Page 52 of Burn Bright (Cobalt Empire #1)

BEN COBALT

X ander’s apartment is similarly laid out to my brothers’ place three floors above, except Xander’s is a two-bedroom he shares with Easton and resembles more of a casual crash pad. Gray sectional, ginormous television, gaming system, and state-of-the-art surround sound.

He moved in this summer, but this is my first time stepping foot here.

My effort to rebuild anything with Xander hasn’t been great. Tonight, I realize how much I want to leave things better than they were with him. I feel like I finally have a chance to.

He’s opening the fridge. “You two want a beer?”

“Sure, what do you have?” Harriet asks, slinging her backpack on the sectional. She slides into the corner cushions.

“Koning, Miller, Yuengling.”

“I’ll take a Yuengling.”

He pulls out two glass bottles, then asks, “Ben?”

“I’m good with my water.” I sit on one side of Harriet and watch Xander pop the caps. I wonder how often he drinks.

His jaw muscle tics when he notices me staring. He’s giving me a brutal look. “Don’t judge me, man.”

“I didn’t say a word,” I defend.

“You have that look.” He takes a seat on the other cushion beside Harriet and hands her a beer.

“Okay, I’m not an alcoholic just because my dad is one—and yeah, it is hereditary, but I have zero signs of addiction.

So cheers.” He lifts the beer, then takes a bitter swig.

His brows pinch afterward. Guilt for being an asshole causes him to slump back into the couch.

My muscles flex, and I sit more on the edge of the cushion. Well, this is blowing up really fucking fast.

Harriet glances cautiously between us. “So…should we talk about Ovid’s Metamorphoses or the fifty-ton elephant in the room?”

“Have you read it yet?” I ask Xander, choosing the easy subject matter—our presentation topic.

“I read one of the translations four years ago.” It’s a Roman epic poem originally in Latin. “You?”

I shake my head. “I know most of the poems. Ovid gets mentioned so much, he might as well be a tenth member of my family.” I flip the cap of my water bottle. “Of what I remember, it’s mostly about the gods being immoral and how they inadvertently inflict pain upon others.” I glance at Harriet.

She sinks back. “Don’t look at me. I haven’t even gotten the book yet.” She sips her beer.

Xander picks at the label on his glass bottle.

“Yeah, but I don’t think we should focus the presentation on that aspect.

Ovid isn’t like Homer where there’s a clear epic hero.

There’s no Achilles or Odysseus, no courageous battletested warriors to root for.

Instead, he shows us that we’re all flawed. Gods and mortals alike.”

I frown. “So there aren’t any heroes?”

“No, there is,” Xander says. “I think at the foundation of every poem, the hero is love.”

“Love?”

“Yeah, and change. It’s literally called Metamorphoses. I think there’s a quote too.” He squints at the ceiling in thought. “‘What we have been, or now are, we shall not be tomorrow.’” He nods. “Something like that.” He shrugs. “I just think it’s a more interesting concept.”

“I’m down,” Harriet says.

Love and Change as heroes? I don’t know what I feel. My brain speeds beyond me. “Yeah, sure.”

“Or, I mean, if you want to go in a different direction after you read it, I’m open to anything. I really don’t want to be the one to say more than a couple words when we present. It’ll be a miracle if my voice doesn’t shake.”

“I’ve got you covered. I can memorize whatever.” Public speaking has never been hard for me.

He eases, then nods in thanks.

Harriet frowns at her beer. “The presentation is one of the last big grades for the course.”

“Yeah…?” I don’t follow where she’s going.

“Professor Wellington hasn’t set a date yet, but it’ll probably be toward the end of the semester. Like November or December.” When I’m gone, she doesn’t add.

I sit up a little stiffer. “Maybe it’ll be October.”

“Yeah, maybe.”

Xander isn’t catching onto the problem. Easton calling me out for ditching people comes crashing back.

To bail or not to bail? I hate that sticking around feels more fatal somehow, but I can’t even picture leaving Xander or Harriet alone in front of two hundred students. She might break out in hives, and I could so easily carry the weight of the presentation for them.

I’ll be there.

I’ll make it. I have to make it. I can make it.

Another swig, more water washes down my throat. Cooling me off, and then an awkward silence passes between us.

“I think the elephant is back,” Harriet says casually. “You have a name for him?”

I rest my forearms on my knees, more hunched, and I glance over at Xander. He takes a sharper swig of beer.

“I guess not.” Harriet widens her eyes.

“You want to tell her?” I ask him.

“Why not?” Xander turns to her. “Ben, here, thinks I’m a porcelain doll. One crack away from shattering.”

“That’s not?—”

“It is true,” Xander retorts. “Look, we can blame the total annihilation of our friendship on your shitty friends, on you feeling like I couldn’t stand up for myself, whatever, but when we were kids, you never treated me like I was this fragile, broken thing.

You don’t even get how much I fucking loved you for that.

” His nose flares. He’s avoiding Harriet and rises to his feet.

I stand up too.

He stops in place.

Pain envelops me, just seeing his and knowing I’m the origin. “I just wanted to protect you,” I tell him.

“I am not one step away from self-destruction.” He points at himself with the beer bottle. When he sees me glancing at the alcohol, he lets out a dying laugh. “Jesus Christ.”

“Xander—”

“You look at me, Ben, like I’m still that thirteen-year-old that you found…” His voice tapers out. He’s unblinking.

I’m unblinking.

It hurts to breathe as we both see the memory in front of us. Christmas at the lake house. The night of his thirteenth birthday. One or two a.m. I needed to piss, and I slipped off the top bunk, not realizing Xander wasn’t on the bottom.

I went into our bathroom. Flicked on the lights. I saw blood, him, the bathtub, and a razor in his fingers. He was cutting the top of his thighs.

I was only thirteen too, and I got the blade out of his hand, watched him slump down into the tub in anguish I wished I could take away, and he just kept crying and pleading, “Don’t tell anyone. Don’t. Please , Ben.”

When Xander was around eleven, twelve his depression had taken an all-time low. It wasn’t a secret to our families that he wasn’t doing well.

I helped him out of the tub. “We can just sit for a sec. I’ll get bandages.” I got him to calm down, and we sat on the floor while I peeled off Band-Aids and he stuck them on his cuts.

He was blinking through streaming tears. “You can go. I’m making your night worse, maybe your life…I don’t know.”

“It’s not worse.” I caught his drifting gaze. “Honestly, I’d rather sit on this bathroom floor with you for a billion years than not have you in this world at all.” His chin quaked, and I added, “I bet it’d get pretty crammed in here because all our families would feel the same too.”

Xander nodded a bunch.

I nodded back and asked, “You think Eliot would stand on the sink?”

He choked out a weak laugh. “And recite some weird soliloquy.” Then he wiped his runny nose. It took him a while to speak again, but he whispered out, “Thanks, Ben.”

I didn’t tell anyone what happened. In a way, I thought he’d trust me more. I thought we’d grow closer. I thought if he hit another low, I’d be someone he’d go to, but he’s right that I started treating him like he was always in harm’s reach.

Gone were the simple times of penis Etch A Sketch drawings. Things got real. I did not want to lose my cousin to anything.

I’m still naturally searching for the bubble-wrap when he’s around.

Harriet casts tense glances between us. “Ben found you where…?”

I’m floored when Xander admits, “Cutting. I was cutting myself in the bathroom.” He’s only looking at me.

“Oh,” she murmurs.

I take a breath. “Maybe I should’ve told someone what happened.”

His brows scrunch in confusion. “Why?”

I lift my stiff shoulders. “Because after that I felt responsible—like if anything bad happened to you, it’d be because of me.

Because I didn’t tell your parents. I didn’t even tell Moffy…

and you know how badly I wanted to run to him that night?

” I shift my weight. “You have one of the best brothers in the world. Back then, I would’ve given a left kidney to switch him with Charlie. ”

“Back then? Not now?”

“I don’t know what’s happening, but Charlie hasn’t been that horrible.” I don’t mention how he gave me a heads up about the Board Game Club tonight, and how he told Harriet he doesn’t hate me. The latter still feels unreal.

Xander loosely fists the neck of the beer. “You know if you ran to Moffy, there is no chance he would’ve kept it a secret. He would’ve told our parents.”

“Yeah, he would’ve done the right thing.” I hear my voice rising. “Everyone would’ve, except for me.”

“You were thirteen too,” Xander defends me. “If anything happened to me, it would’ve never been your fault. If anything does now, it won’t be either.” He motions to my water bottle. “Is there holy water in there? Because you’re absolved. Spritz it on yourself or whatever.”

It won’t be my fault.

I let that ping around my brain, but it’s not helping me relax. Something feels wrong with me. I don’t know…I lift my gaze to his. “If it means anything, I don’t really see you as breakable as much as everything is breaking around me.” The door begins to creak open. Easton is here. “I should go.”

“Wait,” Xander calls out.

“See you in class.” I nod to him with a smile. “I am glad we did this.”

He nods uncertainly.

And I salute Harriet. “Fisher.” My chest is tight. I’m leaving her with Xander. Don’t do it. Don’t do it.

I want her at my side.

I want her in my arms.

I want her to be mine.

Instead, I’m veering toward the door like a tornadic wind, and Easton blows out of the way. Glaring, he says, “It’s not a French exit. It’s the Ben exit.”

I shoot a glare back.

When I’m in the hall, I head to the elevators. Each step away from her hurts. The sound of a shutting door jolts my body, and I look backward.

Harriet is running to catch me.

My lungs expand. I hang on to her appearance, not even caring if she’s a mirage and I’m imagining shit now. I’ll take this fantasy. But full disclosure, she’s real.

She slows at my side, digging in her black backpack. Our eyes meet a few tender times. Then I say, “You looking for a cross to excise the demon within me, Fisher?”

“You’re a Cobalt. The only demon within you is hubris, and sorry to say, you seem to lack it the most of your immortal fam.”

“So you say,” I smile more and more.

It pulls a tiny one out of her too.

Harriet does make me feel so much fucking better, and I can’t explain it at all. I’ve stopped trying to figure it out.

“Damn,” she mutters, a plastic baggie of hard candies in her hand. Her shoulders drop in defeat when we reach the elevator. “How are these not vegan?” She’s reading the ingredients label.

She wanted to give me candy? I smile down at her.

She looks up at me. “What?”

“Nothing,” I whisper, then I drape my arm over her shoulders.

Harriet leans a little into me. I feel her skin go warm, and I scrunch her hair with my hand. I think I’m falling in love with you. I wish we could be together. I’m sorry.

Thank you.

It all rolls over me like a tidal wave.