Page 24 of Burn Bright (Cobalt Empire #1)

BEN COBALT

“ I ’m not a good person,” I warn Harriet. “Even when I try to be…” I take off my baseball cap, just to scrape a hand through my hair. Then I gesture to her with the hat. “You should probably sit for this.”

Her brows furrow in a cuter scowl. “Afraid I’ll faint?”

“You’re the doctor-to-be, you tell me.”

“I’m fine on my feet.” She threads her arms over her chest. “You’re not going to scare me away either.”

“Yeah?” I sweep her up and down, how staunch and fixed she is. Harriet is a determined girl, but I didn’t think her determination would revolve around me. “I was a little worried about that.”

“I’m not going anywhere, Ben.”

It catches me off guard, hearing her call me Ben and not Cobalt boy or Friend. She’s craning her neck past comfort to even look at me, so I rest my ass against the edge of the conference table. At a lower height.

I thumb the Capybara bracelet around my wrist. “I’ve lied to my therapist for a long time—I have a therapist, by the way.

Dr. Wheeler.” Guess I should start there.

“I’ve never gone to therapy to make myself feel better.

First, it was so my parents wouldn’t worry about me.

Then it was to get prescribed Adderall.”

She frowns. “Adderall?”

“I made him think that I needed it.”

“So you’re abusing the drug to…stay awake?”

“No, I didn’t even take it. I gave it to this one asshole in prep school who wanted it.

We made a deal. I supply him Adderall and then he’d stop harassing my best friend.

And he did stop for a while. Then I graduated and…

I figured he had no reason to keep picking on Winona.

He was messing with her to get a reaction out of me, and I was no longer there . ”

“Winona Meadows?” She names my cousin, my ex-best friend, who is insanely private.

It’s ironic that Winona loves photography.

Nearly every lock screen on my phone are pictures she’s taken of forests, rivers, mountains, the sky.

Yet, she can’t stand when her face shows up in magazines.

The tabloids all usually say the same thing:

Winona Meadows is just like her supermodel mom! Another bombshell sex symbol in the making!

It doesn’t matter that her “supermodel” mom—my Aunt Daisy—has publicly stated she didn’t have a great experience modeling.

We all deal with being the children of larger-than-life, globally-recognized parents, but because Winona looks so similar to her mom, it’s harder in a different way.

It’ll get worse for her when she turns eighteen in March. When she’s no longer a minor and the media can print whatever the hell they want about her body. And I’ve seen her cling to her youth like it’s the end of a lifeline.

I’m older than her, and she’s always sort of chased after me. When I climbed a tree, she’d try and try to reach the branch I scaled.

I had to grab her hand and pull her higher.

That’s how it’s always felt between us. If I hiked through waist-deep mud in a creek, she’d be chin-deep, so I’d put her on my back.

She’d make these silly animal noises as a kid. Elephant, goat, koala, hyena. I thought they were hilarious. We laughed so much our voices would go hoarse.

We got older and older, and I didn’t want to tug her into college life too early. I didn’t want to ruin the last good she’d been experiencing. So I added physical and emotional distance between us.

I tell this all to Harriet—because I don’t know how to describe what happened that night without describing Winona. It’s about her.

And it should probably weigh on me sharing private details about a private girl, but I’m so tangled in this mess about Winona that it’s more painful keeping it inside.

Who is Harriet even going to tell? I trust she won’t run to a tabloid. I trust she won’t narc to a stranger. I trust she’ll protect this knowledge because it’d hurt another girl if she didn’t.

I put my worn ballcap on the table behind me. “When I left for college, it’s not like I was leaving Winona all alone. She has three other best friends. They’re the four youngest girls in my family.” I pause to see if she knows.

Recognition glints in her eyes. “Your sister is one?”

“Yeah, we kind of refer to them as the girl squad since they’re all around the same age. It’s Audrey Cobalt, Winona Meadows, Kinney Hale, and Vada Abbey.”

“Vada…? I think I’ve heard of her, but hate to break it to you, I didn’t do my homework on this one.”

I smile a little. “How very un-Harriet of you.”

“You mean un-Cobalt?”

“Ah, you’re not a Cobalt yet. I haven’t proposed, Friend.”

Her cheeks go bright red. Did I go too far? I skim her features more, but she says, “Okay, you’re fucking with me.”

“Just a little bit.” My smile widens, and honestly, I can’t believe I’m even smiling while in the midst of describing this agonized past. A smile toys at her lips too. “I wouldn’t fuck with you that hard, Harriet.”

She drops her backpack to her feet. “Think I can’t take it?”

“You probably could. I just prefer teasing lightly…gently.”

Harriet studies me like I’ve been studying her. As our eyes brush and caress, blood drives south in my body. I wonder if she’s picturing me in bed—because now I’m picturing her beneath the sheets in my arms.

I clutch the desk on either side of me. Pressing my fingers harder into the wood to keep my cock from throbbing. “So Vada?” I have to clear the arousal out of my throat.

“Who is she?” Harriet asks while shrugging off her oversized leather jacket. She must be hot. I glance at her belly button piercing. Red plaid pants ride low on her hips, and her white crop top is tight against her chest, her tits big for her small frame.

Yeah, my blood is still surging downward. I want to hook my finger in the very thin strap of her panties that just barely peek out. Mostly to see if she’d like my hands there.

I shake the thought away. You need to get this out. “Vada is related to the Meadows and Hales through my uncles. Not blood-related to me or any Cobalt.”

“But you grew up together?”

“Yeah,” I nod. “She went on a lot of the same family trips. She races bikes. BMX. Her and Winona are in the same grade, so they’re really close.

So when I went to Penn, I thought Winona would be okay, but Vada was…

” I roll my eyes at myself, pissed off at myself.

“Vada was bugging me a lot this year about Winona. Trying to get me to mend the friendship, and I just didn’t want anything to do with it.

For some reason I thought…” My eyes burn as I stare unblinkingly at a dark water stain on the carpet.

“I thought when Vada said the asshole was being a dick to Winona again in school, she was trying to emotionally manipulate me to fix things with her. Tug on my heartstrings, you know?”

Harriet hops up on the table, sitting beside me. “Is Vada like that?”

I let out a laugh. “ No . That’s the stupid thing.

She’s not , but Winona kept saying everything was fine.

She’s never lied to me like that before, but I get why she didn’t tell me the truth.

I’d put this giant wall between us, and for the first time, I’d stopped helping her over it.

” My nose goes runny as emotion builds, and I wipe it with the side of my fist. “So I was a callous dick to Vada. She didn’t understand why I was icing her out, why I was cold-shouldering Winona, and the whole time, I thought everything was fixed. Fine. Done.”

A vicious knot cramps inside my chest, and I can’t let it unravel. I’ve never really figured out how, not when I remember what happened next.

“Vada convinced Winona to finally tell me what was going on,” I say in a tight breath. “Winona came to me bawling while describing how she thought she was drugged. In school. He put something in her water bottle, and she almost passed out in the bathroom.”

Harriet goes still. “Did he…?”

I shake my head hard. “She called Vada in enough time.” I look up at the ceiling.

“Her bodyguard wasn’t in the building. The administration at Dalton Academy was terrible and barely listened to our parents complain about the harassment.

Even when I was there. This asshole’s grandfather practically paid for the east wing of the prep school.

He was old money, and some teachers thought we needed to get thicker skin because we were the ‘famous’ kids.

Like we were exaggerating what was going on. ”

I pause to swallow the rock that, honestly, won’t go down. So I uncap my water bottle, take a hefty swig, and I offer some to Harriet.

Before she takes a sip, she says, “I don’t see how you’re the bad guy in all of this.”

“I lost it,” I choke out. “That night, when Winona told me what he did, all I thought about was hurting him like he’d hurt her. So I went to his house with a bat. Smashed his Porsche. Smashed him. He wasn’t moving, Harriet. I almost…I almost killed him. I think I would’ve, but Donnelly?—”

“Donnelly?”

“Yeah, Xander’s bodyguard. He was the one on my security detail that night.

He got me off him before I did any permanent damage.

” I run my tongue over my molars. “I’d say he saved me, but funny thing is, I didn’t want to be saved.

” I blink a few times, my eyes on fire. “I scared my family. It’s one thing to enact revenge together .

Another thing to do it alone. They think I’ve been suffering alone .

” I glance over at her now. “Maybe they’re right.

But there were just too many variables if I involved them. Too many things could go wrong.”

She caps the water bottle slowly, then passes it back to me with a deepening frown. “You really think that?”

“Yeah,” I nod assuredly. “I do.” I stare at her laced combat boots.

“After Winona told her parents what happened, she decided that she wanted to go to an all-girls school for her senior year. Boarding school. She’s not too far from here in Upstate New York.

Vada went with her. It’s another reason my sister has been so upset this year.

I left Philly. Two of her closest friends left Philly. She only has Kinney Hale now.”

“Why’d your sister stay behind?” Harriet asks.

“She won’t admit it, but Audrey is pretty attached to our mom and dad. She’s only sixteen. I don’t think she was ready to live without them yet.”

“I can’t blame her.” Harriet unwraps a Jolly Rancher, and it reminds me that she was sixteen and living in a Honda.

Even without all the facts, it’s hard not to feel anger toward her mom and dad for deserting their teenage daughter.

I try to let it go as she tells me, “If I had your parents, I’d probably never leave them behind, no offense. ”

“None taken.” I smile down at her. “Leaving anyone you love behind is the hardest thing in the world, but if you ask my Uncle Ryke, he’d say the hardest things are usually the right things.”

She swishes the candy in her mouth. “Does Meadows wisdom even apply to a Cobalt?”

I hope it does. “Seems universal to me.” I hop off the desk, then clasp her hand and tug her onto her feet. She stays at my side as I approach the bulletin, and I tear off a neon-orange flyer from its pushpin and flash it to her. “What about this one?”

“Board Game Club?”

“No push-ups required.”

Her teeny-tiny smile returns, then she reads the fine print. “It looks like they’re gathering to play Catan next. That’s a strategy board game, right? I’ve never played before.”

“Yeah. It’s not too hard. Beckett loves it, so I’ve played a handful of times.”

“Better than chess?” she teases since I said Chess Club was off-limits.

I almost laugh. “I can handle Catan for you, Fisher. Don’t worry about me.”

“I’ll try not to, Friend.” Her budding smile is now drawing mine even higher. Yeah, we’re making each other smile. My chest feels lighter, and it takes me a second to realize something.

We’ve never let go of our hands.