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)
My phone pings within a few minutes of sitting.
Tom
Not to rush you, Harry. But I just got a call from the label. They need a decision by Friday.
My stomach plummets. “Fuck.”
“What?” Ben reads the text over my shoulder after I angle my phone to him. He lets out a low growl. “That’s bullshit. He’s only giving you two days. You want me to call him?”
“No, it’s okay. It doesn’t sound like it’s his choice.” I exhale out a tensed breath. “On one hand, joining The Carraways would be way less pressure than trying to become a doctor. It’s like skipping to the almost-finish line. Whereas I’d still have med school, residency, a fellowship…” My voice drifts off as the stress starts to build.
“Tom would not tell you he’s at the almost-finish line,” Ben says. “In his head, he’s still stuck at the starting gate.”
“I guess that’s true…maybe there is no real finish line with music. Maybe every album is going to be another race.” I stare into the depths of my hot chocolate. A nagging thought takes root in my head. “Sometimes I think maybe I don’t have the gut instinct to be a doctor.”
He frowns. “Why would you think that?”
I don’t have the heart to look at him. My insides coil uncomfortably. “I didn’t catch on to what you were going through that quickly. Maybe it’s a sign.”
“A sign,” he echoes. “Harriet…” He brushes his fingers underneath my chin, tilting my head up so our eyes meet. He carries an immense amount of tenderness in his baby blues. “Don’t quit on medicine because of me. Because I could just as easily find a good sign.”
“Like what?”
“Like how being with you has only brought me comfort and peace. You have—”
“If you say ‘healing hands’ I’m going to shove you off this bench.”
“Damn, Fisher, that is more punk rock,” he teases, and I let out a laugh, hooked on his softening smile. Especially as he says, “You have what it takes to be an incredible doctor if that’s the path you want. Just like you’d be an amazing drummer.”
His words temper my anxieties, but I think about us. Because outside of our own goals, there is an us now.
A Ben and Harriet in New York City. Attending college together. And our future living situation has been super up in the air.
The ground feels more unstable. Like I’m back on the ice fighting to stay on my blades. “Eden texted me this morning,” I tell Ben. “She’s moving in with Austin next semester. Not that I planned to stay on her couch again. It’s just now my options are officially narrowed. Especially with the likelihood of not being accepted into the Honors House.”
He downs the last of his apple cider and free-throws it into the recycle bin. I can’t even call him out for his jock behavior when he’s saying, “If Guy Abernathy makes that mistake, then you and I could always move in together.”
Oh my…what?
60
HARRIET FISHER
Move in together.
He says it so casually. Like it’s an easy next step, and maybe it would be. Sharing his company has brought me literal happy-go-lucky joy, and he hasn’t grown tired of Too Much Harriet. Some might say living with a boyfriend isn’t always a recipe for good times. But I’ve lived with people who only bring darkness and misery.
My parents. My mom. Her exes.
A TV remote to the face. Insults to the mind.
The real bad times.
Those don’t exist with Ben. We could be battling a thousand demons together. He could be struggling with his OCD. I could be a mopey grump cocooned in my Hello Kitty blanket, and still, it wouldn’t touch that kind of bad.
All Ben has ever done is shelter me, love me, care for me.
But I also want to make sure I’m doing the same for him. So I shake my head when he suggests we move in together.
His confusion downturns his lips. “Too fast for you?”
“It’s not that.” I’m glad his arm is still around my shoulders. “You’re on the road to recovery. I think you need your brothers more than you need to be living alone with me. I’m going to be busy, but they’ll always be around. One of them, at least.”
I imagine Ben all by his lonesome in an apartment while I’m doing research or volunteering or at office hours or possibly in a recording studio. Now, more than ever, he needs his four older brothers.
That’s why they wanted him in New York in the first place. I can’t derail this path—one that he’s mentally tried to derail himself. In a bad, bad way.
“Hear me out,” Ben begins to smile. “You and me. Living with my brothers.”
I snort into a laugh.
“I’m serious.”
Oh…now I feel bad. “On the couch?” I ask. He’s still been on the pull-out since returning from Alaska.