The Oath We Give (The Hollow Boys Book 5)
The Oath We Give: Chapter 2

Silas | two years of freedom | March

Life is loss.

The in-between spaces in time are just us figuring out how to cope with it. Distractions for all the inevitable experiences, hiding from the fact that morbidly, we all die in the end.

“Almost finished, Mr. Hawthorne, and we can recheck your vitals before letting you get out of here.”

“For a second, I thought my father was going to rise from the dead, Taylor.” A light-hearted laugh tethered to his dad joke. “Scott does just fine, like I said the first several times.”

There is a smile on my dad’s face directed at the young woman in red scrubs, despite currently having his body pumped with chemicals.

He could smile for the rest of the day; it wouldn’t matter. Eyes never lie, and his are painting the picture of a man who is bone-fucking-tired. When the nurse finishes checking the machine and quietly leaves us in the room on our own, I bend down and grab the empty pan on the floor.

My chair scratches the floor as I scoot closer, holding the basin at his chest. Just as smoothly as he’d smiled before, he bows his head and empties what little stomach contents he has.

I let my eyes replace the eggshell-white wall in the opposite direction. He hates being viewed as weak, stared at when he’s at his lowest. He always has. I do my best to protect his pride now, trying to think about anything other than this disease that is slowly killing him.

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.

The cancer is advanced. We’ve known that from the beginning. These treatments are for my mother, something I think only I know. Dad doesn’t want to die without her knowing he tried to stay with her for as long as he possibly could.

It’s selfish when you take it at face value, cruel to some, but when aren’t people selfish with the people they love?

Besides, Scott Hawthorne doesn’t give up on the things he loves, especially not my mother.

“Sorry,” he grumbles, clutching the napkin in his palm and raising it to wipe his mouth. “Told your mom that yogurt in the fridge was bad this morning.”

Yogurt, right.

Not one of the many harsh side effects of chemotherapy.

“We’ll try oatmeal next time,” I reply, not bothering to say the first bit. He’s not blind, nor is he naïve. He just doesn’t want to admit it out loud to his oldest son. Even though I see right through him.

When do parents realize that after a while, we start analyzing them too?

My father will be nothing if not strong-willed until the day he dies, and I’ll do everything in my power to give him that.

“Have you gone over the data points I sent—”

“My thoughts and appraisal of Sync Tech are already in your email, Dad.”

I walk to the trash can, tossing away the soiled bin, before turning back around.

“Do you like the board’s idea of buying them out?”

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 that 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? They have a shit ton of them. None of them have a manual. You can’t override their system, and half the time, what you see is never what you actually get.

A sigh leaves me as I walk back to my seat, sinking into the chair. I’m craving a cigarette, seeking anything that takes away the smell of vomit and the clinical scent of hospitals.

These last two years have felt rushed, put on fast-forward, as if the world noticed when I’d started to heal and said, “Here. This is everything you missed while you were grieving.”

It’s giving me a permanent headache, all the things I’m having to juggle.

“Their security consulting is impressive. Profit margins are decent. It’s easy to see why the board is interested.”

“But?”

When I glance over at him, his eyebrow is raised. His eyes are hollowed, body seeming more frail as the days pass. I may not understand how people work all the time, but I can read them, and I got that from the man in front of me.

“It’s not enough for me to want to buy them out. Their threat intelligence is weak, and that’s putting it mildly. Incident response is too slow.” I press my thumb and forefinger into my eye, hoping it makes this throbbing go away. “And I fucking hate the owner.”

He laughs. The same laugh I’ve heard nearly every day in my house for the entire span of my life. Deep and from his stomach. I wonder if that sound will echo in the halls when he’s gone or if time will steal that from me too.

Death isn’t the enemy.

It’s time.

“Yeah, he’s a bit of an ass.”

I scoff. That’s a mild evaluation.

“Son.” His hand comes over to rest on my arm, giving it a squeeze. “I know this is a lot at your age. When I was twenty-two, I was trying to figure out what bar I was going to. I never wanted to put the company in your hands this early, but—”

“I know,” I say simply. He doesn’t need to waste his energy telling me something I already understand. “It’s fine.”

“You’ve always been good at that.” His toothless smile appears. “Knowing.”

My father’s harsh diagnosis he’d received last fall meant at the ripe age of twenty-two, I’d be taking over Hawthorne Technology as acting CEO until I pass it on. I’d graduated early and had already started working beneath him at the company, much to many people’s displeasure.

Maybe it would help if they knew the last thing I want is to be learning how to take over a multibillion-dollar company. However, I know it’s not my age they are concerned about.

We all have to make sacrifices, and listening to the hushed whispers around the office about my mental competency is something I’m willing to put up with for him. He loves me, has done a lot for me, and giving him peace of mind that our family’s legacy is in good hands is the least I can do.

“You have good instincts. The best, Silas. Trust them, always. You will not fail,” he says sternly, instilling confidence in me. “I’ll let the board know we aren’t moving forward with Sync Tech.”

My phone buzzes in my pocket as I nod at him. Pulling it from my front pocket, I replace a text from Rook. Once it unlocks, the group message he created is already opened, and a picture of him with a blunt in his mouth while he lounges on a beach is the most recent text.

The sun bounces off the black sunglasses he’s sporting, and there is a tan on his skin I’ve never seen before. There are a few new tattoos across his chest, and it makes me think of all we’ve missed in each other’s lives due to distance. However, his smirk is still Rook, still the same kid I’ve always known.

Thatcher: Your chest looks like a middle school desk.

Rook: I’ve hugged cactus nicer than you.

I scoff at the back of my throat. The two of them have yet to grow out of their boyish bickering. Unless someone stops it, they will go on forever until someone’s feelings get hurt, and it most definitely will be Rook’s.

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

Alistair: Shut the fuck up.

There he is. Father Caldwell to the rescue. I’m surprised he didn’t tell Rook to wear sunscreen. 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. It’s never something we say out loud, just a foregone conclusion.

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.

They are brothers to me. Each of them. Thicker than any blood.

Thatch is the only guy I see regularly, both of us having chosen to stay in Ponderosa Springs after Stephen Sinclair was arrested. We’d even graduated college together, and the other guys had come to support.

Two years.

It’s been two years since we pressed play on a life without revenge. 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.

“How are the boys?” My father coughs into his fist after asking, probably having already looked over my shoulder at my phone screen. He’s always been nosey like that.

“Alive,” I grunt, sinking further into the chair.

“Shocking.”

The corners of my mouth twitch. He has no idea just how shocking it is. That we survived all the treachery and death unharmed and somehow were able to move forward as if it’d never happened at all.

On the outside, that is.

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.”

He shakes his head as if he can’t believe what I’ve told him. I don’t blame him. Alistair Caldwell never really seemed like the marrying type. More like a brood in the corner until he died kinda guy.

My father had only ever seen him in two lights, angry or causing trouble. There are things about the guys my family would never understand. They’d never outright said they disapproved of my friendships, but I could see it on their faces. However, they refused to take away anything from me that would cause me unhappiness.

But they’d never know them like I do. No one would.

Had never seen just how much someone like Alistair cares about people. How he’d easily give up his own life for someone he loves.

In our own sick fucking way, I think we care more than most.

“You plan on walking down the aisle before I croak? Or giving me grandkids?”

I roll my eyes as I look at him. “You’re spending too much time listening to Mom.”

I’m not even a little surprised she’s pulled him into this. If she tries to tell me about another one of her friends’ single daughters, I’m going to stop going to family dinner.

I would do anything to give my father everything he requests before he passes. Marrying someone? Not going to happen.

“I know losing Rosemary was hard for you.” He places a weak hand on my shoulder. “But you are allowed to love again, kid.”

My jaw tightens.

That’s everyone’s favorite thing to say to me. Rosemary would want you to be happy. You’re allowed to move on. She’d want that for you. As if they knew her better than I did.

Do they not think I already know this? That I don’t know she’d want me to have a good life, to replace someone to love? Rosie’s probably turned in her grave at least a million times since she died at all the things I’ve done. I know she’d want me to move on.

And a part of me has. I’ve spent the last two years settling into the acceptance that she is gone and is never coming back. It’s not my love for Rosie that is holding me back from giving myself to another person.

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 replaces another exit.

It’s the part of me that refuses to love again. I’ve dammed up my soul because I know what the pain of losing someone feels like. I won’t do that to myself again.

“Yeah” is the only reply I give. What else is there for me to say?

My phone buzzes in my hand, and when I look down at the locked screen, it’s not a message from the group chat this time. It’s an email.

I silence my work email when I’m out of the office and with Dad at chemo—very responsible of me—so it’s my personal one that’s received a new message. I open it, expecting spam, but my brows pull together as I pull it up.

It’s an unknown sender with an encrypted video file attached and one line of text.

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

I silently hope it’s a virus trying to steal my bank information as I start to download it. The nurse walks back in, stealing my father’s curious eyes away from me while she unhooks him from the chemo pump.

Fine hairs on the back of my next stand up slowly, one by one, and the room feels a little too cold. My grip on the phone tightens as it continues to load, and it doesn’t matter how much I hope, I know this isn’t a random hacker.

Luck never runs on my side.

My father’s voice, mingled with the nurse’s, fades to the background, dripping further and further from my mind as my focus zeroes in on the video. I quickly make sure the volume is down before pressing Play.

A dark screen greets me, but it only remains that way for a few seconds. Soon, my screen is lit up, the person recording panning the camera upward. What plays out in front of me is a scene I’ve seen before.

A scene I’ve lived.

Rook, Alistair, and I stand in a circle around a budding fire. Rook builds the flames while Alistair and I grab the mutilated corpse of Conner Godfrey, tossing him effectively into the flames.

We’re all covered in blood, disposing of a body in the middle of the night in Lyra Abbott’s backyard. Our faces are clear—there would be no denying it or having lawyers get us off.

Every minute, on camera. On someone else’s phone—God fucking knows whose phone. People I don’t know, people who want something from us.

My jaw twitches, muscles straining painfully. Waves of emotions wash over me, too many of them to handle. All of them blend, roaring and tangling in rage.

“You alright, son?” I hear distantly.

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.

I nod, glancing up from my phone to look into his concerned eyes.

We stare at each other. I look at a face I’ve known my entire life. A man that has loved me without question, without fear, has supported me, and I don’t know how to speak to him.

Not truthfully. Not without lying.

Bitterness, overwhelming guilt, burns my insides, twisting my guts into miserable spirals. These emotions, this fucking burden that has followed me since the moment I was misdiagnosed, they are shackles, heavy and unbearable, dragging behind me with every step.

I want to tell him. Everything.

That I’m not schizophrenic; I’ve never been. I kept quiet to protect Rosemary. Words wouldn’t form after I was released from the ward because I never wanted him to hate himself for not believing me sooner, for taking me to that doctor.

There is so much I want to tell him, and his hourglass is running out of sand.

Is my father going to die without fully knowing his son?

Would there be a time when I could be honest with him? When words weren’t so scarce, and my voice was comfortable being heard?

Once again, I nod.

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