Page 100 of Burn Bright (Cobalt Empire #1)

“I don’t know, dude. I haven’t taken it yet.” I sound defensive. Can they tell I’m scared?

“Taken what?” Tom stands from the couch, spotting the pregnancy test in my clutch. He goes motionless. We’re both grimacing. Then he falls back on the cushions. “What else is going to be thrown at us? An earthquake?”

Eliot scrapes a hand along his hard jawline. “ Ben ,” he says roughly, then looks to Beckett. “Our little brother was having unprotected sex.”

“I’m on the pill,” I shoot back.

“Did you miss a day?” Beckett questions.

I burn up. “No. No .” I pick myself up to my feet.

They follow suit, towering and staring down at me like I’m young and inexperienced.

Possibly because I’m with their youngest brother.

I don’t know what it’s like to have older siblings—or really, siblings at all. “Like I said, it’s just a precaution.”

Eliot shakes his head hotly, his gaze on my flat belly. “Ben couldn’t have known. If he had any idea that he got you pregnant, he would’ve never left you.”

It confirms that I could’ve done more. I nearly double over. I swallow all the brimming pain. “Well, I didn’t tell him,” I snap, then I hand Beckett the letter. “I’m probably not pregnant. I didn’t want to manipulate Ben.”

“You’re better than me,” Eliot paces toward the kitchen, then back, each footfall scalding the floor. “I would’ve told him I have a terminal illness. That I expect him to bury me in three weeks with his own hands or else I’d haunt his ass for fucking eternity.”

“Or maybe I’m worse,” I rasp. “Because I didn’t…” I didn’t do enough.

“He was going to leave,” Beckett rationalizes. “We did what we could when we could.”

I peer down at the pregnancy test, inhaling a deeper breath. “Can I use your bathroom?”

“Why is she asking—why are you asking?” Eliot says to me, standing still. “Has this not been your home the past few weeks?”

Don’t cry, Harriet. He’s basically saying this fact doesn’t change if Ben is gone, but it feels like everything does. “Thanks,” I mumble, darting to the powder room. I’m shaking as I rip open the box.

The instructions confuse me. Maybe because I’m staring at Spanish. Hurriedly, I flip the paper over to the English directions. I reread the same line four fucking times, but the typed black font isn’t processing. Teardrops wet the paper.

People leaving me is nothing new.

Sunny, my drum instructor, left me without a note.

My father left me without a goodbye.

My mother left me by shoving me out the door.

So is it any wonder that I accepted Ben leaving me too? In the end, I relegated this loss as a commonplace part of my life. Familiar. Routine.

Now, I’d give anything for him to come back.

A knock sounds on the door. “Just let me know you’re okay.” It’s Beckett.

“Yeah.” A broken noise breeches my lips.

He jiggles the knob. “Let me in.”

I unlock the door. “I can’t read it.” I can’t see him past the film of tears. “I’m?—”

Beckett immediately pulls me into a hug, and I release a wounded sound against his chest. I’m muttering, “I don’t want to do this without him. I can’t lose him. We have to find him. We have to find him. ”

“Shhh,” Beckett coos. “Take some breaths.” The way he holds the back of my head, I pretend he’s Ben.

I pretend Ben never really left. That he’s here with me, and I calm down enough to pull back, rub at my eyes, and read the instructions.

“I can do this,” I choke out to myself. “I can do this.”

My phone buzzes.

I scramble, patting my hip-clip, and I think, Ben. Forgetting that he doesn’t have a phone.

Xander

I heard Ben is MIA. He just told me hours ago he was planning to drop out of MVU, but I didn’t think he’d leave tonight. Did you know? I feel like shit. If you need to talk, I’m here. I’m sorry. I’m really fucking sorry.

I send back a quick text to chat later and that I feel just as guilty. Because I knew too. “It’s Xander Hale,” I explain to Beckett when I reattach my phone.

“He just found out about Ben,” Beckett guesses, unsurprised. Off my frown, he clarifies, “Xander is usually one of the last to get information in our family.” I wonder if this has to do with Xander’s self-harm.

“You’re one of the first?” I ask.

He presses his shoulders to the door. “Not even close. Everyone is aware I’m largely inaccessible because of ballet. Charlie knows more than I do, always.”

“He’s really in Prague?”

“Really,” Beckett nods, his gaze falling in sorrow. “I can read you the instructions if you need help.”

My neck heats. “I’ve got it. I think it’s probably uncomplicated. Pee on a stick. Wait a handful of minutes. Learn whether or not your brother knocked me up.” I try to joke, but it lands like a dinky water balloon that rolls away and never bursts.

“First brother to fall in love, first to get a girl pregnant,” Beckett says.

“And Ben thinks he’s not winning awards in the Cobalt fam.” This joke hits.

Beckett smiles. It almost nudges up my lips.

He nods to me. “You want me to wait with you?”

Knee-jerk reaction, I shake my head, but after a couple seconds, I begin to nod. I’ve always been able to do anything on my own, but given the chance of comfort over pain, of warmth over the freezing, brutal cold—I’d choose the relief of not being so alone.

So I choose Beckett’s company. Grateful he’s offering. He seems just as relieved I accepted. After I follow the instructions in privacy, he returns to the bathroom. I sit on the toilet lid to wait for the results. He leans up against the wall. My phone timer ticking down.

“I tried…” I gaze at the marble floor, gripping the sides of the toilet as I squeeze my legs together.

Afraid to completely unravel again, but I can’t stop replaying the final moments with Ben in my apartment.

“I tried to get him to stay. I think with sex…” I cringe at myself, furious with myself.

“I told him to come inside me minutes before he walked out the door. But telling him I might be pregnant was a line I couldn’t cross?

Having sex right before he left, that was totally fine though.

Doable.” I confess more to the ground. It takes everything just to peer up at his expression.

Beckett has his skull pressed to the wall while he stares up at the ceiling. His face unreadable.

“If you think I’m too fucked up to be with your brother, I’d get it.” My stomach twists into a pretzel. “I’m not a good person.”

“You use sex to get what you want,” he says as his gaze descends like a feather to mine.

Lightly, not even close to caustically. “We’ve known that since you tried to blow Charlie.

We never thought it’d magically go away if you started dating our little brother.

Neither did Ben.” He holds my gaze even softer.

“None of us are striving to find perfect people with no baggage. We’re well-aware we all carry our own.

” He glances painfully at the door. “Ben is gone. Isn’t that proof enough? ”

I release my grip on the toilet, just to clutch my kneecaps. My body hurts as the loss ricochets through me.

“Bad people to me,” Beckett says in a soothing tone, “are the ones selling out my family to the media. Ones who wouldn’t care what happens to my brother.

That’s not you. That has never been you.

So, no, I don’t think you’re too fucked up to be with him.

” He releases a weighted breath. “And I’m almost positive he wouldn’t have had sex with you before walking out the door.

” His eyes grip mine. “Tell me he rejected you.”

“Don’t worry, he didn’t let it happen. He did the Cobalt chivalrous thing.”

“He did the compassionate thing.” Beckett straightens off the wall. “Charlie, Eliot, and I wouldn’t have done the same as Ben.”

“Oh so you would’ve fucked me and left,” I deadpan.

“Probably.”

My brows shoot up. Shocked he even answered, but Beckett is blunt as fuck.

“Our morals aren’t exactly on par with his. He’s one of the best guys you could’ve been with in your situation, Harriet, and you lifted something heavy off him these past few months. You two were good for each other.”

“Were,” I mutter, staring haunted at the floor. “We’re already in the past tense.” It’s a punch to the gut. I’m surprised I’m not bent over. “Everyone always leaves me in the end…” I trail off into the tense silence.

“I know Ben,” he says in the quiet, lifting my gaze to his.

“He’s too selfless. He’s too altruistic.

Too caring. The only reason he could’ve had the strength to abandon you was knowing you wouldn’t be abandoned—because you have us.

And regardless of what that test says, I will be giving my brother his final wish for the rest of my life. I promise you that.”

I shake my head as tears roll. I wipe them roughly away. “Ben has given me too much. Even when he’s gone, he’s given me a family.”

“That’s my brother. That’s Pip,” Beckett says lovingly, fondly, sentimentally, as if he’s remembering years of time with him.

The timer beeps, and the not pregnant result doesn’t alleviate my paranoia like it should’ve. I’m numb to the fact that I won’t be dealing with a massive life decision.

Though Ben wouldn’t want me to, I would sacrifice everything to find him.

My grades.

Harold.

Tom’s offer to join the band.

I’d drop out of MVU tomorrow. Never become a doctor.

I would lose it all for him to come back. For him to be alive and safe. For him to not be alone in the wilderness forever.