Series: Cobalt Empire Series by Krista Ritchie
Total pages in book: 234
Estimated words: 226965 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1135(@200wpm)___ 908(@250wpm)___ 757(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 226965 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1135(@200wpm)___ 908(@250wpm)___ 757(@300wpm)
“Beeeeen.” Tom lengthens my name in a groan. “Seriously, couldn’t you have told her to belch or something?”
I’m near laughter. “I don’t think I’ve ever heard her belch.”
“So she’s Mom’s favorite and she doesn’t burp?” Tom throws up his hands. “I’m calling it, she’s a demon.”
“What about Dad?” Eliot wonders. “He could be our opening. Maybe he hasn’t been bedazzled by Harriet’s demonic charm.”
I stare at the granola in my hand. Our dad didn’t have as much time to converse with Harriet, but he told me he can tell she means everything to me. He used that exact word. Everything. That’s all I care about—that he knows she’s not a tiny part of my world, that she is my world.
“Dad already likes her, I’m sure,” Beckett says, immediately grabbing my gaze. He has a soft smile on me, and I can practically read his eyes that calmly whisper, no need to be afraid.
That’s not what I’ve been afraid of, Beck. A lump wedges in my throat. How do I tell them? How do I explain the mess inside my mind? It’s been years, and I never really could unravel it all in perfect coherence. I barely understand myself at times.
In the silence, my growling stomach sounds like a broken dishwasher.
“Dude, did you skip dinner?” Tom side-eyes me.
“Our growing baby boy,” Eliot teases.
Beckett smiles into a laugh, which is making me smile, but I’m still not unwrapping the granola. It causes Beckett to frown a little more. Then his face just completely plummets, and that hurts. We stare at each other for a long moment, unspoken things passing between us, and I don’t know what to do until Charlie says, “Eat it.”
I waver. “I’m fine.”
“I’m fine,” Beckett says so deeply, so soothingly. “My little brother being hungry in my car, I don’t like. Especially if you’re not eating because of me.”
I can just wait until we reach the frat, but since he’s asking me not to, I say, “You sure?”
“Positive.” So I end up carefully eating the granola, but yeah, shit goes everywhere.
Tom is laughing so much, he’s rolling into Eliot.
Guilt overwhelms me. Sears the skin on my face, my arms, my chest. I seldom find humor in the same exact things Tom does, which is partly why I’m sure I’m more sensitive than my brothers. But as soon as he laughs out, “All this time, all we had to do was feed Ben granola—follow the crumbs and we’ll never lose him,” I find some ironic levity in the joke.
I laugh from my chest. Hard.
It actually startles Tom. To where Beckett busts out laughing, and Charlie has a rare smile. Eliot ruffles Tom’s shaggy golden-brown hair in brotherly affection, then touches the back of my head with the same sentiment, and I hang on to this effervescence filling my lungs. I don’t want to lose this. I don’t want to lose any of them. Not even Charlie.
Maybe I never have to.
51
BEN COBALT
The frat house is trashed from the all-day football tailgate that’s switched into a drunken afterparty. Remixed hits blast through the first floor. Sloppy hands glide down my shoulders in greeting as I weave through the college students and step on so much trash.
Beer cans, Solo cups, empty liquor bottles, pizza boxes, paper plates, plastic silverware—I almost grab a garbage bag to clean up and separate recyclables from waste. No way will they go through the effort.
I had to personally buy a recycle bin for the frat house because “it’s not in the budget”—which I understand, but barely anyone uses it. Most treat it like it’s just a second trash can.
If I go through initiation, maybe I can gradually change their habits. Maybe I can have a better, greater impact, and honestly, the thought makes me second-guess if I’m choosing the right path. If I’m doing good by de-pledging, or if I’d do better by remaining here.
The vein in my temple is throbbing as I overcomplicated this. In and out. I need to get in and out. My brothers are waiting in a noticeably expensive SUV, and I’m hoping no drunk idiot bangs on their tinted windows to figure out who’s inside.
In and out.
“Ben, man, buddy, you gotta see this!”
“Later, Reggie!” I call out to one of the Kappa brothers.
“Hey, Ben!”
“Ben!”
“Ben!”
I politely bow out of the interactions and ask around for Leif. Getting conflicting answers.
“I think I saw him upstairs.”
“He’s been in the backyard.”
“Basement, I heard, bro.”
I’m about to cycle through each spot when I run into a freshman pledge in the kitchen. Iggy mops up what looks like piss all over the sink with a sponge. Thank fuck Beckett isn’t in here. I should also be a grunt-working pledge, but they’ve treated me more like a trophy they don’t want scratched.
“Hey, Ben,” he up-nods.
I nod back, about to pass him into the backyard just as he asks, “You see your sister yet?”