The Oath We Give (The Hollow Boys Book 5)

silas

Funerals mark the end of life.

It’s swift, sharp, and no matter how well prepared you were for death to take your loved one, it still hurts. It aches in a way you can never predict, and the only Band-Aid, the only salve that will heal the wound, is the one thing you want the least of.

Time.

It’s the enemy. The thief. Salt water over a fresh wound. Until one day, it’s not. Until one day, you look down at the gnarled scar, no longer pink, and you’re thankful for how distance from the pain has helped you grow.

“How are you doing, baby?” My mother’s hand rests on my shoulder, giving me a gentle squeeze.

Her face is red, stained with tears that will take months to stop. Today, my mother buried her best friend. The person she chose to spend forever with, knowing forever isn’t real.

Love is wicked that way. It’s all-consuming and full of so much hope it makes you believe you can outrun death, that you can catch forever if you hold on tight enough.

“I’m alright, Mom,” I tell her as we stand adjacent to Scott Hawthorne’s coffin. “Can you I do anything for you?”

She blinks up at me, batting the tears away with her hand while she stares at me. I wonder if she’s reminiscing on the days of my youth or trying not to break because I look so like my father.

“I’d like you to leave.”

My eyes widen, brows furrowed. In my years of living, my mother has never said anything like that to me. I can feel my jaw unhinge as I stare at her open-mouthed.

“What?”

“Not like that, silly boy!” She swats at my arm like it’s obvious what she meant. Like that wasn’t the last thing I expected her to say at my father’s funeral. “You’ve stuck around this town for everyone but yourself. It’s never been what you wanted or what was good for you. Your father and I knew that, but nothing we would’ve said would have made you leave. You’ve found so much here. Ponderosa Springs will forever be a part of you, Silas, but it doesn’t have to be forever.”

Since I started high school, they’ve wanted me out of here. Far away from the whispers and rumors. I know it’s what they want, what my father would want; I just never got a chance to figure out if it was what I wanted.

It would be easy to say there is nothing but evil that remains in this town, the town that turned me into a villain, a scary story, a monster, but it’s not that easy.

This place holds memories that can never be moved. While life may not live on forever, memories do. Ponderosa Springs is a town that is empty yet entirely too full.

The nostalgia of childhood games lingers on the grounds of the Caldwells’ family home. Echoes of laughter sit on top of the high school roof. Bloody knuckles and adrenaline find rest at the Graveyard. Victory is at home at every Gauntlet, and chaos is burned into every street.

Our marks are here. They’ll stay here.

We can choose to leave it, but those memories stay with it.

How do you say goodbye to that?

“Dad’s company, Mom. I can’t just pick up and leave after I just settled into the CEO position,” I tell her, which is easier than explaining the rest.

“Your father cares more about your happiness than he ever did about that company, Silas. We thought you’d leave after graduation, but when Rosemary died, your grief kept you rooted here. I’ve been watching you outgrow this place for years.”

But not all memories are good.

There is death that lives here too. Secrets and pain. Lies and unforgivable actions. We will never be able to walk on the grounds of Ponderosa Springs without thinking of the bodies we buried in it. The lives we took and the ones that were taken from us.

The possibility of leaving that behind? That’s easy.

Building a life with Coraline that isn’t constantly watched or spoken about. Giving my girl the space she needs to heal and grow. Being there to watch what she turns into without the weight of shame on her shoulders.

“I’ll think about it, okay?”

“Okay, sweet boy,” she murmurs.

I gather my mother into my arms, hugging her small frame tightly to me. There is no guilt in not telling her the truth about my schizophrenia. Not when the truth doesn’t matter.

Whether I have it or I don’t, it wouldn’t change the way she loves me. The way she has always loved me. Belief isn’t the validation I need from her. Belief was something I needed from myself.

The truth will only bring guilt and sadness to her life, two things she doesn’t need as she embarks on her journey of grief. She’ll struggle to forgive herself for trusting a doctor over her own son’s words, as if she had a choice. She’ll forget how scared she was for me and hate herself for not believing me.

I won’t do that to her.

The people in my life who need to know, know.

That’s all that matters.

My father’s funeral moves forward, just like life. I shake hands to be polite, listening to condolences from people who didn’t know him.

When the last person files out of the church, the newly rebuilt St. Gabriel’s, I’m left alone. Well, for a short moment, at least.

The doors to the sanctuary open, and as I look up from my seated place on the steps of the altar, I see Alistair, Rook, and Thatcher make their way inside, dressed in various suits and looking much older than I ever remember us being.

It’s been six months since the day we stood above an empty grave that stunk of burnt flesh and secrets, all of us dressed to the nines, one of us wearing a wedding dress. A day that is supposed to mark the beginning of a new adventure.

It marked the bitter end of our vengeance.

Alistair swore never to come back here, but there’s little he wouldn’t do for me. He’d swallow stepping foot in Ponderosa Springs if it meant being here to celebrate the life of my father.

“How pissed do you think they’d be if I burned this place down a second time?” Rook asks as he slides into one of the pews, tossing his arms behind his head and making himself at home.

“I have a plane to catch tomorrow. If you end up in jail, you’re on your fucking own.”

I smirk at Alistair, silently agreeing but also knowing we’d break him out the moment they sealed him inside.

“I’m sick of funerals,” Rook mutters, dark sunglasses hiding his eyes. “It’s going to be nice waking up tomorrow not worried about one of you being killed.”

“Did you just say something I actually agree with?”

“Can we fucking please get rid of American Psycho now?”

Thatcher slides into the pew behind him, leaning forward. “You wish, Van Doren.”

It’s silent for a moment, just us existing in the finality that this part of our lives is over. The last enemy chess piece is off the board, and we have total control of the game.

Well, almost all of them, but honestly? My least concern in life is Easton Sinclair. I’m all out of revenge, and he gave me an opportunity no one else had.

A chance to say goodbye to Rosemary. A chance to apologize. A chance to let go of my guilt.

So even though he shot me, if I ever see him again? I’ll thank him for that and hope Rook isn’t close by because he’s not as forgiving with Easton as I am.

“Do you guys remember when we were kids and snuck into the Caldwell library at Hollow Heights to set off bottle rockets?” Rook says, making me recall a time when we were much smaller and even more reckless.

“I remember Thatcher throwing you under the bus,” Alistair snorts, crossing his arms in front of his chest as he grins. “Even though it was his idea.”

“First of all, it was your idea, Ali,” Thatcher argues. “You were angry at your father; I simply gave you a solution. Don’t blame your temper on me.”

“I think we’ve had this argument before,” I mutter. “When we were like thirteen in the back of my dad’s car.”

My father had been the one to pick us up from the dean’s office after we’d been caught on camera footage. It was after that I was dedicated to learning how to hack security cameras. No video, no crime.

“I’m not saying I’m going to miss Ponderosa Springs, but…” Rook pauses, looking around at each of us. “This place holds us together. What do we have without it?”

The question echoes with no answer. None of us are sure how to respond because I don’t think any of us know. We’ve just found out we can be different people than this place expected us to be.

“We could buy this place, you know,” I say abruptly, not sure if I mean it, but I know I don’t want to lose them.

Maybe it was my near death experience and the shock to the heart that brought me back, but I’d keep Ponderosa Springs forever, pain and all, if it meant I got to keep the boys.

“What the fuck would we do with a church?”

“I mean Ponderosa Springs.” I motion toward them. “Alistair is about to inherit most of the land anyway. We each own a portion of this place—we could buy the rest and split it. We could make it ours.”

Could we turn a town of horrors into a home? Or was there too much fucking damage?

“Or we could sell it,” Alistair says forcefully, already set in his decision before we take it to a vote. “This town doesn’t make us. We make us.”

Do we keep the place that made us or sell the place that damned us?

The sanctuary doors open once again, but this time, it’s our better halves. Coraline grins when she sees me, letting go of Sage’s hand to make her way down the middle aisle toward me.

I’ll never get tired of waiting at the end of the aisle for her. No matter how many times we get married, I’ll wait here for her every single time.

I stand up when she reaches the bottom step, walking down to stand in front of her. My fingers brush her hair behind her ears, thumb tracing her bottom lip.

“Hey, Hex.”

“Hi, baby,” she breathes, wrapping both arms around my waist before leaning up on her tippy-toes to peck my lips softly. It’s quick, short, my favorite habit of hers.

Everything is my favorite when it comes to Coraline.

“You doing okay?”

I nod. “Better now.”

“What were you boys talking about?” Briar asks from next to Alistair, grinning, completely unaware of our potentially life-changing conversation.

“Memories,” I say simply.

Not a lie. Not the truth.

There are roads of freedom in front of us. Roads where the reputation of the infamous Hollow Boys do not follow. A place where the distant echoes of our tortured past don’t reach.

We’ll forever be the bastard sons of Ponderosa Springs, but we know now that isn’t all we are.

We are more than rage, sin, lineage, and silence.

Alistair Caldwell is more than wrath. He is a fierce protector, an older brother, a shadow that cannot exist without a little light.

To know Rook Van Doren is not internal damnation. It’s a blessing to witness his burning, his inferno that consumes and releases the embers of the ones he loves.

And Thatcher Pierson is not an apple fallen from a sinister tree. He’s the reminder that our family’s history does not determine our future. That love is action and never words.

I am more than words no one believes. I’m a voice to someone who needs it.

We are not unlovable creatures of the night with appetites for violence. There are people, our people, willing to convert to the shadows to show us life beyond vengeance and trauma.

Beyond the flames of our destructive rage, there would forever lie a single thread of obsidian weaving our souls together. It will linger in us as a reminder. That we were once just four boys, little kids who, in the darkness of our lives, forged a family out of our despair.

We aren’t blood, but that means shit in the grand scheme of it all.

It’s easy to love someone who shares your DNA. A true test of unconditional love is who you choose to never give up on, regardless of relation.

That’s what we are to one another.

Family.

“Where do we go from here?” Rook asks, leaning forward and resting his crossed arms on the pew in front of him. The fear of parting weighs heavily on his shoulders. I know we’ll never leave each other, not really, but the possibility of different futures taking us apart scares me too.

“Wherever the fuck we want.” Alistair leans over and ruffles his hair, like he used to when we were younger. “Wherever the fuck we want, Van Doren.”

I pull Coraline tighter to my side, pressing my lips to the top of her head, inhaling the smell in her hair, knowing I have my arms wrapped around the person that I’d give up anything for. Even if she’s truly cursed and loving her kills me, I’ll die sated.

I’ll go with her scent of lavender in my nose, the memory of her touch ingrained in my skin. Full and overflowing with her, I’ll meet death with a thank-you and a favor.

My favor will be this: give my soul a head start next go around. She’s stubborn and hard as fuck to catch.

“To the Styx?” I offer.

In the dawn of death, with a fresh start on the horizon.

“To the Styx.”

This is the echo that is heard across lifetimes.

The End…