Page 93 of Oath
“So?” He threw the challenge down. “Do you need an argument to let it out?”
“No…” I sighed, closing my eyes as I gripped his hand. He turned his hand over until he could cradle my palm with his. One breath. Two. Then, I opened my eyes once more. “Ever since you found me…or the Vandals found me and got me out, I’ve been so focused on finding Am. Then on what was in the way to finding her. Getting home. Getting away from you guys.”
I gave him a small smile of apology, but he just nodded his head and squeezed my hand.
“It was always about the next thing we had to survive so I could get back to the hunt. Or get to the hunt at all. Even the past few months while I found a way towait, I kept telling myself one more thing, then we would do this and find her.”
Tears I didn’t want to shed clogged my throat and I tilted my head back, trying to keep them in.
“And now, we’re close, you’re worried that the answers you find won’t be the ones you want to find.”
Each word landed a staccato blow against my heart. “I’m scared that we’re not going to find any answers. That she really is gone…”
My voice dropped to a ragged whisper at the end. I didn’t want to manifest that. I didn’t want to even put that out into the universe, yet, here we were.
“I’m scared that we will find answers but the answer is she is gone… forever.” As hard as I fought to keep the tears contained, a hiccup of a sob escaped. Bones shifted, his hands sliding under me as he lifted me up and sat back on the sofa with me in his lap. “I don’t know what’s worse. Not ever finding out or finding out that she is gone.”
Because either way, I would have lost her.
The tears slipped past the boundary, sliding down my face one after another. Nothing kept them inside and when he pulled me closer, I pressed my face into the crook of his neck. With care that once upon a time, I couldn’t have imagined he possessed, he rubbed my back in slow circles.
The dam broke and real sobs tore out of me. I didn’t want to cry but that seemed to matter even less right now. The emotion ripped through me like a hurricane, flattening me in its wake. Losing Am would kill me. For months, that was exactly what I fought against even considering.
She had to be alive.
She had to be out there.
She had to be—because if she wasn’t, then I’d never see her again.
I had no idea how long we were there, but I cried until my eyes were swollen, my nose snotty, and my face a blotchy mess. I’d soaked the collar of his shirt. The greenish yellow remnants of his bruises were still visible over that collar. A lot had healed.
But not all of them. He was still hurting, but he was here with the others. They were all here, working on this for me just like they promised.
“Dollface.” He cupped my chin again, then slid his hand up to my cheek before gliding it into my hair and fisting it. The pressure soothed some of the jagged feeling prickling over and under my skin. “You with me?”
I blinked.
A tear escaped, sliding down my cheek and carrying the salty dampness to the corner of my mouth.
“I’m here,” I said after a long moment, probably too long. The wound inside me split wide open, bleeding without mercy, and I had no idea how to stop it. No clue how to stitch it shut and keep my focus where it needed to be — on Mark Sinclair, that law firm, and playing Am like my life depended on it.
No, not my life—Am’s.
A stroke of his thumb glided over the upper curve of my cheek. “You arenotalone.”
Four simple words and they sliced right through the noise in my head, arresting my attention.
“You will never be alone on this quest. We will be with you every step of the way.” It was a promise. An oath. “You are the priority, you have been for far longer than I wanted to admit. That makes your sister,oursto find as well.”
The emphasis on “ours” was not lost on me.
He searched my eyes as he continued to trace his thumb against my cheek in a petting motion.
“Wewillfind her. Alive or dead.”
I flinched.
“I know you don’t want to think of her that way, so don’t. That’s not your job. Your job is to focus on finding your sister and pouring all of that dynamite energy into finding her. I’ll take care of the rest.”
