Main Bonus #86: Winter Break - Hockey with the Cobalts (Rose) (Patreon)

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SPOILER WARNING: There are spoilers from BURN BRIGHT in this bonus scene. We highly recommend reading the book for reading this bonus.

THIS IS TOO SOON. My youngest son returning to hockey after he just came home, after he just learned he’s dealing with a mental illness. It’s too soon to rush into a sport as brutal as hockey. It was hard enough watching Ben at thirteen being slammed against a wall during a game. Now knowing he’s affected by the violence—it makes this whole scenario more complicated.

He should be relaxing by the warm hearth, enjoying the holidays in Philly with people who love him, not facing the biggest adversaries in his head. I did not intend for our son to be thwarted into some Herculean challenge before the new year.

It’s too soon.

I’ve hammered this fact in so hard with Connor, I could be a fucking world-class carpenter by now.

“Are these your fears or his?” Connor asks while squatting down to my ankle. He examines my traitorous heel since the buckle broke the second I exited onto the stoop of our mansion. The cold of Christmas Eve morning barely soothes the fire against my face.

I am angry.

“Of course I’m afraid for him,” I snap back, trying to be hushed in case our children pool outside. The vintage, refurbished limo idles near the stone fountain, exhaust sputtering out of the rear. The morning’s itinerary doesn’t make me feel even an ounce of joy. “Just because Ben knows he has OCD doesn’t mean he can fix it in one week. That’s asinine.”

“I never said he could.”

“Then why are we rushing this?” I unclasp my Chanel purse for my lipstick.

“It’s his choice,” he reminds me. “I talked to him again this morning, and he was adamant he wanted to try to play.”

I growl out, hating our son’s decision. “Hate this with me,” I demand to my husband. “Hate this so much, you’re going to claw your hair out.”

His lips curve in a grin at me. “You would despise if I lost my hair.” His fingers tighten the buckle. “And Rose—”

“Richard,” I cut in icily, unsheathing my tube of dark red lipstick.

“Just because I’m at your feet doesn’t mean I’m at your command.” His dominant, dark warning feeds a deep desire in me.

Translation: we’re equals.

I love how he stares up at me like he’s already at my height. When he fixes my high heel and rises even taller, his calming hand slides against the heat of my furious cheek. “We can’t instill fear in him, even if we think it’s too soon.”

“I know.” My eyes burn. “I’m going to be quietly supportive.” I can’t be a boisterous, overly excited cheerleader. Every maternal bone in my body wants to keep my youngest son off the ice in fear it’s too soon—that he’s pushing himself too fast.

I expel a tight breath.

Connor thumbs the line of my cheekbone. The softness tingles my flesh, but his deep blue eyes say he’ll be unconscionably rough with me later. “Speak your fears.”

“He’s rushing into this for his brothers.”

“Ben isn’t easily peer pressured. He stands his ground. By his convictions.”

“You don’t believe he’d want to make Eliot feel good? The inverse is rejecting his brother’s big elaborate plot to help him.”

“It’s possible he wants to please Eliot and simultaneously push himself for himself. And whatever the motive, Rose, it’s still his decision.”

A frustrated growl sticks to my throat. Connor takes my face in his hand and turns my head to have access to my ear. I bake inside the forceful movement, too attracted to it. Especially as he whispers to me in French that we can’t let our greatest fears stoke our son’s.

Connor isn’t acting like he’s a fearless god and I’m the mere mortal afraid of the worst outcomes. If he made me feel like I’m nuts for worrying, I’d shove him in the ice-cold fountain and watch him die of hypothermia.

I try to relax, but what if my fears are justified? It’s a crystalizing, horrifying thought. Of not doing enough when Connor and I had the opportunity. We could have done so much more to help our son sooner if we’d just known…if we’d seen his mental battle for what it was.

I will always blame us because Ben is ours.

It’s one of our greatest failings as parents, but instead of beating up on ourselves, we’ve given all our energy to being present now. It’s the overachievers in us. Not that we’d ever been slapped with an F in college, but had I received one, I would’ve used it as fuel to work harder. Receive the A.

Never fail again.

It’s why I can’t stop thinking about preventative measures today.

I comb my fingers through my silky hair. “We give them ten minutes on the ice, then we’ll pull the fire alarm.”

Connor arches a brow. “For a fake emergency.”

“We’re preventing a fucking catastrophe. That’s what fire alarms are for.”

He smiles, his hand sliding casually through his wavy brown hair. No one should be gifted with hair that perfect. It’s obnoxious how handsome he’s gotten over the years. He didn’t need to get more attractive.

“They’re actually for real fires, not fictious ones,” he says.

I glare at his widening, conceited grin. “I assure you, I am about five minutes from setting you on fire.”

He laughs.

“Don’t laugh.” I push his chest, but he doesn’t sway. “I’m being serious, Richard.”

“It’s only ten a.m. and you’ve already found three creative ways to murder me to save our son.”

Is that what I’m doing? I lance him with my eyes. “Someone needs to be sacrificed, and you won’t let that be me, will you?”

“No, darling.” He slips a strand of hair behind my ear. “Hyperboles involving your death are still my least favorite.”

I know.

Connor is dressed like he’s about to attend a Cobalt Inc. board meeting. Perfectly tailored navy-blue slacks, white button-down, and slim suit jacket. But he has a gym bag at his feet, fully planning to join our sons on the rink this morning.

I’m in a turtleneck black sweater dress, and no, I do not plan to change out of the comfort of my favorite winter staple. “I’m accepting it’s happening,” I tell him sharply while applying dark lipstick.

“Are you?” His humored grin needs to go.

I glare and smooth my lips together. “I’m not using my powers to cancel today, so what do you call that?”

“Restraint.”

I cap my lipstick. “Part of me wishes I had less.”

“At times, I wish the same for myself.”

I almost ease knowing we’re the same here.

It’s not shocking that we both desire to control every facet of this situation, but one major thing Connor and I have agreed on since our children were little is that we wouldn’t puppeteer their lives. Ben could be making a mistake, but he could just as easily not be making one.

I’m more aware that I’m obsessing over potential worst-case scenarios when Ben is fearful of making a mistake that could hurt his siblings. I don’t want my OCD to impact my children. It’s genetic, so we knew some of our kids could be affected.

Beckett’s OCD presented itself so early and so obviously. Maybe it's just an insecurity of mine, but I’ve considered how he might’ve watched me flinch in disgust at the dirtiness of minor things and that unlocked something in his head.

I glance backward at the shut doors, expecting our children to come outside any minute now.

“The inverse is Ben not even being here this Christmas,” Connor tells me after checking and pocketing his phone. “We’re fortunate he’s not pulling away anymore.”

I inhale strongly, my arms crossed while he weaves one around my hips.

Connor adds, “And to be clear, I make my own fortune.”

I roll my eyes. “That was an unnecessary, egotistical addition.”

“You should have more faith in me than you do in chance and luck.”

“So you always say,” I snap, and the truth is, I do have more faith in my husband than in the power of luck. But he also can’t control random happenstance any more than I can. Some things are just destined.

I wonder if what happened with Ben is one of those fated things. It was always going to happen. There was no stopping it.

I shove my lipstick in my purse, trying my best not to revisit his disappearance from hardly a month ago. If I return to those all too recent days where Ben went missing, my eyeballs feel like molten lava. Lily said I was “rage crying”—and I have no idea what that even means. Other than I was sick to my stomach. I couldn’t eat. I couldn’t sleep. My voice went hoarse with the number of hours I spent talking to people just to find him.

I was short with my sisters. Even shorter with Loren, Ryke, and Garrison. Yes, Garrison. Connor had to step in because I was one second from strangling Garrison for going to sleep at midnight when I needed him to be sleep deprived hacking his way to locating my son.

Not one of my finer moments.

But I needed Ben back. I needed my son alive.

Thankfully, Daisy and Lily are used to me being an ice-cold bitch. They said that there was nothing to forgive, and Garrison had understood, too.

On the stoop of our Estate, I release another tight breath, but my ribs feel like a boa constrictor around my lungs.

The doors finally open behind us, but only Beckett exits in black joggers, a zipped jacket, NYC baseball hat, and a gym bag on his shoulder.

“They’re going to be a minute.” He blows on his cold hands. “Ben and Harriet are still in the shower.”

I narrow my eyes. “Together?”

“I didn’t ask,” Beckett says. “You’re letting them stay in the same bedroom. I thought you accepted they’re likely doing more than just showering together.”

Connor smiles too arrogantly at me. “What were we saying earlier about accepting things, darling?”

“That I’ve mastered the art of acceptance.” I flip my hair over my shoulder at him and stare at our calmest son. “I’ve accepted your brother has a girlfriend. A girlfriend that is fully, entirely, wholeheartedly welcome in this house for as long as she’d like. I’ve also accepted that you’re all grown adults and have urges.” I fix the strap to my purse. “As long as you’re practicing safe sex. The absolute last thing any of you need is an unplanned pregnancy.”

Beckett takes a long breath out of his nose. The cold gives him away as it smokes the air.

Connor frowns, rubbing his lips in thought. “Did one of you have a pregnancy scare?”

My jaw tries to unhinge. “Beckett Joyce.”

“Ask Eliot.” He goes to the limo, and the driver takes his gym bag to place in the trunk. I follow my son to get out of the cold.

I slide in the warmth of the limo beside Beckett. The baseball cap shades his yellow-green eyes, but I can tell he looks tired. “Mom, you can ask Eliot—”

“I’m not picking your brain about Eliot,” I assure him. “You’re taking off work and missing the rest of The Nutcracker.”

“I am,” Beckett says, dusting nonexistent lint off his thigh. 

“How are you handling it?”

“I’m managing.” His eyes drift toward the window. Outside, Charlie and Connor are speaking on the stoop. “Do you still like Harriet?”

“More and more.”

Harriet would’ve done anything to find Ben when he went missing. She was willing to share everything she knew or heard, and our phone calls each day even reassured me. It made me believe that my son could’ve returned to her, could’ve reached out to her, could’ve come home for her. She was a bright possibility in a dark time.

“Do you still like her?” I volley the question back.

Beckett nods. “I think she’s really good for Ben.” It’s what he’s told us before when we asked what he thought about Harriet.

“And you’re on board with this?” I ask him. “Hockey? Today?”

Beckett frowns at me. “Are you not?”

“Hell no. It’s too soon.” I point a matte black nail at him. “To Ben, the timing is just right.”

Beckett smiles. “I won’t tell him you think this is a horrible idea, but Mom, it’s not one. It’ll be worse if he delays this. It’ll become a bigger obstacle in his head he won’t even try to scale, and right now, for whatever reason, it doesn’t seem insurmountable to him, so we should take this chance.”

Okay.

“Fine.” I ease backward and thread my arms, then I look him over. “And you’re doing all right?” I ask. “Your rituals—”

“Manageable.” If they were unmanageable, I’d tell you, he used to say when he first left for New York and I worried about my sixteen-year-old off on his own with ballet as his obsession.

He never called to say his OCD was unmanageable.

It’s hard to believe he’s never had an episode since he left home, but I have greater peace of mind knowing Charlie has always lived with him. It’s brought me even more comfort knowing Ben is returning to his brothers after the holidays. He won’t be alone.

I reach forward and grab a water out of the limo’s cooler. “You wouldn’t tell me if they were wreaking havoc on you, would you?” I ask.

“Would you really want to know?”

Yes and no. “Yes, so I can slay your ugly little demons for you.”

“These ones you’ll never reach.”

“I can’t accept this,” I admit to him, my eyes scalding. “As your mother, I want to defeat every evil thing in your life.”

“I know,” he whispers.

We stare ahead together, watching Connor and Charlie split apart as Eliot steps between them on the stoop. I place a hand on his hand. Beckett squeezes my fingers before he lets go.

Connor, Eliot, and Tom are the next to enter the limo. Apparently, Charlie is going to ride with Jane, Thatcher, and Maeve to the hockey arena.

“Should we feel rejected?” Tom asks, uncorking the bottle of brut.

“Our dear brother would rather endure a baby than be here with us,” Eliot says in mock hurt, taking the champagne from Tom to have the first swig.

“It’s not the morning to imbibe.” I snatch the alcohol away. “You’re about to skate. On ice. With hockey pucks. With a brother that needs your full mental focus and fortitude. Understood?”

Eliot salutes me, and Tom raises his hands in the air to show he’s not touching the brut.

Beckett laughs.

Connor smiles.

I cross my arms again. “Tom, will you go check on the girls and your brother.” They’re taking too long, and yes, I am fucking impatient for more estrogen in this limo.

“Why me?” Tom complains.

I glower. “Because I asked you to do a very nice and easy thing that’s by far in your capabilities seeing as how you have two feet that I haven’t chopped off yet.”

“Okay, okay. I’m going. Fuck.” He scoots out of the limo and peeks back in to say, “You all better miss me while I’m gone.”

“Chaque seconde, frère,” Eliot says seriously. Every second, brother.

Tom points at me. “Shed tears, Mom.”

“I will—over your feet that will become the legs to my end table.”

Tom laughs, which twitches my lips in a partial smile. I figured Tom would likely be the quickest to bring them all outside or give me an update on everyone.

And I still need to ask Eliot this. “You’ve been having safe sex?”

Eliot sinks the champagne into an ice bucket. “Only the safest of all New York. I should teach classes on how to wrap it up.” He wags his finger. “Now that’s an idea. Fornicating Safely with Eliot Alice—we’ll drop Cobalt for this, just to preserve the sanctity of the family name. Your sex tapes aside.”

“Stop talking,” I warn.

“And deprive the limo of my harmonic voice?”

Beckett can’t contain a laugh. 

“Demonic,” I tell Eliot, then I turn to my husband. “You’re responsible for this, Richard.”

Connor drops his fingers from his lips, his smile still apparent. “He’s all you, Rose.”

“Oh no, that is your ego.”

“Your dramatics.”

“I love when you two fight over me,” Eliot grins.

Connor stares straight into him. “There’s been no pregnancy scares in your apartment then?”

“None,” Eliot says with wide open arms. “Not even Harriet and Ben.”

“Thank God,” I say.

“You can thank yourself,” Eliot says, “for birthing me, the educator of safe sex in apartment 2166. My students are passing beautifully. Straight As.”

I don’t have time to retort. The rest of my children, plus Harriet, join us in the limo. Most of the ride is filled with banter on top of Christmas songs playing over the radio. Harriet and Ben are seated across from me, and I see the way she makes herself even smaller. Legs tucked together. Back stiff against the seat. Arms folded into her tiny frame.

Like she’s afraid of taking up space.

Ben keeps his arm around her, and whenever he scrunches her hair, she looks up at him and her scowl recedes.

I feel a smile try to pinch my own lips. I’d like to believe my son is also good for her, and I hope one day she’ll feel like she can take up as much room as any of my children.

It’s only later, when we’re at the empty hockey arena and our sons are changing into gear with Audrey and Harriet, that Connor says quietly to me, “I can barely tell anymore.”

“Barely tell what?”

“If Eliot is being deceptive.”

A cold chill snakes down my spine. “You think he might’ve lied to us?” I want my children to be honest with me, but I can also understand wanting privacy from parents.

“I don’t know.” Skin pleats between his brows. “It’s odd that Beckett told us to just ask Eliot.”

I would’ve said Beckett has no cunning bone in his body when he was younger, but he is crafty. “You should give Ben a talk about protection again, just to be safe,” I tell Connor.

“I agree.” He turns his attention to Thatcher at one of the entrances with more security. Our son-in-law motions for Connor.

Before he goes, I ask, “And Charlie? What was his deal this morning?”

“He didn’t want to see Ben being affectionate with Harriet for an entire car ride.”

I sigh. At least he removed himself from the situation rather than making a smartass remark. Twenty minutes later, I climb the emptied stands and try to prepare for this hockey game. Beckett’s reassurance starts to waver within me.

I still wish Ben would give it a few more months.

Maybe even a year.

It’s too soon.

“At least you’re on my side,” I say. “You’re far more intelligent than my fourth-born. You know what he said to me? Ben is ripping the Band-Aid, Mom. Yes, let’s go rip the fucking Band-Aid in the brain. Does that sound like a good idea to you?”

Maeve giggles in my arms with a big goofy grin.

“Precisely, little gremlin. You and I are the smartest two here.” I glance backward. Jane is already on the ice, spinning in slow circles and chatting with Thatcher and Connor on the sideline.

I stroke Maeve’s soft brown hair back and ascend a few more rows. “If your Uncle Eliot tells you to rip any Band-Aids on your boo-boos, tell him to eat dirt.” I adjust the one-year-old against my chest, and she presses her soft little cheek to my stiff collarbone.

My first grandchild is an angel. No harm will come to her. Not in my arms.

Thank you so much for reading this month's bonus! It's a special one as this is our first Addicted x Cobalt Empire crossover with Rose taking the POV helm. We're so excited that we get to show this side of the Addictedverse here on Patreon. Rose and Connor have our hearts, and there would be no Cobalt Empire without the king and queen themselves.

There's more hockey to come this month! So stay tuned for more Winter Break shenanigans!!

xoxo Krista & Becca

 “Winter Break: Hockey with the Cobalts (Rose)," Copyright © 2025 by K.B. Ritchie