Page 14 of Burn Bright

As am I…except for being nineteen. I don’tfeel my age, though. The past few years, I feel like I’ve aged about ten more.

“I’ll show you to your room, young prince,” Eliot says, turning on his heels like we’re in a play. For him, life is one beautiful stage.

I start to smile, but it wanes fast at a realization. “My room?”

He walks backward, eyes on mine. “You think we’d let you sleep on the floor?”

I was hoping.

A rock wedges in my ribs, and I follow Eliot to his side of the apartment, just as Charlie calls out to me, “Does Beckett know you’re already here?”

“No.” I stop in place. “I told him not to worry about picking me up.”

Charlie curses under his breath, drops his feet to the ground, and immediately calls our brother. Phone to his ear. “He’s already here…okay. Il est énervé contre moi.”He’s angry with me.Long pause. “Je ne peux pas être tenu responsable de lui.”I can’t be held responsible for him.“Oui, oui. À plus tard.”Yes, yes. See you soon.He hangs up.

“Beckett has a performance tonight,” I tell Charlie.

“He’s taking tonight off for you.”

I wince. “I told him not to.”

“Well, congratulations. You’re one of the few people he would sacrifice an evening performance for.”

Fuck.I grimace and expel heat from my lungs with a big exhale. “Is that supposed to make me feel better?”

“I don’t care what it makes you feel,” Charlie says. “It’s just the truth.”

“Brutal, brother,” Eliot says with less levity.

“I warned all of you that I wasn’t going to be soft on him.”

Irritation scrapes down my neck, and like word vomit, I sling back, “I wasn’t expecting you to be Maximoff.” Our older cousin who has an off-again, on-again friendship with Charlie. I think they’re currentlyon, but there is one undying truth: where Maximoff is purely good, Charlie is purely evil. Day and night. Hero, villain.

For some reason, I got stuck with the villain brother.

Charlie is equally as irritated as I am now that I brought up Moffy. “Sorry he’s not here to coddle you like you’re twelve.”

“Only you would thinkcoddlingis equivalent to beingkind.”

“I’m unkind. Moffy is the best. Moffy is the greatest,” Charlie says in a mocking, disinterested tone. “Don’t you get sick of smelling his shit? Or do you really, truly believe it doesn’t stink?” He cocks his head at me. “You’re going to be in a world of hurt when you realize he’s not perfect.”

I never thought he was. But at the very least, Maximoff Hale has never made me want to punch my fist through a fucking wall.

This time, I ignore Charlie. “Where are we going?” I ask Eliot.

“This way.” He guides me down the short hall and opens a door. “After you.” He extends his arm, and I stride inside…his bedroom.

The whole space is engulfed by an ornate four-poster bed with a thick burgundy canopy and even darker bedding. Squished in the corner is a reading nook, and beneath heavy curtains lies a desk that houses piles upon piles of manuscripts and treasured copies of Poe. It’s familiar and as gothic as his childhood bedroom. The walls are even the same blood-red.

He drops my duffel. “It’ll take me about ten minutes to strip the bed and put on a fresh set of sheets, and I’ll have all this cleared out.” He gestures to manuscripts—what I assume are plays. He used to be in a prestigious theatre troupe in Hell’s Kitchen, but that job fell apart late last year.

He grabs a cardboard box from the floor. I come forward to stop him. “I don’t want your room,” I tell him.

“Is it the paint? Tom said it might scare you. You can always paint it blue.” He wears an endearing smile. “For the Empire.”

I laugh, the sound light in my chest. “Yeah, for the Empire. Because I fit in so well.” I’m not bitter about being the odd one out.Thisis just a fact to me.

“None of us are the same, brother,” Eliot reminds me. “That’s what makes us gods among men.”