Page 104 of Burn Bright (Cobalt Empire #1)

I unzip my heavy blue jacket. “I was able to tell Harriet things. More than I could share with anyone else.” I shake my head as thoughts whirl. “I told her how I felt…how nothing was making sense to me.”

Charlie studies me. “You weren’t trying to protect her as well?”

“It’s not that.” I think back. “I didn’t feel like I had to.”

“You weren’t afraid of causing her pain?”

“Never,” I realize, and I blink away the burn in my eyes.

“I kept telling myself I was doing good by her. I was good for her. Then she felt like the only one I never hurt. She was the only one I ever loved without harming.” I laugh harshly to myself.

“I don’t even know if that’s fucking true, but in my head… it’s all that I understood.”

Charlie shifts his weight, leaning on the hiking pole. “She’s not here though.” He swings his left pole toward the thicket of trees. “She’s not there. She’s definitely not in the ugliest cabin you could’ve purchased.”

I almost laugh. “Yeah, sorry I didn’t hire an interior decorator.”

“I meant the outside, but I’m sure the inside is just as heinous.”

I tug off my gloves, combing my hand through my hair. “Charlie?—”

“She’s not here, Ben. Harriet isn’t in Alaska. Which means that the ‘only one’ in your life is no longer a part of your life.”

“She has all of you,” I reason. “She has the Cobalt Empire. She will be okay.”

“What kind of Empire are you leaving her?” Charlie retorts with heat. “What do you think happens if the sixth born never returns?”

I slip my fingers back into my gloves, needing to move. My ribcage squeezes around my lungs. “I think it’s better this way.”

Silences bleeds. Charlie pulls off his beanie, then mutters, “I wish I brought Beckett.”

“Beckett can’t kn?—”

“I’ve told him nothing.” He glares. “No one knows where I am. I’m being brutally honest with you because I don’t know how to be soft enough for you. But you’re stuck with me for at least another hour.” He plants his ass on the tree stump, stretching out his leg.

An hour.

I can last an hour.

“So you put thousands of miles between us.” Charlie rubs his knee, then looks up at me.

“You planned to limit communication to letters so no one would worry. Maybe mail a fun postcard. Maybe you bought some from different states— welcome to Wyoming, North Dakota, Montana —just so we’d believe you were traveling.

There’s Ben Pirrip on his great American backpacking adventure.

Having a wonderful time away.” He slow-claps.

He’s not wrong.

Charlie continues, “The letters would eventually slow down, until they stop arriving altogether. You’d hope we’d forget about you. Grow disinterested in what you were up to. We would just move on without you.”

Yeah.

I can’t even nod, but he’s not asking for confirmation. He knows he’s right.

His intense gaze stays fixed on mine. “Now you’re really alone.

What’s next when you start imagining what could happen to us?

You have an intrusive thought of Beckett drowning.

Now you’re panicked because it might happen.

You thought it, now you caused it. Then what are you going to do to protect us, little brother? ”

I stare haunted at the snow. It takes me a minute to speak. “The existence of me is more harmful than the absence,” I say what has kept cycling in my head for so long.

Charlie’s eyes redden, his gaze tunneling in me.

“The loss of you is the most catastrophic event our family will ever endure. You could explode on another planet, and we’d all still feel the impact like you’re a single inch away.

Our parents will never recover. Our mom will grieve you for the rest of her life.

You will have irreparably changed us all. ”

I can’t catch my breath. “I almost caused Audrey’s death. Better me gone than her.”

“She’s not going to die if you come home,” Charlie refutes. “And if she does, it won’t be because of a bad choice you made.”

“You don’t know that.” I jump to my feet, pressure compounding on my chest. “You think I can’t survive out here, but Charlie, I can’t survive there. Literally, if anything were to happen to one of you…”

“You will lose this battle if you stay here,” Charlie says slowly, forcefully. “I am certain. I am also certain you have a chance to win if you come home.”

It freezes me in place.

Charlie picks himself up, bracing his weight on the hiking pole. “You think Beckett doesn’t understand that fight? He’s battling compulsions every fucking day.”

I grimace up at the sky. “I don’t even understand how this is OCD. It’s not like Beckett’s rituals with symmetry or the contamination thing. It’s not the same.”

“It’s similar. There are different types of OCD. Some are all up here.” He points to his temple. “Do you have intrusive thoughts about negative outcomes or causing harm to others?”

I swallow. “Yes, yeah.”

“Do you feel a compulsion to protect others from yourself?”

Clearly. I nod.

“Do you have the irrational belief that your thoughts or actions can control the outcome of events?”

It’s all just slamming into me. “Yeah.”

“That one is magical thinking. You also likely have hyper-responsibility, but I’m not a fucking psychiatrist. I’m just well-read and too intelligent for my own good.

” He stakes the pole hard into the snow, then bores his eyes into me.

“Beckett knows , Ben. He knows what it’s like to go to war with your mind…

to the point where I’m guessing he saw in you what none of us did. Maybe subconsciously, he always knew.”

I frown. “What do you mean?”

“He was adamant that you come to New York. We all knew you hit a low point, you weren’t doing well, and you started to pull away from us.

But beyond everyone, it was Beckett who felt that something was critically wrong.

That you needed to live with us. Not in Philly with Mom and Dad, but with your brothers. ”

I take a few dazed steps backward.

It was Beckett.

I shut my eyes tightly, emotion stinging. Then I rub my face with my fist. All this time, I thought my own family would be the least likely to understand me. And here they are—the ones who always would.

“I wish I talked to him sooner.”

“There’s plenty of time for that,” Charlie says. “There’s also time to fire your fucking therapist and start being honest with a new one.”

I choke out a laugh. “Yeah, like who?”

“Frederick.” Dad’s therapist. Before I combat, Charlie adds, “There’s little better than the guy who’s been in our dad’s mind for decades. He’ll understand your feelings more than most would. Isn’t that what you want?”

To feel understood.

Yeah. It’s what I’ve been craving.

I expel a weighted breath, trying to throw the monster off me. I stare around at the trees. At the logs, at the snow. At the tiny cabin in the distance. It’s so hard.

It’s so hard to choose this path. “What if leaving is the biggest mistake I make, Charlie?” I ask.

He holds my gaze. “It took hockey from you. It took your friends. It took your family. Don’t let it take her.

Don’t let it take you. There will always be dominos hitting ones you never intend.

You can’t avoid mistakes. You can’t avoid bad choices.

You can’t avoid change. Embrace it and get the help you need. You won’t find it here.”

I stare right at him and inhale the deepest breath of my life. I think I did find it here. I nod to him, overwhelmed. “Let’s go home.”

C harlie took a private jet, of course. I can’t even think about fossil fuels.

I just crash almost the entirety of the plane ride.

Emotionally wiped out, and he wakes me up when we land.

With a kick to the shins. Still very Charlie, but it’ll be impossible not to love him after today, even when we aggravate each other.

He tells me, “I called our family. They all know everything.” He doesn’t give me a chance to thank him. He collects his luggage from the back of the plane and speaks to Oscar.

I asked Charlie to make the call before we took off. It lifts a heavy weight not having to do it myself. Gives me a jump start on picking up the pieces I’d left behind. I just hope I can glue the ones with Harriet back together…I hope I can salvage this.

I’m going to try.

I gather my duffel from the overhead bin, ducking a bit on my way out the door.

When I straighten up, I see Beckett waiting on the tarmac of the private runway.

His dark brown hair blows in a gust of wind.

His leather jacket zipped. He’s at the foot of the stairs.

His SUV parked farther away. He rips out his AirPods as soon as I emerge, and his widened, relieved eyes meet mine.

His chest rises into a bigger breath.

Don’t break down.

Don’t fucking break down.

I chant to myself as I descend toward him, but as I near, I just know—it was him.

My ultimate plan would’ve succeeded, if not for him.

If not for New York, I would’ve never fallen in love.

I would’ve never had all that time with Harriet.

All that time with my four brothers. Charlie would’ve never found me.

I would’ve never gotten on this plane and come back to find peace.

I reach him on the tarmac, and I know—my brother saved my life. I drop my duffel and wrap my arms around him.

He hugs back, his warm hugs the best of my whole childhood. I want to say thank you, but I can’t even fucking talk.

When he draws away, he holds the side of my neck, still keeping me close.

His calming eyes carry so many reassurances.

“If something happens today or tomorrow or next week that makes you want to turn around, you need to know something. There will always be storms—whether you’re here or not, but be here. ”

I intake a breath.