Page 139 of Burn Bright

I’m five blocks away from Pink Noir when a black SUV rolls up beside the curb at the same pace as me. My pulse accelerates as the car keeps in time with my stride. Fuck—am I about to be kidnapped? Mugged? Assaulted?

32

BEN COBALT

Fear slams at me.

I shouldn’t have left my brothers—the thought is hacksawed as the rear passenger-side door whips open. While the car is still fucking moving. Sure, it’s going like a mile per hour, but for a split-second, my muscles flex in preparation to fight.

When I see Charlie in the car, glaring at me, I’m so caught off guard that I almost run into a lamppost.

Novak catches my arm and yanks me to the side so I don’t make a head-on collision with metal and gain a massive goose egg.

“Get in,” Charlie says more calmly than his eyes let on.

“Did Beckett send you?” I stop at the curb.

Charlie tilts his head. “Of course he sent me.Get the fuck in.” When I don’t move, he lets out an exasperated sigh. “It’s my birthday, Ben.”

Swiping the birthday card should not have this much power, but our mom treats birthdays like they’re coronations. Our day to reign. Even if some of us don’t care much about them.Honestly, if Charlie weren’t a twin, I think he’d Houdini himself on his birthday so no one could celebrate him.

Novak is silent, but I sense his utter relief when I step toward the SUV. My bodyguard rounds to the front passenger-side door, and I climb into the backseat beside my older brother. Oscar Oliveira mans the wheel, and I avoid making eye contact with Charlie’s bodyguard through the rearview.

Really, I just want this night to end.

I’m splintered open from feelings I can’t wrestle with properly. I still haven’t texted Harriet not to return to the club when she’s done at the lab. Because I worry if I tell her I’ve left she’ll think it’s because I’m angry at her.

Charlie lowers his window. “I don’t want to ask.” Cigarette between his lips, he lights it, then actually blows smoke outside and not in my face. “But this is my birthday present to Beckett, so I’m going to ask…” He raises his brows at me. “What’s wrong, Ben?”

The question sounds like he couldn’t care less for the answer.

“Consider your birthday present given,” I tell him with heat. “You asked me.”

He rolls his eyes. “I need an answer.”

I turn my gaze to the blurring city lights. “I’m not talking to you about this.”

“Eliot and Tom seem to think it has something to do with Harriet. They say she left, and your mood turned to shit, so what happened?”

I don’t reply.

He lets out an irritated exhale. “Let me guess. She offered to suck another guy’s dick?—”

“Fuck off.” I shoot him a glare.

“He’s alive,” Charlie golf claps with the cigarette pinched between his fingers.

“Do notfuckingtalk about her like that.” Anger lances my voice. Novak is casting glances back at us. He might need to physically restrain me from strangling my brother in the next minute.

Charlie takes a drag from his cigarette, then taps the ash casually out the window. “Then explain why you looked like you just saw roadkill?”

“I thought I was about to get kidnapped off the street!” I shout. “I had no fucking idea it was you.”

“This is a security vehicle,” he says like I’m a moron.

“We aren’t the only people who own Range Rovers!”

He pinches his eyes like my lack of forethought is a bullet to his brain. We’re both grating on each other. “Before you stupidly thought you were going to be kidnapped, you were upset.” He drops his hand from his face. “So let’s not do this pointless runaround tonight. I’m not in the mood to chase you.”