Page 17 of Burn Bright

Probably because I can’t be pressured to do anythingI don’t want to do. I have a titanium-strong backbone.

Which does make me a Cobalt.

I’m just not a very good one.

“House meeting!” Charlie calls from the living room. “Beckett is home!”

Tom springs off the bed and pushes his hair out of his eyes.

Eliot follows.

I’m the last one out—but I’m trapped for a beat by the humongous, ornately framed painting on the wall.

My eyes grow wide at the dark oils illustrating the sack and annihilation of an ancient Roman city. A storm brews in the background as warriors kill and seize prisoners. A woman in white is being yanked backward by an aggressor. Marble pillars are crumbling. A bridge is broken. People drown in the water. Buildings and boats are on fire.

It’sThe Destruction of the Empireby Thomas Cole.

The fourth of five paintings in hisThe Course of Empireseries. Our parents gave us each a replica of a particular one. They depict the rise and fall of a civilization. This one—the one given to Tom and Eliot—has always disturbed me.

It’s an empire at war.

“BEN!” they all call.

I tear myself away. “Yeah, I’m coming!” Duffel on my shoulder, I go to my brothers.

4

BEN COBALT

“I’ll sleep on the couch,” I tell Beckett directly even though I’m facing all four older brothers. I’m the onlyone even sitting on the couch right now. He’s in the matching blue chair beside Charlie.

“It’s not a pull-out,” Beckett says with a mountain of confusion knitting his features—features that can only be described asangelic.

It’s weird that he shares that in common with Charlie when A.) Charlie is a demon and B.) they’re fraternal twins. They don’t look that alike, really. Beckett has much darker brown hair, and he’s a couple inches shorter at six-one. They do have the same penetrating yellow-green eyes and lean builds.

But Beckett isripped.

His body could probably be studied in art and humanities courses.

He shrugs off his leather jacket, and I notice the floral tattoos crawling up his arm. He has the reputation of being “the bad boy of ballet” at his company, which I’ve never completely understood how it could be true. Not until the past few years.

“The couch is long enough to fit me,” I tell him. “I can just throw some blankets on it.”

“You’d rather take thecouchthan a king-sized bed?” Beckett is very confused. He slips a look to Charlie likehow much did I miss?They share short glances. Talking through their eyes.

They do that a lot.

“Maybe Eliot’s room has a funk that we’re nose-blind to,” Tom says, straddling a kitchen chair backward. He dragged it over here.

“Bronwyn would’ve said something,” Eliot replies, the only one standing. His bare foot is on the glass coffee table which has to be bothering Beckett because it sure as hell would bother our mom. “She was here two nights ago.”

“Bronwyn?” I ask, the girl totally unfamiliar, and I’m fairly good with names.

He presses his tongue against the inside of his cheek and jerks the air. Miming a blow job.

He fucked her. Probably a casual hookup. Eliot isn’t quiet about how he sleeps around.

“You’ll change the sheets?” Beckett asks Eliot.