Page 65 of Burn Bright (Cobalt Empire #1)

HARRIET FISHER

E arbuds in and The Carraways blasting, I listen to Tom belt out an angsty chorus while I hike across campus. Trees rustle with a cool wind, the leaves beginning to change into a fiery orange as September ends.

I wonder how Ben is faring at Douche Row right now. Sure, Kappa wasn’t at fault for inviting a dickhead to a party who nearly drowned me, but they’re probably hungry for a piece of the Cobalt pie.

Picturing them taking a bite out of Ben gets my back up. No one is allowed to take a chunk out of him. Maybe I should’ve gone into law and not medicine. I could’ve fucking decreed it. Woven a gavel around. Flung that thing?—

“Fisher!”

I hear a faint yell, and I pry out my earbud, turning as Ben strides toward me with a long-legged, confident gait. His smile ignites as soon as he sees my face—which has to be resting at its normal scowling stasis.

My whole body goes light and airy. Has anyone ever been this happy to see me?

Just him, probably. Emotion tries to rush, and I take some deep breaths to stop the overwhelming surge.

Then I shut off my music. He slows to my side with a protein shake in hand, and I’m more cognizant of the many heads that’ve spun in our direction since he shouted my name.

“Sorry.” He notices them scrutinizing me.

“It can’t be worse than being caught in the quad with Xander. Three girls asked me in my morning lab if I was dating him, and I keep getting nasty spam through my MVU email address.”

He shakes his drink. “What do you mean?” Concern darkens his face.

While we walk together, I pull up my email and pass him my phone. “It’s junk mail. I’m guessing someone must’ve posted a pic of me and Xander online, and an internet savvy fan traced down my name, our college, and found my school email.”

His jaw muscle tics as he reads, “ Go die, bitch. You don’t deserve Xander Hale. ”

I pop a hard caramel candy in my mouth. “I didn’t say they were nice, Cobalt boy.”

“ I hope you rethink your whole life and take your skank ass vagina to the sewer you came from. ”

“That one did almost make me laugh.”

He’s not cracking even an itsy-bitsy smile. Instead, he’s deleting the emails for me. “Are they jumping in your socials too?”

“Nope. They haven’t found me there. My usernames are too creative, and I think it helps I don’t post a ton of face pics.” His concentration hasn’t let up on erasing the emails. “Friend—I will survive.”

“This doesn’t bother you?” He hands me my phone when he’s finished.

I shrug. “People suck. A tale as old as time. I feel worse for Xander, honestly. It can’t be easy having these types of fans breathing down your neck and affecting your actual life.

It’s toxic parasocial relationships. All one-sided and obsessive.

” I adjust my slipping backpack. “Me, on the other hand, all I have to do is make a new email. Which will be a pain, sure, but it’s not like people are crying about who my next hookup might be. ”

“Don’t count me out, Fisher,” he teases.

I bite on the caramel candy, my heart going unsteady the longer our gazes latch. “You’ll cry if it’s not you?”

“Definitely.” He sounds serious, but the light in his eyes never dulls. He checks me out a little bit, and heat bathes my cheeks.

“Odds are in your favor,” I flirt back.

Ben has a softer smile. I can tell something is on his mind, and I’m about to ask when he says, “Where are we headed?”

We.

He’s also freeing my sliding backpack from my shoulder. He slings it on his, carrying it for me.

“Library.” I hope I don’t sound too breathless. “I need to get Metamorphoses. I searched the database, and it hasn’t been checked out yet.”

He glances at his watch. “One hour before your 1:50 lab.” He’s memorized my schedule, a known fact that still levitates me in a weird way. “Looks like I’m yours for sixty minutes.”

That’s not even close to long enough. Before befriending Ben, I would’ve been shocked if he gave me thirty seconds. Asking for more feels greedy, but I’m ravenous for each minute, each sunny hour.

So when we reach the library together, I soak in the seconds with him. He’s such a jock shaking up his peanut butter protein concoction, casting smiles down at me. I think, in part, to try to beckon one out of me.

It works once or twice.

The librarian lets him in with the drink because he offers to dump it first. Being honest and kind does play to Ben’s favor a lot of the time. People always seem to give him what he wants in the end.

It reminds me of his meet-up with Leif today. “What’s the prognosis with the frat?” I ask, more hushed. “Are you a Kappa now?”

The second story of the cathedral-like library is dead quiet and also mostly empty of students. Barely any light shines through moody stained-glass windows. Bookshelves tower to the domed ceiling, and Ben follows me between two of them.

I crouch to read the spines. He hasn’t answered me, and fear squeezes my stomach. “Did they mess with you?”

“No.” He makes a face like I am very far off. His lips tic up. “Were you worried they would?”

“You against all of Kappa? Yeah, kind of.”

He rests an elbow on the shelf way above me. “I have a way with frats.” There isn’t much arrogance in his tone. He speaks like it’s just a fact. “But it’s not going to work out with Kappa Phi.”

I brush my fingers over the spines as my face falls. I’d really been hoping they’d offer him a place to stay. No other options seemed good enough to pursue. “Because…?” I drag out a dusty hardback.

He downs a gulp of shake, then clears his throat to say, “They want me to complete a bet that’s been in the frat for a decade. If I don’t, I can’t live there as a sophomore.”

“So let’s complete the bet,” I say with more optimism. I’m already including myself because he’s joined Team Harriet before I even handed him the sign-up sheet, and I’m clamoring for the opportunity to be there for Ben too.

“No.” He’s shaking his head.

My thighs ache in a squat, so I kneel. “You aren’t going to tell me what it is?”

Ben slides his fingers through his hair, a groan caught in his throat. “Don’t look at me like that.”

“Like what?”

“Like you want to scratch my eyeballs out and throw them down the stairs.”

“Is it hurting your warm blue heart?”

“More like it’s making me want to push inside you and watch you come.”

Holy fuck…I’d say that came out of nowhere, but his groan had been a hoarse, turned-on one.

My breath staggers, and I can’t formulate words.

We haven’t fooled around since the one time at his brothers’ apartment.

We haven’t even kissed , and seeing as how there is a time stamp on his life in New York, I can’t determine whether it’ll ever happen.

The flirting I like, but the actual reality of him slipping inside me, I know I’d love more. Even if it’s probably incredibly stupid to sleep with a guy who’s not sticking around. I don’t care.

I don’t care.

I crunch on the tiny bit of hard candy left in my mouth, breaking the spindling tension in the air.

Thankfully he speaks again. “I think you meant cold blue heart.”

I shake my head once. “Yours might be blue, but it’s not cold. It never has been.” I don’t look at him. I just slip the hardback on the shelf, still in search of Ovid. Not here. I start picking myself up.

“They want me to sleep with a girl from the Honors House.”

I literally stumble on the ascent to my feet. Ben juts out a hand, clasping my hip to balance me. My eyes are saucers. At first, I’m trapped on the horrifying image of Ben sleeping with another girl.

Them together.

Hot and heavy in bed. His hands skating down her bare skin.

And she’s in the Honors House where I want to be? Jealousy towers over me and makes me want to shrink. Until I realize, he’s not accepting the bet.

That pains me in a different, more agonized way. He’s adamant that he can’t stay with his brothers for much longer, and if he has no place to live soon, then…is he going to expedite his trip to the wilderness? Will he pack his bags next week? Three days from now? Tomorrow?

I wish I could offer my apartment, but after I asked Eden, she’s now reminded me multiple times not to let my friends spend the night.

She’s paranoid I’m going to have “friendly” sleepovers when I’ve never even pushed that boundary once.

I just asked one time. She said no, which I respected but hated.

Sadly, the frat really is the best solution to Ben’s crisis.

He places the protein shake on one of the library shelves, and he explains more about the bet. When he’s done, I consider the possibility of me achieving my goal of being accepted in the Honors House. “I could?—”

“No,” Ben forces out.

“ Ben , just listen to me for a second, please.” It hurts craning my neck to look up at him, but I still fucking do it because I want my eyes on his and he needs to hear this.

“If I get into the Honors House, do you know how easy it’d be to just tell Leif we had sex and give him panties?

They don’t even have to be mine, okay. We can buy a new pair, pour some bleach on them, make them look used. ”

“What if you don’t get in?”

I go cold. “Then I guess you convince another girl to do that for you. Or you actually sleep with her.” What is wrong with me?! Why am I suggesting this?

He swallows hard, his nose flaring, and he stares around the dark, quiet alcove that feels like ours.

I inhale the old dusty book scent, ignoring the boulder in my lungs, and he says, “I’m not fucking another girl.

” His blue eyes narrow down on me. “You’re the only one I’ve even thought about sleeping with for months.

You’re all I can think about every morning and every night, and if I even tried to have sex with someone else, I’m fairly certain I’d only be thinking about you, Harriet. ”

For months. Every morning. Every night.

He’s been thinking about me.

Me.

It balls up in my esophagus. I’m too overwhelmed to speak.