Page 19 of Burn Bright

Because I left Audrey.

I left Audrey.

Maybe I shouldn’t have left her this soon. I could’ve stayed in Philly until she graduated from prep school. She’s only sixteen.

“Pip,” Beckett says so softly, so gently. He’s one of the few people who call mePip.Our older sister is the only one who calls me Pippy.

I swallow a boulder to tell him, “This isn’t permanent.”

Charlie arches his brows. “Somewhere else you have to be?”

Anywhere but here with you.

On-campus housing would’ve been my first choice. Second would be an apartmentnotwith Charlie. Both cost money that I don’t have right now, and I’d rather cut out my tongue than advertise I’m broke to him.

“What do you care?” I sling back. “You don’t even want me here.”

Beckett slips him a look I can’t read.

Charlie sweeps the length of me. “What I want doesn’t matter. You need to be here.”

“I need to be here,” I echo and nod a few times. “Je vais bien. Vraiment.”I’m fine. Really.

“Tu ne vas pas bien,” Beckett says so smoothly.You’re not.

I love hearing him speak French the most, not just because his cadence is beautiful—but because his silky voice is practically a morphine drip. It reminds me of our dad, how he can calm me with a few words. I hang on to that and not how my muscles are on fire like I need to escape my entire body. I rub at my brow and scrub a hand down the side of my face. “Je vais bien,” I repeat. “Je vais bien.”

I hate how they’re staring at me.

Like I’m a malfunctioning nuclear reactor. And my brothers are confident enough to house one. They are prepared to be blown into smithereens because they know they can’t be injured.

Cobalts are invincible, haven’t you heard?

All but me, apparently.

Beckett comes over and sits next to me. His arm slides over my back with such familiarity. He holds my shoulders, and I breathe out deeper at his consoling touch. I’m four, five, seven—and he’s wrapping his arm around me while I’m crying over something seemingly dumb.

A bird fell out of a nest in our backyard and wheezed painfully on the grass.

Tom and Eliot lit a rosemary bush on fire.

A girl scraped her knees at Disneyland and her dad was being an ass to her. I didn’t understand why.

Beckett was there when we were kids. Before he left for his dream. I’m nineteen, and he’s here again. Right beside me.

This feels like my dream—like I amdreaming.Because it can’t last. I have to wake up.

“You need to be in the city with us,” Beckett says quietly to me, drawing my gaze to his. “New York is where you get tolive, and I mean truly live. This is your time to be selfish, follow your ambitions, fuck the night away, let it all go—and we’ll be with you. You aren’t alone here, Pip.”

I nod a few times, trying to cool the simmer in my blood.

“Have you talked to Dad?” Tom wonders. “About what happened that night?”

That night.

I can barely see what I did. Rage tore through me. I think I blacked out for half of it. I smashed a Porsche in with a bat. Then I knocked out the guy who owned it. I assaulted him on his front lawn, and I think I would’ve killed him if I wasn’t pulled off.

So have I talked to our dad? Who relates almost 100% with Charlie? Who would never rage like an unhinged ape? Yeah, no. “I’m not looking for Dad to psychoanalyze me,” I mutter quietly.