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)
“You spot Casper lurking behind seven-year-old me?” I joke, abandoning my sweaters to go plop down beside him. My shoulder presses up against his body, but he hardly budges.
“When did you go to Disneyland?” he asks.
The photo between his fingers—it’s me at Disney. The teacups ride is blurry in the background. I have on classic black and red Minnie ears and my dad has his hands perched on his waist, a little fed up with me. I think Disney wasn’t his thing, or so my mom said. The trip had been a boiling point in their marriage, which was likely why it was the only family vacay we ever took.
“Uh, I think I was four here.” I squint at the photo. “Yeah, four.”
“What month?”
I’m confused. “Why…does that matter?”
“Was it July?”
“I think so.” I nod. “That sounds right. It was definitely the summer.” I peek at the back of the photo. No date written. “You okay, Ben?”
He blows backward in a daze, leaning against the wall my bed is pushed against. I scoot back to be beside him. He stares off as his thoughts whirl. “I was there.”
“You were at Disneyland?”
“In July. We were there at the same time.”
“Okay, but like different days.”
Ben gazes at the photo with a faraway expression. “I remember this little girl with pigtails. Light brown hair.” My natural hair color. “Her knees were scraped.”
I peer closer at the pic. My knees are visibly reddened like I’d fallen.
“I remember her dad being so mean to her, and it hurt to see. I remember crying over it…over…” He glances down at me.
My pulse skips. “It might not have been me. What are the odds, Ben? You were…how old?”
“Five.”
“How good is a five-year-old’s memory, really?” I pat my hip for my phone, about to search the internet for the answer, but I left my cell by the printer.
“I don’t remember a lot from that trip,” he says. “But I do remember that. It was burned in my head because it upset me. I wanted to go to that girl, but I couldn’t stay. I was being tugged in another direction.” He sweeps my features.
I cling harder to his, scouring his face as if my own memories from that long-ago summer will surface. Maybe I’ll see him in my mind. “I thought you don’t believe in fate.”
“I didn’t think I did,” he whispers in the gentle silence. “What about you? What do you believe?”
“Well…Aunt Helena would tell me it’s all real. She’d want to call her psychic friend Angelica for a reading, which she’s already promised us.”
Ben met my aunt on video chat the other day. She said she sensed “goodness” in him and thought our fire and air signs would spark explosive sex—which I did not want to talk about with her and him together. Ben controlled his laughter well.
When he’d first introduced himself, she’d asked, “You’re a Cobalt, as in that famous family?”
Even my aunt knows of the Cobalts. After confirmation that he is, indeed, of that renowned lineage, she’d gasped and said, “Harry!” As if I hit a jackpot, and I definitely did, but not because Ben has money or fame. By the end of the call, she made an offhanded mention about my mom. Reminding me to keep her blocked.
“I know what your aunt would believe,” Ben says. “But what does Harriet Fisher believe in?”
I want to be closer, so I straddle his lap. His hands fall to my hips, and I clutch his neck while my knees dig into the mattress. “Scientifically speaking, there is no way to verify whether your memory was of me or not. Even if we figured out that we were at the park on the same exact day.”
“Yeah,” he nods, not disagreeing with the logic.
“But…it’s a really beautiful belief.” I search his eyes while he searches mine, as if scavenging for more fragments of each other, more pieces of us together littered over time. Of course he’d want to pick them up. Cradle them. Protect them, and I’d want Ben to share them with me too.
I clutch his cheeks, my finger brushing over his beauty mark, as I stare deeper into Ben. “My childhood memories aren’t ones I like visiting. What makes me want to look back for the first time is the knowledge that you might’ve always been there. Out of all this bleakness, there was a star.”
“Two stars,” he breathes. “You were never dull, Harriet. Not to me.”
“Two stars,” I agree, trying not to get choked up. “And no matter what choices we made, we were always orbiting. We were always going to collide over and over again. Until we ended up here. We’re destined for each other, Cobalt boy. That’s what I believe in. Because it makes me happy, and I want to believe in things that bring me stupid amounts of joy.”