Page 1 of Burn Bright (Cobalt Empire #1)

HARRIET FISHER

I take my beer and my scowl to the wall. Me and the wall—great friends. My only current friend.

This party feels like an amalgamation of hipsters, jocks, beauty queens, and outcasts. A total Breakfast Club scenario. But instead of five people sharing detention there are a hundred-plus sharing a frat house.

I take a stiff sip of beer.

Alone.

Avoiding direct eye contact with others.

Maybe I thought things would be different at Manhattan Valley University.

New city, new college, new outcomes. But I might be part of the problem when it comes to making friends.

I don’t know how to be warm and inviting.

I can blame it on my scowl and permanent Resting Bitch Face, but the truth is I could try harder to be softer.

More approachable. Yet, the thought of being someone that people actively want to approach makes me scowl even harder.

Is it weird? To want friends but also not want them?

Sure, the idea of friends sounds amazing.

People to hang out with, laugh with, go to the movies and venture to the mall with.

But friends also come with drama—like what if they judge me?

Hate me? What if I do something wrong to mess it all up?

Or worse, what if they’re amazing friends, and they start wanting more from me?

So I’d have to start sharing about my life and get into my past, and all that sounds so incredibly taxing that I’d like to just fling myself into a dilapidated cabin in the South Pole where no one can find me.

Friends…sometimes the fantasy seems better than the reality.

And it’s not just girls that I struggle to connect with in that way. I’ve never had a friendship with a guy. I’ve never wanted to be adopted as one of the bros. I can’t wrap my head around what a guy’s girl even looks like. It sounds like phony fucking baloney.

I’m not even really attempting to make a friend tonight. Literally, my goals are on the floor. I just want to have a better-than-average time at this party.

When I go to the backyard for some fresh air, a thought slams at me.

I shouldn’t have come here.

Maybe I should’ve stayed inside and melted into the plaster. Kappa guys play beer pong on the grass while couples giggle-fight during a game of chicken in the pool, and I’m just trying to reach a corner of the fence.

“She’s so tiny,” a six-foot-something asshole with a humongous smile says. He wears an MVU Row Team shirt, and he elbows his preppy friend in the side. “Like a little Polly Pocket.” They snort together.

I try to walk around the jock for the second time.

He side-steps again . “Whoa, Polly, how tall are you?” He tries to pat my head, and I jerk backward.

“Leave me alone.” I raise my voice which contains rasp and grit .

But their glassy eyes say they’re four beers in and I’m as threatening as a Chihuahua. “Come on, you’re supposed to be fun-sized. ” He downs a big gulp. “Be fun .”

His friend laughs, then leans into the jock to mutter, “Those are definitely party-sized, though.” Their heavy-lidded eyes drop to my chest.

Yeah, I have larger than average boobs. I’ve been told this super uninteresting fact since the tenth grade. Guys like to act as if it’s surprising to me. Like I don’t realize my tits are, I don’t know, attached to my fucking body.

I can see them.

I know they’re big.

And I wish I didn’t finish off my beer in the house. I’d throw it at his face. Cup and all. Instead, I flip them off with two middle fingers. “How’s this for fun?”

They snicker, like I’m playing around. Like this is just a game and I should lighten up. It’s a party, right? We’re at a frat house on campus. People aren’t taking anything seriously here.

I’m the buzzkill.

But maybe I don’t want to be the five-foot-one party favor.

“Seriously,” I growl. “Just let me through.” I try to slip past the jock.

He blocks me.

I glare. “ Dude .”

“ Polly .”

What the fuck?!

“Oooh, you made her mad, Cameron,” he says off my scowl.

“Does she bite?” Cameron laughs, then tries to pat my blonde hair again.

I swat his hand away. “Don’t touch me.”

“Aww, she’s a snapping turtle.” Cameron passes his beer to his preppy friend. “You know what turtles need?”

My pulse races. I try to back away, to return inside, but I barely even rotate before Cameron hoists me around the waist. I kick out as he tosses me over his shoulder and shouts, “Water!”

“Let me down!” I yell, banging a fist against his back. I squirm and try to pull away as he carries me to the pool. No, no, no . Panic envelops me alongside raw anger, and I fight against his rower strength.

“You’ve gotta go in the water, turtle!” He grunts as I writhe against his hold. He pins me harder on his shoulder. “I’m saving you!”

“Water! Water! Water!” People chant around the pool.

“No, no!” I shriek so loudly, so furiously, my throat sears. As he prepares to launch me into the pool, I scream bloody murder. “LET ME DOWN!” Fear guts me. “LETMEDOWN!” I can’t see beyond the hot glassy film in my eyes.

I just hear a strong, commanding voice. “HEY! Let go of her! What the hell are you doing?!!”

I feel the tug around my waist from behind. Someone is ripping me out of Cameron’s rower arms. Someone is setting me gently on my feet. Someone is letting go of me.

As soon as I spin around to see who, I’m thunderstruck at the sight of him. I stumble back a step, breath caught deeper in my lungs. I have to crane my neck just to meet his carved jawline.

Fury flexes his cut muscles, his athletic body.

He’s sky-scraping tall. Taller than most students here.

His wavy brown hair peeks beneath a faded blue baseball cap.

No one wears a ballcap as attractively as he does—with this rugged sexiness that shouldn’t exist in New York.

It should look so out of place, but he doesn’t.

He just fits.

He seems to always fit among people. And there is something so devastating about his blue eyes, about the way he looks at you. Like you’re his whole…entire…world when I know it’s not true.

His world is massive and illustrious.

I’m small and dull inside it.

My eyes drop to his chest. He’s in an old Penn Hockey shirt, even though we’re not at the Ivy League anymore. And didn’t he quit hockey?

“Is that Ben Cobalt?” I hear the whispers.

“Holy shit, that’s a Cobalt.”

“Ben!” someone calls out in familiarity.

“Hey, there you are, Ben,” Cameron says brightly like they’re buddies. “You should stick around us, man. The party’s right here.”

Ben is ignoring them and staring right at me. He’s sweeping me for signs of damage. “You want out of here?” he asks me.

Yes.

I still can’t slow my pulse. I can barely form a single word. A lump swells in my esophagus. I sense Cameron coming up behind me. I flinch, and Ben reaches out and shoves him backward.

“Get the fuck away from her,” Ben warns with visceral heat.

I don’t wait around. I bolt on instinct and race back inside the frat house. My heartbeat pounds in my ears.

“Harriet!” Ben calls after me, and I feel him desert the party and his surplus of friends. He sprints after me. I’ve never had anyone come check on me for anything good.

I’m not thinking. I rush up the flight of wide stairs littered with beer bottles and ping-pong balls. I land on the second floor and quickly find a bathroom. Once I’m inside, I slam the door shut.

Breathing heavy, I keep my palms glued to the wood.

“Hey,” Ben says from right outside the door. It’s unlocked, but he doesn’t come in. I feel a weight against the door, and I imagine his palms are on the other side. That he’s pressing against it too.

I let out a slow breath, starting to ease. “Hey,” I say, trying to make sense of the weird flip of my stomach and the even stranger tug at my lips. Am I…am I smiling?

I shake my head to myself. What the hell, Harriet?

I blink back the jumbled emotion. I never thought my messed-up life would collide with a Cobalt.

Really, this Cobalt.

There are five brothers and two sisters and a mom and dad any kid would dream of having—a tight-knit family who go to battle for each other. And they’re rich.

Blue-blooded, high society Philadelphians who might as well be New Yorkers with how often they’re in this city. They have McMansions, private jets, yachts, and trust funds, all the things that come with owning the world’s most popular soda corporation.

But they are so much more than the typical billionaire.

They have bodyguards.

They have millions of followers on their socials.

There are Reddit forums and fandom pages on Fanaticon dedicated to them. Fans follow their every move and theorize what they’re doing at every minute of every day.

Their names are as commonplace as the most recognizable actors and pop stars of our generation.

Yet, they’re not in movies and they’re not known for charting the Billboard Hot 100.

Their fame has an origin so deep-seated in the fabric of American society that most have forgotten how they became noteworthy in the first place.

They should’ve just been like every other billionaire who owns Fortune 500 companies. Like the faces behind Pepsi and Coca-Cola. They should be irrelevant. But that’s about the last thing you can say about a Cobalt.

None are irrelevant.

All of them matter as pillars of elegance and intelligence and power. That is the mythos of the Cobalt Empire.

People talk about them like they’re spawns of Zeus—godly, some full of hubris, but so unbelievably mighty . Like if you run into one, your whole world will spin on its axis. You’ll be changed.

No one talks about what happens when you try to enter their orbit (under good pretenses) and you’re rejected. That it feels like getting spit out of a whale’s mouth. The lions roared in your face and then turned their backs. The animal kingdom dubbed you less than.