Page 41 of The Oath We Give

I think Coraline knows what it’s like to have the world make assumptions about who you are before you have the time to figure it out yourself.

Ponderosa Springs loves a story. The scarier, the better. They told her she was a victim, that she would always be a victim. A cursed woman that had a habit of finding herself in toxic relationships, as if she consented to being kidnapped. They told me I had schizophrenia, that I had to be in order to cover up a crime I’d once seen as a child. A man whose silence spoke to his mental illness and not his fear of never being believed.

We stand here as two people given narratives we didn’t want, trying to make some truth out of the words someone else wrote.

“My father has cancer,” I tell her honestly, because for the first time in a long time? I feel like I can. “I have to be married to take over a company with my last name. If I don’t, then we lose it.”

Coraline nods, flicking the ashes onto the ground.

“So it’s money related,” she hums, making assumptions she shouldn’t.

“It’s family related.”

A scoff echoes from her lips, just before she takes another puff, talking around the smoke.

“What’s it like to have the last decent family in this piece-of-shit town?”

“I know you had no clue what you just walked into, Coraline. But this arrangement could benefit the both of us. With Stephen breaking out, I could help—”

“I do not need you to protect me from him.” She pushes off the wall, a fire burning in her at the mention of his name. “I don’t need anyone to protect me from him.”

“It’s not protection I can offer you, Hex.”

The nickname slips out before I can catch it.

“Yeah? Like what? Money?” She shakes her head, a grim smile on her lips. “I have enough with my last name, thanks, hotshot.”

I run my palm down the front of my mouth. Goddamn, she’s fucking stubborn. So sure of herself before I correct her.

“Revenge,” I say swiftly. “I can offer you a chance of revenge.”

And protection, but I won’t tell her that part. She needs to feel like she’s the one in control. I don’t mind giving it to her, for now.

She keeps her mouth shut for a few minutes, like she’s debating her next words, weighing her options before she flicks the cigarette onto the street. I watch her reach into her purse, picking up a tube of lipstick and a compact mirror.

Coraline takes her time, tracing the lines of her mouth. The gentle curve of her lips seems to invite the touch of the applicator. There’s an intimacy in simply observing.

Carefully, she rubs her lips together before running her pinky along the corner of her mouth to swipe off the excess.

“I don’t need it.”

The tiny mirror clicks in her palm as she shuts it, making me blink from the trace of her lips.

“Needing revenge means I still give a fuck. I’m out of fucks to give about Stephen Sinclair.”

I stand on the sidewalk perfectly still as her heels click with every step she takes toward me. I don’t think I could move if I wanted to, not with the way the shadows bounce off her skin and the determined look in her eye.

There is something about this woman. Something I can’t comprehend but want to grab with both hands and squeeze until her body burns with the red marks my hands leave.

“I’m sorry about your father, Silas.”

Her small palms run along the edges of my jacket, dusting off nonexistent lint from my shoulders. The movement is fake, but her eyes shine with sincerity.

“But no.” She gives me a toothless smile, quick, delicate. Denying me with grace.

“You don’t want to be attached to someone like me. This is me returning another favor. If you believe anything this town tells you? Believe that I’m cursed.”

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