Page 98 of The Oath We Give

“Coraline. I can’t imagine what this feels like, but we’ll figure it out together, okay? The police said they were able to catch one of the men fleeing the apartment. It’s going to be alright, I promise.”

“Lilac,” I say on a ragged exhale, “I’m asking you to give me some fucking space before I say things I don’t mean.”

“I—”

“Your happy-go-lucky bullshit is not going to help me right now!” My body whirls around as I toss my hands up. “I just want you to leave me alone.”

She flinches, my words growing hands and smacking her, and she retreats toward the door with glassy eyes. I’ve never spoken to her like that before, never so much as raised my voice in her direction.

There is just so much anger in me, so potent that I almost feel drunk from its power. I’m a volatile human being right now, and I’m afraid anyone who comes in contact with me will be left just as shredded as I feel.

“She didn’t deserve that.”

Silas comes into view, leaning against the doorframe, just watching me with those dark eyes. Eyes that see far too much, more than I want him to see.

“If I wanted a lecture on my behavior, I’d ask for it.” I grind my teeth. “I know I’m a bitch, and I know what she didn’t deserve.”

“You’re not a bitch, Coraline. You’re just hurting, that’s all,” he says.

I hate how he sounds so sure of himself. Like he knows it for a fact.

Like he’s positive I’m not an awful person, as if he knows me at all.

“You made me come once, and suddenly you know me?” I laugh incredulously. “Get fucking real and get out.”

His eyes slit, arms crossing in front of his chest, standing his ground. “You need somewhere to put all that anger, Hex? Put it on me. Give me the best you got.”

I turn away from him, distracting myself by trying to find anything in this room that might be worth saving. I kick papers and clothes around to see what’s beneath the rumble.

My mouth tries to seal itself; if I had glue, I’d force it to shut to keep back the venom that is coursing through my veins, threatening to spew from my throat toward anyone who comes too close, who tries to help.

No one can help me. No one will understand that I hate myself for the way I want to hurt other people because of the way I was hurt. Not because it makes me feel better or more powerful; it makes it feel like shit afterward, but it gives all this anguish somewhere to go.

“You’re stubborn. You don’t want to hear it, but I know what you’re doing. I can see it in your eyes, all that pain just festering beneath the surface. You cannot keep it in forever, Coraline. It’ll kill you.”

“You don’t know shit about my pain, Hawthorne.” My words are laced with poison, with intent to wound, to force him the fuck out of this room. I don’t care if it hurt his feelings. I don’t care if he hates me. I just want him far away from my path of destruction before I take all the good in Silas and swallow it whole.

I point my finger at him, eyes burning with rage. “Your girlfriend died. Cry about it. My orbital socket was shattered because I didn’t open my mouth for his dick fast enough. Our stories are not the same.”

I want to be alone with my fury, hidden away so I can ache in peace. I don’t want someone here to watch me fall apart. The entire world watched me lose my mind on national television. I was the story of the century, millions of eyes seeing me erupt into shards of tiny glass only to make it worse by feeling sorry for me.

So I cut them. I let them step all over me with their bare feet, and I burrowed myself into their heels like tiny razor blades.

I want to break. I want to cry and throw things all on my own with no eyes on me, in a silence where the only thing I can hear is my own heartbeat.

“My best friend spent his entire life swallowing his pain like rusty nails just to turn it into a weapon. I watched it eat him alive, and now I’m watching him in the aftermath,” he tells me. “Being mean? It won’t make me leave, Coraline. I’ve withstood storms much more violent than you. You are not what the world tells you. You are not a bitch. You are a girl. A girl who was abused. A girl just trying to survive.”

My chest feels like it might cave in on itself, the empty space where my heart used to be only a black hole that sucks up all the kindness in the room just to spit it back out.

“Fuck you, Silas.”

He walks further into the room like my words are an invitation. He stands atop my demolished room, in the rubble of my home, like a statue. A stunning piece of sculpted art in a space of pure malice.

“If you don’t learn to accept that you were a victim before you were ever a curse, all you’ll do is continue cutting people who didn’t hurt you.” His head tilts, watching me. “Is that what you want? To cut everyone out so you’re left with no one?”

“I wasn’t the victim,” I snide, feeling the tears slip down my cheeks. I’m exhausted, tired of Silas always finding me so broken. “Can’t you read a newspaper? I was in love with him. I wanted to be there.”

I pick up shreds of canvas like they’re the tattered pieces of my heart and toss them in the air, watching them rain down on me. My voice is almost a scream. “That’s not a victim. I’m not broken—all of my money put me back together. Can’t you see that? Iaskedfor it, Silas. I asked for all of this.”