind my shoulder.

“How fucking long did you know he was your brother!”

Alistair’s jaw goes taut as he pushes himself from the ground, glancing at Thatcher, who doesn’t bother offering a hand. We feel divided, and I seem to be the only one who understands where Alistair was coming from.

Guilt awakens in my stomach, hot and urgent, churning like fire waiting to consume me.

“How—”

“Two years,” Alistair grunts, spitting blood onto the dying grass. “Wayne told me right before I left Ponderosa Springs. I didn’t think we’d be fucking back here. It wasn’t supposed to be a goddamn problem.”

“You didn’t think to mention it before you left?” Thatcher speaks up, crossing his arms in front of his chest.

“It didn’t matter. It doesn’t matter now. It changes nothing.”

“It changes everything!” Rook shouts, tossing his hands in the air.

Fear and pain throb in my chest.

If I told him the truth now, would it change everything? How he sees me? Would telling them the truth do more damage than good?

They may have difficulty admitting what each of us means to each other, but I don’t. I may not say it out loud, but I have always known what they mean to me.

I’ve never been afraid of love, just losing it.

And right now, I’m terrified my truth will shatter this shaky bond. That it will be the straw that breaks the dam.

“Oh, so who we’re related to matters now?” Alistair scoffs, dark hair sticking to his sweaty face. “That determines who I am to you, Van Doren?”

“How the fuck am I supposed to trust you? How do I believe a word that comes out of your fucking mouth?”

The truth sits on my tongue, begging me to let it out as Alistair takes a threatening step forward. I’m tempted to throw a shot back at Rook to match his bloody mouth.

“Careful there. You sound a little like your father. Don’t act so goddamn sanctimonious. You forget we didn’t find out about Sage until after you’d fucked her and got your pretty-boy heart broken.”

My chest tightens, hands reaching inside and pulling on my raw nerves. Their argument is only the tip of the iceberg, only a preview of what their reaction would be to me.

I can’t keep quiet any longer, not when I’ve gotten so comfortable speaking to Coraline. She’d given me too much confidence in my own words, how easily she’d accepted my voice.

It makes it impossible to keep my lips fucking closed.

“We all have secrets.” The plague inside of me spills out. “It doesn’t mean there isn’t trust. Some secrets are just heavier than others. It’s harder to share the weight of them.”

Rook looks at me in the eyes, removing his attention from behind me. My hands are still on his chest, and a piece of me wants to grip his shirt in my palms just to make sure he doesn’t go anywhere.

“Yeah?” Rook says, jaw twitching. “What’s yours?”

I see every memory we’ve ever had together flash before my eyes, knowing that after this conversation, memories with Rook and the guys might be all that’s left of the Hollow Boys.

My tongue drags across my dry lips. “I’m not schizophrenic.”

I move my hands from his chest, stepping back and turning so that I’m facing each of them. The weight of my secrets presses down on me as I swallow.

“I’m not schizophrenic,” I say again, just to taste it on my tongue.

My mouth waters around the truth, desperate for more, and I give it. I watch each of their faces as I speak every part of my story. Every detail of the secret I kept to myself for far longer than I ever should have. The secret I swore to hold to my chest just to protect Rosemary.

I tell them because we are nothing if we can’t stand next to each other in the unknowing. It was the reason we’d found each other. Each of us had unspeakable pain. This is just the first time I’m talking about mine.

The words rush out of me, so desperate to share after years of torture. They have always existed right on the tip of my tongue, begging to be spoken aloud, but fear was a shield.

Coraline had helped remove it. Taught me that a little faith in someone’s voice goes a long way.

“Why didn’t you say anything to us?” Rook’s voice is choked with disbelief. Sorrow, maybe, that he didn’t question me sooner. “Why’d you suffer alone?”

I look at him, knowing his soft heart will take the blame for this. That he will leave here and hate himself for not being someone I could trust with this. Like it was his fault.

But Rook has never been to blame. He’s always been a solace for me. A person who I could just exist around without being drained. He’s fuel for my soul. Always has been. Forever will be.

“Would you have believed me? Or would you have thought I was just saying that so I didn’t have to take my medication?”

There is a pause, each of them knowing the answer. That without telling them about Rosemary’s abuse, none of them would have taken my words as truth. Each of them would’ve been too afraid of the consequences of me not being medicated.

I don’t blame them.

I’m not angry at Alistair.

I can’t feel anything besides relief, knowing the ones I’ve always kept closest to me know me. Each of us has a story, unbelievably hard fucking stories.

They hurt, and they bleed. When they fall on deaf ears, they become myth. But it doesn’t make it any less real for us. I look at them, knowing that regardless of the lies, one truth is our solid foundation.

“We are all unbelievable circumstances that are complete truth.”