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)
I smiled, one that spilled warmth into my body. “Siblings took them all.”
She mimed tears with her fists, her lips rising. The smile surprised her, and she startled into a frown. I thought it was cute. She gave me a stiffer wave before she disappeared completely.
We didn’t stay in contact.
Despite really, really wanting to, I never texted her. My move to New York was never part of the plan at the time. I didn’t think I’d follow her to MVU, and a friendship with Harriet didn’t feel genuine if it was miles away. But then I did move to New York, and…the frat party happened.
Twice now, my presence averted some sort of catastrophe in her life. Twice, I was able to get some bastard’s hands off her. That doesn’t always happen. Being at the right place, right time. Especially with me. I don’t really believe in destiny or fate, but I do believe there’s something about Harriet that makes me feel like I won’t fuck everything up.
All I really want is to be able to hold on to that feeling for a second longer.
5
BEN COBALT
I’m applying for a job. It’s not a great thing to tell my brothers on my way out the door. I already picture Beckett’s classic “what the fuck” face, and Tom’s double-blink like he can change the channel on me—to one that makes more sense.
So I just tell them I’m meeting with a friend. They know I have many. They also know my friendships are about as deep as a Neapolitan pizza.
“Don’t wait up for me!” I call out as I open the door.
“Wasn’t planning to,” Charlie deadpans.
“Duuude,” Tom groans like Charlie is beating a dead horse—that horse being me.
It’s easy to tell myself, don’t let Charlie get under your skin. Harder to accomplish when he lives in my bloodstream. I escape into the hall and breathe out the smoke-cloud of aggravation in my chest, then I text my bodyguard to just meet me on the lobby level.
Waiting for the elevator, I punch the button a couple times, and my phone buzzes in my jeans’ pocket. I slip the cell out, my pulse skyrocketing. Is it her?
My heart jumps seeing the “H,” then the “a” but then plummets at the rest of the name. Haddock (Coach MVU). I stare at the screen, processing this brutal anticlimax. Disappointment has sufficiently smothered a brief millisecond of exhilaration. That’s what I get for getting excited over a fucking phone call.
I answer it as the elevator opens on the twenty-first floor. “Hi, Coach.” I slip inside and hit the lobby button, vaguely listening to his pitch about trying out for the team. It’s his third attempt to recruit me.
Hockey. First time I remember really thinking, I could do this forever. I never want to leave the ice, I’d been seven. I wasn’t on an indoor rink. It’d been a freezing Christmas, and the lake had iced over at my family’s vacation home in the Smoky Mountains. Orange sun crested over the spruce-lined peaks, and I held a stick and flew toward the net. I wasn’t alone. Ryke Meadows and Maximoff Hale, my uncle and my cousin, were there, playing with me, and as I sucked the frigid air in my lungs, I just felt alive.
I played nearly every day that year. If I couldn’t get on the ice, I’d put on rollerblades and shoot pucks into a goal in the Meadows’ cul-de-sac. Then I played on a team, helped a group of boys win a dinky little trophy, but their elation was everything to me. I fed off the high of their happiness.
So I kept going. I played for my prep school throughout my adolescence. Then at sixteen, I played junior hockey to improve for college. When I was young, hockey had been a constant source of love. I could rely on it, depend on it.
The last few years, things started shifting in my head. It’s been a steady decline, the slow decaying of what I once enjoyed. My college experience with the sport didn’t help.
I warmed the bench more than my blades touched the ice. I was consistently told I wasn’t good enough and that “not everything can get handed to you”—even if I thought I was at least the fourth-best on the team.
Coach Haddock, who I’m on the phone with now, likely found little footage of me playing back at Penn. He also admitted to contacting my old coach for a recommendation. Which, I gathered, my old coach told Haddock that I suck and not to waste his time on a “prick of a kid” like me.
Why would Haddock even want me on his team badly enough to call again? MVU is a D1 college. A good percentage of players end up being drafted for the NHL. He’s a dream coach who could have his pick of a potential hockey prodigy.