Page 66 of The Oath We Give

“I think,” I sigh, biting down on the inside of my cheek, “I think I want to know her more. But she isn’t going to make it easy if I try. She’s in pain and fucking prideful. I can see it every time we make eye contact. It’s like an extension of herself—it lives in every room she steps in like a shadow. It’s in her art. It kills me. She knows she could find comfort if she let someone in but refuses.”

Coraline makes me want to talk.

Break myself open just so I can have her. Tug on the strings that she has wound so tightly around herself so I can see what’s underneath as she unravels for me.

There is something in the way she moves, how she talks so brazenly with an underlying fierceness in every word, the way her eyes catch the light and melt like honey when she looks at me.

That connection between us is palpable, humming through the air, and it’s becoming harder to ignore. Soon, we are going to be under the same roof; then she won’t have anywhere to hide from me. She’ll be carrying my last name, existing in my space.

We’re about to be bound for at least two years, and she can’t resist me that long. Especially if I apply a little pressure. I’ve barely tried.

She’s going to break for me.

I’m not afraid of a curse, especially when they look like Coraline Whittaker.

Book made for [email protected]

FIFTEEN

YOUR MOTHER’S DAUGHTER

CORALINE

“I thoughtyou said they wouldn’t be here.”

“They weren’t,” Lilac mumbles as I follow her up the front steps to our parents’ home. “I guess they got back early from their trip.”

I’d come because she needed help packing the rest of her things. It’s normal for her to stay with me most days, but I don’t want her away from me now. We’d easily been able to convince Regina that Lilac wanted to stay with me for the summer and would come home once school started again.

I’m not sure she really heard the conversation, just nodded her head while flipping through a tabloid magazine. Either way, Lilac is coming with me; the details don’t matter.

Lilac’s hand grabs the front door knob, only to have it pulled open from the opposite side. Inside Regina stands, wearing a perfectly ironed green dress that reminds me of a booger.

Her retouched blonde hair is up in rollers, and she has that permanent pinched expression on her face as she crosses her arms in front of her chest.

“Coraline,” she snides. “When were you planning on telling your father and I about being engaged to the eldest Hawthorne son?”

As if he heard her, my father appears from around the corner, dress pants as always. Except the look on his face is different than I anticipated. There isn’t a look of contempt or disapproval; he almost looks happy.

It would appear Silas’s coworker from the other night had officially spilled the beans about what he saw at the art gala.

I didn’t want to see them. I really didn’t want to see them now that I know they’d found out about my upcoming marriage. Because if this has to be real in public for Silas? That means I have to make it real to the two people in front of me who call themselves my parents.

I hope to fucking God Silas doesn’t want to have an actual wedding because I don’t want these people seeing that. Maybe that should have been something I mentioned when I was laying out my rules. I blame it on the fact I got distracted by his arms in that shirt.

Sex brain ruins everything.

I don’t like the idea of weddings to being with. Not the devoting your lives to each other, that’s fine. It’s having all those people around to watch it. In my mind, something like that should be shared in private. I don’t want to be vulnerable to the world, just the one person standing across from me waiting to say I do. Only they get to see me in a state of softness, with all my walls down and nothing between us but hands.

“Hello, Regina.” I push my sunglasses up on my head. “James.”

“This is gonna be awkward…” Lilac mutters below her breath, slipping inside the house and heading toward the stairs, ready to leave with me with the vultures like a traitor.

But it’s probably for the best. She’s a terrible liar.

The conversation between me and Silas regarding this arrangement ended with us agreeing that I could tell Lilac the truth and he could tell his friends. Those were the only people that could know what was happening between us.

“And where do you think you’re going, little miss?”

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