Page 52 of Burn Bright

I don’t want to leave. In this single second, I want to exist quietly beside my brother, in the safety of this bathroom. I want to freeze time and know that everything is okay. Everything will be okay forever.

I’m okay.

11

BEN COBALT

The next morning, hot water drips off my eyelashes. Steam fogs the bathroom in a cloudy haze. LED lights glow in a neon-blue color from the showerhead, bathing the entire stall in a calming cocoon.

I rest my palm on the black tile as water pelts my skull and the back of my neck. Expensive shampoos and body washes line two shelves. If I had to unearth a guess, the Dior shower gel is Eliot’s.

He likes name-brand things, but Tom doesn’t cheap out on any skincare products. So who the fuck knows? I never grew up sharing a bathroom with my brothers. Not until now.

Our childhood home is affectionately called the Cobalt Estate, but you can’t find horse stables, multiple pool houses, or private tennis courts on the property. There aren’t even million-dollar sunset views.

Don’t get me wrong—our parents’ house is a mansion.

The marble entryway with the dramatic staircase and crystal chandelier is fit for a Disney castle, but it’s not twenty-thousand square feet to get lost in. It’s not even a fraction of what my family’s money could buy.

Our parents purchased a home in a gated neighborhood where households with mid-seven-figure incomes live. They picked it because it’s where my mom’s sisters wanted to be, and she wanted to be close to them and for us to grow up alongside our cousins.

So we did.

The Hales and Meadows lived just down the street from us in a rich little suburb of Philadelphia.

Some of our cousins became our best friends, and in my case, theyweremy best friends. Past tense. At one point, I would’ve said Xander was one of them too.

I try to push him so far out of my head, along with the cold chill he gives me every Tuesday and Thursday in Classical Mythology with Harriet wedged between us in the back row. The arctic blast from Xander hasn’t stopped me from sitting beside her.

It’s weirdly easier to focus on my brothers and being here. Each of us had our own space and privacy at the Cobalt Estate, and my brothers chucked that out of the window when they moved to New York. Now they’re in a 4 bed/2 bath apartment that would be luxurious to most in the city, but it’s honestly a shoebox compared to where we grew up.

When I was a little kid, I used to avoid bath time like the plague, mostly because I just liked the smell of dirt, of the muddy earth. As I got older, I’d race through my showers in under a minute flat. Soap all the important parts, rinse, and hop out. I thought maybe if I used less water, I could tip the scales in favor of the planet.

Then one day during my usual sprint through my shower routine, I just…stayed there. Frozen underneath the rainfall of water, I let it drip down my skin and pool into the drain. The warmth was an embrace I didn’t want to abandon. Couldn’tabandon. Despite the screaming in my head toleave.Jump out, you wasteful bastard.

I stayed there for twenty minutes. It had been the longest shower of my life.

That was three months ago.

And today, I find myself stuck in the shower again, the water a comfort I can’t shake. Only instead of berating myself, I start thinking about a short, beautiful blonde with angry eyes. I don’t carve her image out of my head. I’m almost afraid of what’ll fill its place once she’s gone.

Nothing that’d feel as good. Nothing that’d stir emotion or my blood. Nothing I’d really want.

I picture her now.

Fully clothed in the shower with me, Harriet is underneath the waterfall with her chin tilted up to meet my eyes. Wet blonde strands stick to her soft cheeks. Her cute pierced ears peek out of her soaked hair. Her arms are crossed at her ribs in a guarded, defensive posture, but as she clings to my confidence, she lets them fall to her sides. She trusts me, like I trust her.

I slowly drag my gaze down her body where the white cotton of her top suctions to her tits. Her shirt is drenched. Her nipples are perked buds against the fabric, but I look back at her face as her pink lips part, an aroused breath escaping. I feel myself harden.

“Fuck,” I grunt out as my cock throbs. I want to run my hands down her hips—to see how her body reacts to me. I want this girl to shake in unknown fucking pleasure. I want her to crumble to the shower tile in ecstasy so that I’ll have to pick her up to keep her against me.

I want inside Harriet.

Her mind, her heart, her pussy. Deep…deeper.Like how she’s rooted herself in my head. I want to fuck her until she can’t see straight and the only word she can mutter isBen.

I stroke my rock-hard length with my right hand, balling my left into a fist against the tiled wall. My breath goes labored, and a groan tries to scratch against my throat. Has she ever been eaten out before?

I imagine dropping to my knees, then shimmying her soaked panties to her ankles. They’re black. Lace, maybe.