Page 61 of Burn Bright
I shield my eyes. “Whoa, it’s like looking into the sun. You realize your teeth are perfect? Did you even go through an awkward puberty phase? Did you have braces? Pimples? An ugly wart on your toe?—”
“Do you want to know more about me or my brothers?” he asks.
You.“Both.”
“To clarify, this does mean you’re coming to the party tonight?”
I jab a thumb toward the board. “You are helping me knock off an item on my list. It’s only proper to pay it back, Friend.”
Plus, it sounds fun to finally attend a party with someone and not just show up alone. Ben makes me feel like my goals won’t crash and burn if I give into this one temptation. Maybe it’ll even be worth it in the end.
“Something about my brothers…” Ben thinks hard as he peruses the corkboard. His gaze falls off the flyers and settles on me with a sudden intensity. “They called me to New York. Well, Beckettdid first, technically. I had zero plans to move here, but they were insistent after what happened right before the summer.”
The room suddenly feels smaller as if his words aren’t meant for a space this large. I had no clue he’s only here because his brothers begged him to come. I don’t know what it’s like to have family that activelywantsme around them. But I’m stuck on his foreboding last words.What happened right before thesummer. A nagging feeling tugs at my insides. I get the sense he wants me to ask, and I can’t help the pull to want to know. It’s not so I can jot down Ben’s secrets in a diary or slip them to the tabloids for cash. It’s just so I can understand him more.
My voice is almost a whisper as I ask, “What happened before the summer?”
13
BEN COBALT
“I’m not a good person,” I warn Harriet. “Even when I try to be…” I take off my baseball cap, just to scrape a hand through my hair. Then I gesture to her with the hat. “You should probably sit for this.”
Her brows furrow in a cuter scowl. “Afraid I’ll faint?”
“You’re the doctor-to-be, you tell me.”
“I’m fine on my feet.” She threads her arms over her chest. “You’re not going to scare me away either.”
“Yeah?” I sweep her up and down, how staunch and fixed she is. Harriet is a determined girl, but I didn’t think her determination would revolve around me. “I was a little worried about that.”
“I’m not going anywhere, Ben.”
It catches me off guard, hearing her call meBenand not Cobalt boy or Friend. She’s craning her neck past comfort to even look at me, so I rest my ass against the edge of the conference table. At a lower height.
I thumb the Capybara bracelet around my wrist. “I’ve lied to my therapist for a long time—I have a therapist, by the way. Dr. Wheeler.” Guess I should start there. “I’ve never gone to therapyto make myself feel better. First, it was so my parents wouldn’t worry about me. Then it was to get prescribed Adderall.”
She frowns. “Adderall?”
“I made him think that I needed it.”
“So you’re abusing the drug to…stay awake?”
“No, I didn’t even take it. I gave it to this one asshole in prep school who wanted it. We made a deal. I supply him Adderall and then he’d stop harassing my best friend. And he did stop for a while. Then I graduated and…I figured he had no reason to keep picking on Winona. He was messing with her to get a reaction out of me, and I was no longerthere.”
“Winona Meadows?” She names my cousin, my ex-best friend, who is insanely private. It’s ironic that Winona loves photography. Nearly every lock screen on my phone are pictures she’s taken of forests, rivers, mountains, the sky. Yet, she can’t stand when her face shows up in magazines. The tabloids all usually say the same thing:
Winona Meadows is just like her supermodel mom! Another bombshell sex symbol in the making!
It doesn’t matter that her “supermodel” mom—my Aunt Daisy—has publicly stated she didn’t have a great experience modeling.
We all deal with being the children of larger-than-life, globally-recognized parents, but because Winona looks so similar to her mom, it’s harder in a different way.
It’ll get worse for her when she turns eighteen in March. When she’s no longer a minor and the media can print whatever the hell they want about her body. And I’ve seen her cling to her youth like it’s the end of a lifeline.
I’m older than her, and she’s always sort of chased after me. When I climbed a tree, she’d try andtryto reach the branch I scaled.
I had to grab her hand and pull her higher.
