The Oath We Give (Hollow Boys, #5)

by Monty Jay

To everyone who never believed in fairy tales because they understood the villain. And to me, for finishing the series of a lifetime.

“You’re not schizophrenic.” Ten years. I’ve waited ten years for someone other than Rosemary Donahue to say those words to me. For someone who was alive and fucking competent to confirm what I’d known for so long.

No one would ever know why Ronald Brewer made loving parents and a vicious town believe a twelve-year-old boy had schizophrenia. A secret. An oath I’d vowed to take to my grave. To this day, I’ve kept my word to her. This was the only way I could still protect her. Although my promise of keeping her safe had been broken the day of her death, I swore to her tombstone that no one would get away with hurting Rosemary Donahue. Never again.

My mind leaked black slime that oozed into every pore and choked me with deception. It twisted and crawled, slithered with creatures too scary for most to imagine. My monster, my demons, the shadows that skidded off the walls and took on humanoid shapes. They would paralyze people with fear. Even though they’d left and have yet to return since my hospitalization, I’d accepted the memory of their existence, grown used to it. I realized I would always be a much scarier beast than my mind and the evil it can produce. I’m frightfully worse. Because I am, and have always been, real.

I fucking hate crying. Loathe showing this weakness, this vulnerability that has no room in my life or in this town.

The weight has shattered my shoulders, and I’m tired of suffocating. I can’t breathe, ever. Why can’t anyone see that? Can they not see me turning purple? The hands of my mind choking me? Because every time I look in the mirror, I see it.

“To fill.” “What?” My eyebrows furrow. His tone is a steady hand, calm water. “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.” “How? Where do I even start? I don’t⁠—” “Learn, Coraline. You lived for a reason. Figure out why.”

I don’t have to be Coraline Whittaker, survivor of the Sinclair House of Horrors. I’m not the award-winning artist prodigy or the regal daughter of James Whittaker. I’m not the older sister to a girl I’ve trapped myself in this town for. I’m Coraline. I’m not okay, and right now, that’s enough.

meant to him. “How did you live after losing Rosemary?” I’d always thought it was beautiful, his grief. A living reminder of a love lost too soon. To my surprise, he doesn’t hang up or tell me to fuck off. Instead, he sighs. The sound of a lighter flicking makes its way through the speaker. “I didn’t.” I scoff, “So, you’re dead?” “You don’t know?” Once again, I can hear the smirk. In my mind, I can see only his lips, tilted up in the corners. “They say I’m dead on the inside.” “They call me cursed. I wonder which is worse?”

“Coraline,” he says before I can hang up. “Yes, Silas?” The voice on the other side once again reminds me he isn’t just a voice or an ear. That he’s a person who feels this pain too, that emptiness inside, and he’s looking for something to fill up the holes. “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.”

In this very moment, my in-between? Preparing for my life without my father in it. Bracing myself to teach Levi and Caleb how to live without him. Building the muscles in my shoulders to hold the weight of my mother’s grief. But there is only so much preparation you can make for death. You can plan the funeral, buy the plot, and read the grief books, but in the end, it doesn’t matter. Death still has a way of sweeping the rug out from under you every time.

Computers have always been my thing. They make sense to me; they don’t ask questions, and there is usually a code to fix issues when they fuck up. Understanding my family’s company isn’t an issue; it’s the people who work there. Humans are not my thing. Have never been my thing, will probably never be my thing. I understand emotions, feel them, but I actively hate them every second of the day. And people have a shit ton of them. People have manuals. You can’t override their systems, and half the time, what you see is never what you actually get.

Death isn’t the enemy. It’s time.

Thatcher: Your chest looks like a middle school desk. Rook: I’ve hugged cactus nicer than you.

Chipotle bag haha

All of Thatcher’s feelings are tied up in Lyra. He doesn’t have any left for the rest of us.

We’ve grown apart, but at our core, we’ll know each other until we are gray. Time, space, distance, death. None of it will ever take away what we know for certain—that we know each other at the core of our beings.

They feel as if they’ve moved so quickly, as if no time at all has passed by, and just yesterday, I was burying bodies. Yet, in my chest, I feel it. The time that’s slipped through my fingers. It’s measured by my grief and the stages of it. Acceptance has been the most painful.

There are scars on each of us that will never fade. Deep wounds that bleed into each other that only we can see. We came out alive but not unscathed.

“Alistair just got married,” I tell him, because that’s what normal people say about their friends. Sharing the ordinary updates of their adult lives. I feel the weight of his stare, and I glance over at him. His eyes have widened, and there is skepticism on his brow. “And the girl was willing? She walked down the aisle of her own accord?” A snort leaves my throat. “Seems that way.”

Alistair Caldwell never really seemed like the marrying type. More like a brood in the corner until he died kinda guy.

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.

I’m not finished with you four. Time to come home, boys.

Two years. That’s it? Two years before this fucking town had to come back from the dead? It wasn’t happy with its pound of flesh. It wanted to eat us whole.

It’s always been better to remain quiet than risk speaking words no one believes.

I get these impulses to scream until glass shatters, or break everything in my line of sight, just so they all can see what really lives inside of me. 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. My very being would scare them so badly no one would utter my name aloud again.

“Should I thank you, Daddy Dearest, that your friendship with Stephen spared me being sold? Or my mother for those cursed genes that made me special enough to keep?” My voice is just above an acceptable level. They may give a shit about what others think, but I’ve been called “cursed” by this town my entire life. What they believe of me doesn’t keep me up at night. Demons do.

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 mean, technically I could hack just about every camera she passes by on a regular basis, but that feels too far, even for someone like me. I’m a killer, but I was also raised to respect women’s boundaries.

“Rook is positive it’s the coked-out daddy’s boy out for revenge. His last name took quite a hit when Stephen was arrested.” I snort. “Easton Sinclair may have majored in computer science, but he isn’t better than me. If a tree fell over in Japan, Rook would blame it on him.”

“This is the last time, Silas,” Alistair says, conviction in his voice. “This is the last time I come back to that fucking place. Even if it kills me.”

I gave my voice in exchange for silence. Gave it my peace in exchange for acceptance. And now? The one thing I never, ever wanted to do again, and it’s forcing me? Fuck off.

He’s dying, giving up his company because of me. My friends are in trouble because of me. Rosemary died because of me. It’s all my fault. All of it.

Music thumps through my veins. It’s never sounded better than in this moment. All of my inhibitions are lowered, and all my mind can think about is finding nirvana. In the dark of night, I seek artificial happiness to fill the void of my empty days.

When the devil can’t reach you, he sends a drunk, entitled man.

Only the voice. Smooth and calm as the night sky. Silas Hawthorne.

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. His eyes are dark, like sodden earth, and so fucking vacant, begging for life to occupy them, aching for a spark. I track the details of him from his straight, distinguished brow to the slope of his strong nose. Freckles, such a soft and innocent thing, dust the planes of his light-brown cheeks, and his lips are so inviting that I have a sudden overwhelming urge to see him smile. Just watch as his full mouth tilts up and shows off what I know are blinding white teeth. There is an ache in me to touch him, but I refuse it.

I’m the spindle lover boys prick their fingers on. I leave them comatose with only the memory of my touch. I’m not the princess. I’m the rotten apple. The poison made to demolish happily ever afters. I’m no good for him, for anyone.

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. Falling for me is not the fear. It’s what happens when I fall for them. Every man I have ever loved has either disappeared, died, or lost their mind. Magic may not be something most believe. Curses may not be real to some, but things can only happen so many times before you realize that a common thread in these tragedies is always you.

Another person won’t be walking romantically into my life ever again. I don’t mean that in the typical way where people say it as a joke or a shield ‘cause they’ve never been given the right opportunity. I mean it in how even if my soul mate descended from the clouds and fate wrote in big block letters in a mirror that this person was the one, I’d still turn around and walk away like I didn’t even see them.

“Breaking news. An inmate has escaped Rimond Penitentiary just last night. We are told the prisoner is Stephen Sinclair, arrested just a little over two years ago for his involvement in a national sex-trafficking organization. Law enforcement considers this man armed and dangerous.”

I told them. I told all of them. Screamed it for days. I was his Circe, and Stephen Sinclair would always come back for me.

“Are the girls okay?” “Currently taking over my house,” Thatcher grumbles. “No one is thrilled to be living with you, cactus. Don’t look so troubled about it.” “First night back and Rook’s already killed someone.” Alistair’s jaw twitches, running a frustrated hand across his mouth. “This place is a black fucking hole, not a home.” “I didn’t kill anyone. I drugged someone and helped them off a bridge. Two very different things in the eyes of the law.”

My body clings to him as much as my soul does. He is my gravity. My earth, sun, and moon. There has not been another voice in my ears for who knows how long. I have not felt another touch or inhaled air he did not provide. I barely remember my life without him. My own name is a foreign word. Stephen Sinclair is my home. My wrists ache for his chains that keep me safe. His hands are the ones that fed me, his kiss the one that both broke and healed me. No one else has ever been able to love me. It’s only him.

Gag

“Some rich asshole already paid double.” My lips tilt at the corners. “For all of them.”

“I don’t understand why you do that.” I arch an eyebrow. “Do what?” “That.” She motions to my face. “Just because you have money doesn’t mean your experience, what you went through, isn’t valid, baby. Money can never take that pain away. You’re allowed to hurt. You’re allowed to talk about it just as much as the next person.”

It’s impossible for anyone to know who inspired it. That most of these paintings that some stranger purchased are from a raw, deep, painful place inside of my soul. However, the universe is keen. As of late, it seems to constantly remind me that there is one person who knows about that place in me. Heard it. Witnessed it. Calmed it. Goosebumps scatter across my arms as a familiar voice answers Hedi’s question. “Voice in the Canvas.”

Coraline Whittaker is a mystery to this town. To me. She is a mirage, a naturally occurring optical phenomenon that bends light rays to produce the image of a girl who is a familiar face but is unknown beneath the surface.

She became something to fear. I know what that is like. How much easier it is to be scary. If people are afraid of you, they won’t risk getting close. The truth is I don’t know Coraline. Not really. Not what makes her laugh or her favorite color. Who she wanted to be when she grew up or if she’s allergic to shellfish. That’s what makes this…odd for me. Having this connection with a person I hardly know. I do not know her the way most do, but I know her in a way no one else ever would. Our trauma is a kindred spirit, emotional turmoil that two strangers on an interwoven path share. We’ve both been running, trying to forget, and the past is punishing us for it.

I felt it. That connection. The one I felt when I saw her leaving the Sinclair Manor. The one I felt when I visited her in the hospital. That secret language only the two of us understood when she called me. The little string of fate that refused to let me take my eyes off her in that club. It hummed between us like a secret. It kills her that she can’t pick up the scissors and cut it. It kills me that I want more of it. I shouldn’t be wanting more of anyone. Especially not of her.

I think a part of me might be sadistic for enjoying this. Knowing how unbothered I am by her snark, the stubbornness that makes her mean. I’m not Coraline’s enemy, but I’m a threat. She knows this attitude isn’t working on me, and it’s bugging the fuck out of her. It’s cute.