First Look: Burn Bright - Chapter One (Patreon)

As a First Look, you all are receiving early access to Chapter One of Burn Bright. Please be respectful of your fellow readers and do not spoil anything for those who wish to wait to read. We are beyond excited for you to embark on the Cobalt Empire! And so it begins with Ben Cobalt and Harriet Fisher 🥰🦋✨💙 Happy Reading!!

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I take my beer and my scowl to the wall. Me and the wall—great friends. My only current friend.

This party feels like an amalgamation of hipsters, jocks, beauty queens, and outcasts. A total Breakfast Club scenario. But instead of five people sharing detention there are a hundred-plus sharing a frat house. 

My white crop top and red-and-black checkered, very low-rise pants—which I love in all their early 2000s punk glory—shouldn’t cause me to stand out that much. I’m positive I saw a guy wearing a spiked collar five minutes ago.

I take a stiff sip of beer.

Alone.

Avoiding direct eye contact with others.

Maybe I thought things would be different at Manhattan Valley University.

New city, new college, new outcomes. But I might be part of the problem when it comes to making friends. I don’t know how to be warm and inviting. I can blame it on my scowl and permanent Resting Bitch Face, but the truth is I could try harder to be softer. More approachable. Yet, the thought of being someone that people actively want to approach makes me scowl even harder. Is it weird? To want friends but also not want them?

Sure, the idea of friends sounds amazing. People to hang out with, laugh with, go to the movies and venture to the mall with. But friends also come with drama—like what if they judge me? Hate me? What if I do something wrong to mess it all up? Or worse, what if they’re amazing friends, and they start wanting more from me? So I’d have to start sharing about my life and get into my past, and all that sounds so incredibly taxing that I’d like to just fling myself into a dilapidated cabin in the South Pole where no one can find me.

Friends…sometimes the fantasy seems better than the reality.

And it’s not just girls that I struggle to connect with in that way. I’ve never had a friendship with a guy. I’ve never wanted to be adopted as one of the bros. I can’t wrap my head around what a guy’s girl even looks like. It sounds like phony fucking baloney.

I’m not even really attempting to make a friend tonight. Literally, my goals are on the floor. I just want to have a better-than-average time at this party.

When I go to the backyard for some fresh air, a thought slams at me.

I shouldn’t have come here.

Maybe I should’ve stayed inside and melted into the plaster. Kappa guys play beer pong on the grass while couples giggle-fight during a game of chicken in the pool, and I’m just trying to reach a corner of the fence.

“She’s so tiny,” a six-foot-something asshole with a humongous smile says. He wears an MVU Row Team shirt, and he elbows his preppy friend in the side. “Like a little Polly Pocket.” They snort together.

I try to walk around the jock for the second time.

He side-steps again. “Whoa, Polly, how tall are you?” He tries to pat my head, and I jerk backward.

“Leave me alone.” I raise my voice which contains rasp and grit.

But their glassy eyes say they’re four beers in and I’m as threatening as a Chihuahua. “Come on, you’re supposed to be fun-sized.” He downs a big gulp. “Be fun.”

His friend laughs, then leans into the jock to mutter, “Those are definitely party-sized, though.” Their heavy-lidded eyes drop to my chest.

Yeah, I have larger than average boobs. I’ve been told this super uninteresting fact since the tenth grade. Guys like to act as if it’s surprising to me. Like I don’t realize my tits are, I don’t know, attached to my fucking body.

I can see them.

I know they’re big.

And I wish I didn’t finish off my beer in the house. I’d throw it at his face. Cup and all. Instead, I flip them off with two middle fingers. “How’s this for fun?” 

They snicker, like I’m playing around. Like this is just a game and I should lighten up. It’s a party, right? We’re at a frat house on campus. People aren’t taking anything seriously here.

I’m the buzzkill.

But maybe I don’t want to be the five-foot-one party favor.

“Seriously,” I growl. “Just let me through.” I try to slip past the jock.

He blocks me.

I glare. “Dude.”

“Polly.”

What the fuck?!

“Oooh, you made her mad, Cameron,” he says off my scowl.

“Does she bite?” Cameron laughs, then tries to pat my blonde hair again.

I swat his hand away. “Don’t touch me.”

“Aww, she’s a snapping turtle.” Cameron passes his beer to his preppy friend. “You know what turtles need?”

My pulse races. I try to back away, to return inside, but I barely even rotate before Cameron hoists me around the waist. I kick out as he tosses me over his shoulder and shouts, “Water!”

“Let me down!” I yell, banging a fist against his back. I squirm and try to pull away as he carries me to the pool. No, no, no. Panic envelops me alongside raw anger, and I fight against his rower strength.

“You’ve gotta go in the water, turtle!” He grunts as I writhe against his hold. He pins me harder on his shoulder. “I’m saving you!”

“Water! Water! Water!” People chant around the pool.

“No, no!” I shriek so loudly, so furiously, my throat sears. As he prepares to launch me into the pool, I scream bloody murder. “LET ME DOWN!” Fear guts me. “LETMEDOWN!” I can’t see beyond the hot glassy film in my eyes.

I just hear a strong, commanding voice. “HEY! Let go of her! What the hell are you doing?!!”

I feel the tug around my waist from behind. Someone is ripping me out of Cameron’s rower arms. Someone is setting me gently on my feet. Someone is letting go of me.

As soon as I spin around to see who, I’m thunderstruck at the sight of him. I stumble back a step, breath caught deeper in my lungs. I have to crane my neck just to meet his carved jawline.

Fury flexes his cut muscles, his athletic body. He’s sky-scraping tall. Taller than most students here. His wavy brown hair peeks beneath a faded blue baseball cap. No one wears a ballcap as attractively as he does—with this rugged sexiness that shouldn’t exist in New York. It should look so out of place, but he doesn’t.

He just fits.

He seems to always fit among people. And there is something so devastating about his blue eyes, about the way he looks at you. Like you’re his whole…entire…world when I know it’s not true.

His world is massive and illustrious.

I’m small and dull inside it.   

My eyes drop to his chest. He’s in an old Penn Hockey shirt, even though we’re not at the Ivy League anymore. And didn’t he quit hockey?

“Is that Ben Cobalt?” I hear the whispers.

“Holy shit, that’s a Cobalt.”

“Ben!” someone calls out in familiarity.

“Hey, there you are, Ben,” Cameron says brightly like they’re buddies. “You should stick around us, man. The party’s right here.”

Ben is ignoring them and staring right at me. He’s sweeping me for signs of damage. “You want out of here?” he asks me.

Yes.

I still can’t slow my pulse. I can barely form a single word. A lump swells in my esophagus. I sense Cameron coming up behind me. I flinch, and Ben reaches out and shoves him backward.

“Get the fuck away from her,” Ben warns with visceral heat.

I don’t wait around. I bolt on instinct and race back inside the frat house. My heartbeat pounds in my ears.

“Harriet!” Ben calls after me, and I feel him desert the party and his surplus of friends. He sprints after me. I’ve never had anyone come check on me for anything good.

I’m not thinking. I rush up the flight of wide stairs littered with beer bottles and ping-pong balls. I land on the second floor and quickly find a bathroom. Once I’m inside, I slam the door shut.

Breathing heavy, I keep my palms glued to the wood.

“Hey,” Ben says from right outside the door. It’s unlocked, but he doesn’t come in. I feel a weight against the door, and I imagine his palms are on the other side. That he’s pressing against it too.

I let out a slow breath, starting to ease. “Hey,” I say, trying to make sense of the weird flip of my stomach and the even stranger tug at my lips. Am I…am I smiling?

I shake my head to myself. What the hell, Harriet?

I blink back the jumbled emotion. I never thought my messed-up life would collide with a Cobalt.

Really, this Cobalt.

There are five brothers and two sisters and a mom and dad any kid would dream of having—a tight-knit family who go to battle for each other. And they’re rich.

Blue-blooded, high society Philadelphians who might as well be New Yorkers with how often they’re in this city. They have McMansions, private jets, yachts, and trust funds, all the things that come with owning the world’s most popular soda corporation.

But they are so much more than the typical billionaire.

They have bodyguards.

They have millions of followers on their socials.

There are Reddit forums and fandom pages on Fanaticon dedicated to them. Fans follow their every move and theorize what they’re doing at every minute of every day.  

Their names are as commonplace as the most recognizable actors and pop stars of our generation. Yet, they’re not in movies and they’re not known for charting the Billboard Hot 100. Their fame has an origin so deep-seated in the fabric of American society that most have forgotten how they became noteworthy in the first place.

They should’ve just been like every other billionaire who owns Fortune 500 companies. Like the faces behind Pepsi and Coca-Cola. They should be irrelevant. But that’s about the last thing you can say about a Cobalt.

None are irrelevant.

All of them matter as pillars of elegance and intelligence and power. That is the mythos of the Cobalt Empire.

People talk about them like they’re spawns of Zeus—godly, some full of hubris, but so unbelievably mighty. Like if you run into one, your whole world will spin on its axis. You’ll be changed.

No one talks about what happens when you try to enter their orbit (under good pretenses) and you’re rejected. That it feels like getting spit out of a whale’s mouth. The lions roared in your face and then turned their backs. The animal kingdom dubbed you less than.

But the Cobalt who tossed me aside—he’s not the one at this party. Of the few times we’ve crossed paths, Ben has never scorned me. We both went to Penn and transferred to MVU this semester—for different reasons, I’m sure—but if anyone can understand what this move feels like it’s him.

So it’s natural to grab the knob. And I let him in.

I’m eye-level with his sternum. He’s six-five. The top of my head barely reaches his shoulders. Being this close to his chest quickens my heartbeat. I back up and sink against the wooden cupboards, sliding to the scuffed tile.

Ben shuts the door. I can feel him assessing my state, which is mostly pissed.

I pick at the gray fuzzy bath rug next to me. “Your friend is an asshole,” I say.

“Cameron Dunphy?” He joins me, sitting against the wooden cupboard that’s covered in Kappa Phi Delta decals and beer stickers like Budweiser, Koning Lite, Coors. “He’s not really my friend.”

“You know his last name,” I say like it’s proof enough.

Ben smiles first with his eyes. Even shadowed with the curved brim of his hat, those baby blue orbs carry his emotion so clearly before his lips tic upward. “I know a lot of people’s last names. Including yours, Fisher.”

Flush tries to reach my cheeks.

Especially as he adds, “But you are my friend.”

Right. I wonder how many times he’s used this line on girls.

I glance over at him. “And we have a lengthy text thread to prove it.”

Ben pulls out his phone at this. The last encounter I had with him, we exchanged numbers, but we never texted, never called, never did anything other than exist in each other’s cellphones. I considered sending him a casual message about a cool grunge band I like, but I figured he has a thousand randoms spamming him with memes and invites, and he didn’t need one more.  

To sum it up, I would be absolutely delusional to consider a Cobalt a real friend off a five-minute interaction at Penn.

His thumbs fly over the screen.

My phone suddenly buzzes on a clip at my hip, resembling an old school pager. I see his text.

Ben 🌿: I like what you did with your hair.  

I let my buttery-blonde bangs grow out a little this summer, and they touch my eyelashes as I stare at his message. I remove my phone from my hip and text back.

Harriet: Thanks, Friend.

He’s fast.

Ben 🌿: I knew we’d get there again.

He’s slipping me coy glances, and I chew on the inside of my cheek to keep this strange feeling at bay.

Harriet: Were we ever here before?

I anticipate his response more than I should. I watch his fingers dance across his phone with precision. There is no hitting the delete button. He’s not overcomplicating his response. He just presses send.

I look.

Ben 🌿: Yeah. We have been here before. This isn’t the first time you’ve called me Friend.

Harriet: That’s right. It was your birthday.

Ben 🌿: Happy you could remember.

His side glance at me steals my breath, and I have to look at the tiny hole patched in my checkered pants.

It was March. His birthday. That was our last encounter. He ran into me in a science lab at Penn. This isn’t the first time Ben has been in the right spot, the right time, and helped me.

I don’t respond, and my phone vibrates in my palm.

Ben 🌿: Unless you’re trying to forget?

“Sorry to bring it up,” he says out loud. “I know it wasn’t a great day for you.”

I shrug. “It happened, it passed. I’m not letting it fester or anything.” I wrap my arms around my legs, bringing them closer to my chest. “You know, I saw online that you were transferring here,” I say, resting my temple against the cupboard.

He does the same, looking at me. “Tabloids?”

“Yep. Sorry to say you weren’t a headline, just a footnote.”

“That’s preferrable,” he breathes. “The siblings and cousins who are headlines have it harder. My fame is easy in comparison.”

I nod. “How long have you even been on campus?”

He checks the time on his blue-plated Omega watch. It’s one of the only evident signs of his wealth right now. “Two hours. This is actually my first time at MVU.”

I frown. “But you toured the campus and met Cameron Dun-fuckface weeks ago, right?”

Ben laughs, the corner of his mouth pulling higher. It sends a flutter throughout my entire nervous system. I don’t know what it’s like to be overcharged. I probably exist on 30% battery life. I’m not chipper. I’m not fucking bubbly, that’s for sure. If I’m a dying battery, then I’m also a flat beverage, but who cares?

I’m not trying to be Miss Energizer Bunny.

I tear my gaze off his. Get it together.

Some of his brothers can be described as lethally charming, and he could fall into this quadrant of the Venn diagram too.

“I never took a tour,” Ben admits as his smile softens on me. “I just met Cameron and half the row team an hour ago.”

Of course he did.

Ben isn’t a loner. He’s not a loser.

He’s a social fucking butterfly. Who could make friends with the sun, the moon, and a trashcan. Within an hour or less.

And he’s out of his mind. “You’re seriously unhinged,” I say. “You transferred to this college without ever stepping foot here when you were going to an Ivy.”

“You transferred too.”

“I bought a brochure. I took a three-hour tour. I made an Excel spreadsheet listing the financial expenses of this move—not that you’d need to do that.”

“I did Google search MVU,” he smiles, almost teasingly.

“Oh, he Google-searched.” I mime pompoms to cheer him on, my lips somewhat rising with his. “That has to at least dock you a point or two with the studious fam, Cobalt boy.”

“Probably five points. Don’t tell my mom. She’d have a heart attack knowing my research consisted of typing in Manhattan Valley in a web browser and not a one-on-one with Dean Ferreira.”

“Like I would ever come face-to-face with the Rose Calloway Cobalt,” I say without thinking. His mom is a certified bomb-ass-bitch, and I would idolize her feminine ferocity if I didn’t prefer hero-worshipping the dead. The dead can’t disappoint you as much as the living.

“You never know,” Ben says like life has taken stranger turns. It causes the air to tense and for the focus to draw to us. To how we’ve run into each other again. How we’re on a collision course. Our eyes clash in the sudden quiet, fighting to stay glued for longer than a couple seconds.  

“How’d you hear about this party anyway?” I ask.

“Through a friend of a friend who knows Leif Westergaard. He’s president of the frat.”

“Already three-degrees from the Kappa prez,” I tease.

He laughs, then checks the time again. “I’ll probably head back to Philly in a couple hours.”

My stomach sinks, but then twists in more confusion. “You aren’t staying in New York?”

“Classes don’t start till next week. I’m not moving here before then.” He asks fast, “What about you? How long have you been here?”

“A few days. I have to take a week-long orientation for the Honors Program.”

“Overachiever,” he calls me out.

I make a heart with my hands and crack it apart. “You want half?”

He glances down at my hands, then up to my eyes. “You always break your heart for your friends?”

He would be my only friend.

If this were real.

“It’s imaginary, Ben,” I murmur. “Tomorrow, you’ll act like I never existed until our next strange encounter. Is that not what this is?” I motion between him and me.

“No.” He shakes his head, scans the bathroom, then rests a forearm on his bent knee. “No, it’s not, Harriet.” His voice is nearly a whisper, and he lays his gaze even gentler on me. “We don’t have to be strangers.”

I’m lost for words.

So he adds, “I want to be your friend.”

Did Cameron Dun-fuckface drop me on the pavement outside? Did I hit my head? “Okay.”

“Okay,” Ben repeats, then narrows his gaze. “I get the sense you still don’t believe me.”

“I’m trying, Friend.”

He smiles a little, which is coaxing mine out. Wow, he is really good at this…

I should probably take notes on how to make friends, but what he possesses feels like a gift. A trait inherited, not one learned.

“Thanks for the backup tonight,” I say too quietly. I’m unsure if he hears until I see the ire flashing through his eyes.

“Parties like this can be such a fucking wreck.” He gazes at the wall, his jaw muscle ticking. “I’m sorry that happened to you. Someone should’ve stopped it before me.”

“At least you did something at the cost of social suicide.”

“I’m a Cobalt. That cost is low.” He exhales a long, tired breath. “We’ve been here before.” Here as in helping me.

He already said that over text.

I hold my knees, seeing him stare unblinkingly at a stain in the ugly brown paint. “Yeah, but it’ll be me helping you out next,” I promise. “Right place, right time, I’ll be there. And when I make commitments, I don’t usually break them.”

You can count on me, I think about adding, but how much weight does this cliché phrase even hold when you barely know someone and they barely know you?

Ben cradles my gaze for a steady beat, and just as he inhales like he’s about to tell me something, a knock pounds the door.

“Ben, you in there?!”

“Man, of course he’s in there. His bodyguard is standing right out here.”

“Ben, come do a shot with us!”

I rise to my feet first. “You’ve been summoned, Cobalt boy.”

He takes a taxingly long time to pick himself off the floor. He stares at the door, then down at me. I forgot about our height difference while we were on the ground. He is towering. I try not to imagine being scooped up in his arms.

I try not to imagine being held by him. I felt it for point-two-seconds tonight, and I’m worried I’ll want more when everyone already wants so much more out of him. How much can a person like him even really give to someone like me?

“I’ll probably head out,” I tell him. “I’ve got some stuff I need to get to.” Like sleep. Me and my pillow—also friends.

Does he look dejected? Or is that wishful thinking—that maybe he wanted to hang out with me for longer?

“Ben!” his friend calls.

“I’ll find you in the kitchen, Reece!” he shouts back while only looking at me, his gaze rooting me here. It’s one of the hottest sensations that slips into my body, the feeling of being kept and grasped with a single intrusive, caring stare.

Their footsteps pad away.

I intake a short breath and tuck a strand of blonde hair behind my ear. “Catch you later?” I hear my doubt.

A part of me does believe this friendship is an illusion. It’s not that I’ve been met with total misfortune in my life—I’m at a dream college, for fuck’s sake—but it’s still hard to accept beautiful spots inside my reality that I didn’t work for. Having good things fall into my lap…that rarely happens.

Ben likely hears my cynicism too.

Is that why he lingers? Does he wish I believed in him more? My stomach backflips, and I realize how much I want to believe this won’t end here between us.  

He glances at his phone. I wonder if he’ll text me or if there’ll be a new wave of tumbleweeds, and then he says so suddenly, so abruptly, “I need a job.”

I’m thrown off.

I nod slowly, seeing he’s messing with me. “Right. I also need a job, but for real. I used to give drumming lessons in Philly to this snarky little prep school kid, and I’m not sure a gig will be as easy to find in New York.”

“I’m for real,” Ben says fast, eyeing the door, then me. As if this is a secret.

I shift my weight in confusion. “But you’re…rich.”  

“I’m broke.”

My jaw is on the floor. “Whaa…how? Is that even possible? Don’t you have a trust fund?”

“Our trust funds aren’t limitless. I’ll explain later.” He’s running out of time with me. “But if you find anything worth applying for jobwise, let me know. Maybe we can work together.”

Work together…?

He wants to work with me now? Maybe he’s hit his head. Because no one, and I mean, no one has acted thrilled to spend more than an hour with me. Unless I’m on my knees.

But Ben isn’t asking for a blow job.

He’s asking for friendship. The one thing I’ve never really given out.

“Maybe, yeah,” I say in one trapped breath. I think I would want to work alongside Ben Cobalt. Who wouldn’t?

One question is plaguing me as he goes to the door, adding distance between us, and I call out, “Who knows?”

“Who knows I’m broke?”

“Yeah. Who’d you tell?”

“Just you.”

My brows catapult, and my lips part but only breath comes out.

Just me?

Just me?

JUST ME????

It’s not computing fast enough. It’s not computing at all.

He grips the doorknob but faces me. “No one in my family knows, and I need to keep it that way.”

What the…?

This isn’t just a secret big enough to implode his life. It’s massive enough to spill to tabloids for cash. It could help pay for my housing.

I could turn on Ben in a heartbeat. It’d be so easy to pocket the ammo and payday. There’s nearly nothing stopping me from destroying him.

“You’re unhinged,” I say again. “You barely even know me, but you know enough that I could ruin you out of revenge—I hate your brother and he hates me—or out of desperation. Because you know that I could use the money.”

“Yeah…I’m hoping you keep it a secret.”

“Hope?” My stomach churns hearing that word out loud, and I come closer to him. “That’s what you’re banking this on?”

“I’m banking on you.” He stares down at me from beneath his ballcap. “I’m banking on you, Harriet.” His deep voice is a caress. It’s terrifying how much I want to feel it all over my body. “I might not know you that well yet, but I think your heart is good.”

“You think,” I repeat like he’s lost it. “You’re out of your mind.” I lace my hands on my head before they fall to my neck, my pulse on an ascent. I grip my shoulders like I pulled a muscle. The one class I almost failed was P.E. in ninth grade.

As a non-endurance runner, fuck the mile death run.

But I don’t hate this weird out-of-breath feeling with Ben. It’s one born from anticipation, from the things that slam through walls and soar. I’ve experienced so much of life alone that to share this moment with another is heady, dizzying, maddening.

And I realize…I’m losing it too.

Ben looks me over. “Tell me not to believe in the good in you. Tell me I should be scared.” Our eyes can’t unfasten. 

“You should have some fear for your life. Where’s the self-preservation, Friend?”

“Courage doesn’t exist without fear. We all have to confront things that scare us at some point.”

So this does scare him.

The idea that I could betray him.

I can’t imagine screwing over a person who’s helped me not once but twice. This secret isn’t a grenade that could blow me up. It feels more like his heart. Like he was the one who cracked the organ in half. He was the one who gave it away.  

“You might’ve chosen the wrong person.” Better to warn him now. “I’ve never been a safety net for anyone. My parachute probably has holes in it.”

He twists the doorknob. “Guess we’ll be on a fast descent together, Fisher.” He gives me a salute from the brim of his hat. “See you around, Friend.”

My heart can’t slow. “See you, Friend.”

We hope you already love Ben and Harriet as much as we loved (and still love!) writing them 🥹🩵 Thank you for reading Chapter One of Burn Bright and your excitement surrounding this new series!

We have LOTS more coming for the tail-end of August! Including another First Look (Chapter Two of Burn Bright), plus the Monthly Podcast where we catch you up on all things Cobalt siblings ahead of the Cobalt Empire, and the last written content for the month.

Thank you for being here, for your support, and for all your love of the Cobalts! This new era is upon us, and we're so happy it's kicking off with the sixth-born Cobalt. Oh Pippy!

xoxo Krista & Becca

“Burn Bright," Copyright © 2025 by K.B. Ritchie