Page 90 of Burn Bright (Cobalt Empire #1)

BEN COBALT

N ew York—I was never supposed to be here in the first place. I never thought I’d be living here this far into November. None of this has been part of my ultimate plan. I thought I’d even be moved out of my brothers’ apartment in Hell’s Kitchen forever ago.

Sure, I don’t really have anywhere else to live since the Honors House hasn’t accepted Harriet yet. I haven’t completed the Kappa bet. But the past couple weeks, I haven’t been clamoring to ditch my brothers for the frat house.

Last week, I even went to my niece’s first birthday party in Philly.

Harriet had a research symposium she needed to attend, so she couldn’t go.

I didn’t want her to miss it, and Maeve’s birthday isn’t the sole family gathering of the year.

As the holidays approach, we’re all going to come together so much more.

Plus, family vacations are around the corner. The yacht will come out. The fancy villas in the Med. She’s barely even seen a portion of the wealth. Mostly, I’m excited to be here as Harriet is integrated into my universe.

I could tell Harriet wished she could’ve gone to the birthday party. Almost everyone in my extended family had been there. Hales. Meadows. Cobalts. I saw Baby Maeve dig her little fingers in a soft-pink cake and smile gleefully up at Jane and Thatcher. No disasters, no damage, no hurt or harm.

It’s made me wonder if maybe things are changing. Things are better now. The desperate need to leave is being submerged beneath the powerful desire to stay.

It’s November 22 nd .

Close to midnight on a Friday.

And I can say I’m still here for the upcoming Classical Mythology presentation. But really, it’s so much more than that. I’m dragging out the plan because of her. Every bone in my body wants to stay and just be happy with this girl I fucking adore.

I know if I leave New York, everything with me and Harriet ends. But if I stay…

The if feels like an I am.

I am staying.

“You really want to do this?” Harriet questions for the third time.

We’re in my brothers’ apartment. I have her up on the marble kitchen counter, my hands on her thighs while her knees are spread around me.

Her wet blonde hair has slowly begun air-drying, but strands still soak against her baggy Green Day tee.

She’s not wearing a bra, and I’ve debated slipping my hand up her shirt about a thousand-and-one sweltering times.

“What was the question?” I ask with a playful smile.

She tears a red Twizzler with her teeth, seeing me check her out. “You are such a dude.”

“I am only human.”

“Hate to break it to you, Cobalt boy, but you’re far from mortal. And what I’ve gathered from all our course material, gods tend to fuck more than humans.”

I laugh. “That explains Eliot then.” I run casual fingers through my own damp hair.

We just took a steaming hot shower together.

I shut off the water at one point to not waste a lot.

I’d hooked a tie on the doorknob, so my brothers knew not to barge the fuck in there.

We have an agreed upon system in place, and I don’t even care if they know I’m hooking up in the bathroom.

They don’t care that I am.

It feels like college. Like I’m in a dorm with the people I love most. I’m falling further in love with the idea of planting roots with my brothers. Of keeping both feet on the floor, both feet beside them. It scares me, but that fear isn’t a panic crawling to the surface of my skin.

It’s somewhere unreachable. Faded.

Hopefully gone.

I smile more at her. Thinking about us in the shower.

Being inside Harriet hasn’t wrecked me. It’s been the most cathartic, euphoric experience of my life. I’ve never been this close to someone else. Never loved them to this extreme depth, and I’ve given so many pieces of myself to her—vulnerable pieces that I’ve never shown anyone.

I think she’s given just as many back.

“You really want to do this?” Harriet asks for the fourth time now. She swallows the bite of Twizzler and awaits my response.

“I’m sure,” I nod. “Tonight is the best night. Kappa has been throwing a football party all day. It’s probably still going on, and Leif wanted me to show up. So I’ll go to the frat house and tell him I’m dropping out of the pledge class.”

I’m not going through initiation. I don’t want to be an official member of the frat. Especially now that I don’t plan on completing their bet. Even if Harriet is accepted in the Honors House, I’m not living at Kappa Phi Delta.

I want to live with my brothers.

I’ve always wanted to, really. I just never felt like I could until now.

“You’re setting your parachute on fire,” Harriet warns me. “They’re your fallback.”

She’s worried I’ll leave the city early if I don’t have alternate housing.

“I won’t need one. I’ll be okay with my brothers,” I assure her.

I don’t mention how I’m contemplating staying permanently.

I might take her out to break the good news.

“Before I forget.” I tug my phone out of my pocket, then send Harriet a contact.

Her cell lights up on the counter beside her. I smile as her big eyes grow into disco balls at the contact’s name. “What the fuck…no.”

“Yes.” I nod with a grin. “I’ve got the connections. One of which is a highly-respected concierge medical team. Physicians that you can shadow. You’ve already met Farrow after the escape room, now you have his number.”

After she told me the play-by-play of her meet up with her dad, I wanted to knock him out.

I hope to never run into him because I might.

I don’t trust myself. I wish it struck me sooner that Farrow was an option right there, all this time, but maybe it’s good Harriet closed the chapter with her dad.

Her goals in medicine no longer have to be tangled with him.

She hasn’t blinked yet.

I heard all about Tom asking Harriet to join The Carraways. She wanted my input, but I’m not much help. I can easily picture Harriet being extraordinary as a rock star or as a doctor—both paths fulfilling her, both paths making her happy.

She’s been firmly fifty-fifty split down the middle. At a significant fork in the road. Music or medicine. Where she goes will determine her entire future, but it shouldn’t change our relationship much. I’ll be beside her no matter what she does.

Unless I leave.

What I decide about my plan will be the course-corrector, the thing that truly impacts us. I don’t love wielding that much power in a relationship, but then again, I would be more panicked if I didn’t have control.

I have no clue what that says about me. That I’m a control freak?

I see her mind reeling. “I won’t be the one to call Farrow,” I tell her. “It’s your choice.”

She picks up her phone. “Is this your way of telling me to choose medicine?”

“No, I just want to make things easier if you decide to be a doctor. No pressure at all, but that window is cracked for you, bel oiseau. Fly through if you want to.”

“Thanks, Ben.” It’s so soft and sincere, my ribs relax around my lungs hearing it. “I’m collecting numbers in your fam like Pokémon.”

“You going to catch them all?” I tease.

“Maybe.” Her teeny-tiny smile peeks through, and I dip my head down, kissing her lightly, tenderly, my blood coursing through me in fervent, passionate waves. I still hold her delicate jaw when I break our lips apart.

“I am spending the night at my apartment,” she says again.

“You telling me or yourself?”

“Both.” She needs to finish writing her final essay for Classical Mythology in the morning, and her place does have less distractions.

I still haven’t started my paper. But I figure I’ll take the subway with her, make sure she gets home okay, then go to the frat house from there.

Harriet scoops the stuffed lion off the counter, his neck blinged out with a beaded Cobalt Empire choker. “You’re not giving Son of Ben back. We’re keeping him. Because trust me, you don’t want to be the father that ditches their kid.”

“Noted,” I nod, looking her over. “I’ll be in and out tonight. I’ll let you know how it goes?—”

“How what goes, brother?” Eliot saunters in the kitchen. Snatching a red apple from a fruit bowl, he leans over the island and takes a bite.

Fuck. I comb a hand through my hair, and Harriet slides off the counter while I spin toward him. “I’m dropping out of the frat tonight.”

“Say no more.” Eliot straightens up. “I’ll grab my coat?—”

“Alone.” Like very alone. I planned to not alert Novak. Eliot is already opening the coat closet. “Alone, Eliot!” For fuck’s sake.

I hear Charlie. “That word has lost meaning to him since Tom entered the world.” He appears from his side of the apartment and slings a travel duffel on his shoulder.

“Wasn’t he only eleven-months-old?” Harriet asks with another hostile bite of Twizzler.

“Eleven-months of pure agony and loneliness I’ll never forget,” Eliot quips. He’s sliding his arms through a very, very expensive black peacoat, pressed and ironed.

“And that’s not your coat,” I point out.

“Finders keepers,” Eliot grins, popping the collar. He’s trying to get a rise out of Charlie, since the coat belongs to him.

Charlie isn’t entertaining Eliot tonight. He slips his wallet in the pocket of his black slacks, then grabs his keys. Probably about to Houdini himself to another country. Who knows?

I pull my MVU sweatshirt over my head, then toss Harriet her pleather jacket. “Well, I’m out of here—without you,” I point a finger at Eliot, then raise a hand like stay. Please. But Eliot is far from a dog.

He has an impish grin as he sinks his teeth into the apple.

“Where are we going?” Tom enters the living room, setting aside his guitar against the pull-out, and I internally groan.

“Ben is finally kicking the frat to the curb,” Eliot explains, which makes Tom grin like it’s the best news he’s heard all month. Eliot dumps his half-eaten apple in the trash.

“We could’ve composted that,” I say, “and I’m going alone .”