The Oath We Give (Hollow Boys, #5)

by Monty Jay

“Life left you empty so that you’d have room to fill it. We are only hollow if we allow ourselves to remain that way.”

“I had to learn how not to live for the trauma and loss. I’m living in spite of it. Don’t let him win.”

We are who we are. No matter where we go or how we change, there will always be this knotted, twisted string tangling each of us together. What we found in each other as kids is something we refuse to ever let go of.

I’ve always believed love is like water, the way it flows between bodies and souls. You can’t stop

the flow of it because one pathway is closed off. It just finds another exit.

There isn’t a single person in this world who will look out for you better than yourself.

To show them and this entire rotting town how rabid and vile I am beneath the surface. That I am not plastic but a force of self-loathing and misery that would terrify their sleepy lives.

People constantly battle two versions of themselves. The individual they give to the world, the person who exists for public consumption, and the version they hide, the person they are when no one is watching.

I’m a killer, but I was also raised to respect women’s boundaries.

what a #feminist Silas is.

But there are some things we can never let go of. Things that refuse to let go of us.

For a moment, we are two strangers in an empty room, connected only by our eyes. Our pasts

do not overlap, and we are totally unknown to each other. It’s just a second that I allow myself to imagine a world where I can be attracted to him without repercussions.

I’m not the princess. I’m the rotten apple. The poison made to demolish happily ever afters.

I am cursed. Inside of me lives a spell that crushes the hearts of men. My bones are built from a hex, dark magic that drives boys mad. This curse I live with makes love a lethal weapon.