Page 103 of Burn Bright (Cobalt Empire #1)

BEN COBALT

I swing an axe, splitting a log in two clean pieces.

Snow crunches under my boots. The air frigid.

I have no problem with the cold. I could’ve lived on the ice, but if asked, I’d say I love springtime the most. I was born when the tulips begin to bloom, when the air in Philly begins to shift and people start spilling outside.

When doors open and the cool breeze is let in.

If anyone asked?

Yeah, like anyone is going to ask me, “What season do you like, Ben?” I’m not even going to be asked if it’s cold outside.

I am very, very alone.

No one around me for miles. With a deep exhale, I glance at the sky-scraping, snow-capped hemlocks and spruces. A bald eagle soars in the clear blue sky. Pine and earth flood my nostrils, but I find myself wanting to get rid of it.

Afraid I’ll forget what she smells like. The sweet, candy scent of Harriet.

I adjust my grip on the axe. It doesn’t help it’s Wednesday.

This is the first Wednesday of many I’m never going to enter my family’s ornate dining room.

Sit around the table. Watch Eliot bang his foot on the edge.

Everyone raising their goblets just in time.

Drumming our feet and our hands. Laughing.

So much vivid, effervescent laughter. The roaring love of the Cobalt Empire.

I rub at my raw, swollen eyes. I wasn’t delusional. I didn’t think I’d come here finding peace. I left that in New York with a short, grumpy punk-rock girl.

“They’re safe,” I mutter to myself.

They’re safe from me. I can’t hurt anyone here.

Another exhale, I place a bigger log on the stump. I swing, and the wood splits. I hear the snow creak, then crunch, and I immediately drop the axe and reach for my shotgun. Could be a wolf or a bear, if the latter is too hungry to hibernate.

When I turn around, I never even raise the gun. There is no way. There is no fucking way possible.

“How did you find me?” I ask in one iced breath.

“It wasn’t easy. I’ll give you that.” Charlie approaches in a black durable winter coat, thick-soled boots, a scarf up to his neck. Even a black beanie covers his ears, and for a moment, I wonder if he bought the heavy-duty winter gear just for this trip.

Or if he’s been to the coldest places on earth before.

I am solidified in shock. Unmoving. “Really, how?”

“I sewed a tracker into the lining of your duffel weeks ago.” He knew I’d leave.

Charlie comes closer to the firepit I haven’t lit yet.

“I would’ve been here sooner, but I was on a flight to Prague when you left New York.

By the time I arrived, they weren’t letting any vessels onto the island until the ice melted. ”

I saw the water lapping the rocky shoreline this morning. So that checks out. Fear is seizing my muscles. He can’t be here. I need him to leave. “You can’t tell anyone where I am,” I say in panic. “Charlie?—”

“I won’t tell a soul.”

I try to relax. “You promise?”

“I promise, except for Oscar. He already knows.”

“Your bodyguard is here,” I realize.

“He never shares where I go when I ask for secrecy. So relax . He won’t tell anyone.” Charlie trusts him even more than I realized. “He’s in your cabin now. You left the door unlocked.”

Didn’t think I’d ever have a visitor.

I can’t get the words out. I blink a ton. Maybe he came here to see what I’m up to. Mystery solved. Then he’ll go. Right? Right?

“Calm down,” he snaps.

I let out a pained laugh. “I don’t hunt you down on your mysterious trips across the world. No one does. They let you go, but as soon as I try, it becomes impossible .”

“We’re not the same,” Charlie says pointedly coming closer and closer.

“You need others. You are fueled by connections to people . Not the earth, not the sun, not the sky, not on a remote island in fucking Alaska . You will wither away in isolation like the very birds you love. While I will thrive.” He outstretches his arms, hiking poles in hand.

“Because I hate people. The human race annoys the shit out of me, and I would do anything to get away.”

“So this is a welfare check?” I ask him. “You can go. I’m fine.”

I return the gun and pick up my axe.

Charlie stops in place. Feet away. The firepit separates us. “What are you going to do with that?” He nods to the gun.

I can’t even look at him. “There are predators out here.”

“You wouldn’t hurt a living soul, let alone a fucking Ficus tree. If a predator were to approach you, you wouldn’t shoot. You’d let it kill you.”

I swallow hard, my eyes blazing. I come around the firepit and toss the axe at his feet.

“You want to get it over with then?” I’m losing my nerve.

Panic is riding me so hard, I can barely breathe.

“Just do it. No one has to know, Charlie.” I can’t even see his expression through the hazy film in my eyes.

I put my hands on my thighs, hunching over, and I start gasping for more and more breath.

Then I’m on my knees, and Charlie is knelt in front of me, urging me to breathe. His hand on the back of my skull.

I tug my jacket at my throat, and I tell him, “I feel like I’m exploding. I can’t stop it, Charlie.”

“You have to stop.”

“I can’t…I’m going to hurt everyone around me.” Snot balls up in the back of my throat. I am drowning in my own emotion. Keeling over. He’s keeping me up as I fight to say, “I know it makes no fucking sense . But my choices end up causing so much harm, and…I can’t…I can’t stop it. I can’t stop it.”

“You can.”

I shake my head.

“Yes, you can. Je sais que tu peux.” I know you can. His words—I’ve heard those words from Charlie before. Only he spoke them to Beckett.

I look up at my oldest brother. Seeing him clearly through the scalding sheen of tears. “What’s wrong with me, Charlie?”

He stares at me in ways he only reserves for Beckett. “It’s the butterfly effect.”

“What is?”

“What you believe in.” He lets go of me as I sink back on my heels like I’ve been shoved.

“Even the smallest actions you take can have extraordinary consequences. The wings of a butterfly flapping can cause a tornado halfway around the world. A single fallen domino will tip over a thousand more. Cause and effect. Everything changes everything. It’s the chaos theory.

And maybe it manifested when you were little.

Your responsibility to protect the earth.

You recycle—you save the entire forest. You don’t eat meat—you save the animals from extinction.

Then maybe it grew into something worse. ”

A chill snakes down my spine. “What do you mean?”

He’s not irritated for me not “getting it” fast enough. He’s not even pulling me to my feet. Snow tries to bite through my pantlegs, but I can’t feel anything but Charlie’s words as they try to unlock a chain around my body.

“I mean when you started feeling like you were the source of all the terrible things that happen in our family. The one responsible. The butterfly causing the storm. When was that?”

I stare off at the snow. All I see is the car crash. Slamming into the median. The flip. The violent crunch of metal. My hands slipping off the wheel. My family I’d hurt, the ones in the car with me. I’d never felt so responsible for the pain of others until that point.

It overwhelmed me. Consumed me. Haunted me for weeks into months into…

“I think the car crash.” The monster grew beneath me and began shaking my bed. “I was driving, Charlie. I literally caused the accident.”

“It was raining. Paparazzi were chasing us. They caused it. But I can tell you this a thousand times, and you’ll still struggle to believe me.”

How is he in my mind? “Why do you know that?”

“Because…” He has trouble now. He falters, tipping his head to look at me with more care and concern he’s ever given or offered or extended before. “I’m almost certain you’re dealing with an obsessive-compulsive disorder.”

My brows pinch. “No.” I reanimate, pulling myself to my feet. I walk over to the tree stump, my gloved hands on my head. I let them slip to my neck. “I would’ve known.” OCD runs in our family. “Dad would’ve known.”

Charlie is standing. “He’s not around you enough.

He’s not a figure in the sky watching our every move.

He can only see what you show him, and even then, you would only have these occasional breakdowns.

You were obnoxiously —and I mean it in the rudest sense—vague.

It was a clever way to lie, but not clever enough because I’m clearly here. And you’re not dead.”

I go cold. “That wasn’t the plan,” I assure him. “I didn’t set out to take my life.”

“You think you can survive out here? On nuts and berries? With a growing, feasting mental illness?”

My nose flares. My brain spins. I have to sit or I might pass out. I take a seat on a tree stump around the firepit. “You’re all safer away from me.”

Charlie forces a tight smile. “Right. So you purchased a plot of land in Alaska. To live here for…?”

I clench my jaw, the alarm not subsiding.

Restlessness rattles my whole body. It’s taking everything not to shoot back to my feet.

I open my mouth to offer him the actual answer, but it’s trapped inside me.

“I can’t…” I gaze unblinkingly at the peeling bark of a tree.

“It’s not that I don’t trust you. I just physically feel like I can’t…

” I heave for more oxygen in the biting cold.

Fuck. “Like I’m afraid what happens if I do tell you everything. ”

“I know that you plan to live here for the rest of your life. You fear if you share this knowledge—which I already have because I’m me —then it’ll compromise my safety.

You’ve been trying to protect us from your own mind.

Your illness was never going to allow you to tell us exactly what was happening or this elaborate plan to help us.

” He narrows his piercing yellow-green eyes into me. “You realize that?”

I’m starting to.