Extra Bonus #94: Winter Break - Hockey with the Cobalts (Ben) (Patreon)

IMPORTANT: Please do not screenshot and post any part of this bonus scene to other sites or share with non-patrons. All of the Patreon content is exclusive to Patreon and for current patron's eyes only.  Thank you!! xoxo Krista & Becca

RESOURCES:  Check out this narrative timeline graphic to visually see when this bonus scene takes place.

MUSIC: We listened to "Dream State" by Son Lux while writing his bonus scene.

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

EVERYONE IS HERE for me. It brings both reassurance and slow-growing terror, but I don’t want to freak out my family. I don’t want to freak myself out on Christmas Eve morning at a hockey arena that Eliot rented out for me.

I can do this.

I can play an easy pickup game where there’ll be minimal contact. We’ll mostly skate around each other and pass the puck and shoot in an undefended goal. It sounds fun. Getting back on the ice. Being with them.

I try to ignore this nagging sensation that tries to speed my pulse. I want to be here. I can play hockey with my brothers, my sisters, my dad, my girlfriend.

My girlfriend.

The thought shoots my gaze outward in the co-ed locker room. Harriet clutches the wooden bench on either side of her thighs and examines her skates while flipping a jolly rancher with her tongue in her mouth. She’s trying to listen to Audrey next to her, but her narrowed blue eyes keep veering back to her laced skates.

Yeah.

Something feels not right there.

I’m pulling on my old Penn hockey jersey. “You good, Fisher?” I call out from across the locker room.

Chatter abruptly ceases. My brothers, all surrounding me, suddenly zero in on Harriet, and the attention stiffens her small frame.

Fuck.

I’ve been trying to remind myself all break that she’s an introvert and just grew up spending the holidays with her mom. My overbearing, overly loud, chaotic family has to be a stark contrast. I keep trying to check in with her, but Harriet is a little stubborn. I think we both just want to take care of each other first, ourselves second. Our desires are clashing.

She’s said, “I’m fine. I want you around your siblings, Ben, so don’t steal me away because you think I need alone-time or whatever.”

“What if it’s mostly for me?” I asked her in a deep whisper. “I want to be alone with you, bel oiseau.”

“You can’t always get what you want, Cobalt boy.”

“But I can,” I said with a rising smile. “I usually do. I have.” I stared deeper at her.

She chewed on her lip, her smile fighting through, and I wanted to steal her away right then to kiss her in the privacy of my room. But she remained staunch on her position. “If you ever think your fam is too much for me, just remember one thing.”

“What is that?”

“This is the stuff I dreamed of. A close family. One who cares. I will take your brother breaking out in a weird five-minute soliloquy and everyone applauding over my mom’s boyfriend throwing a remote at my head and everyone blaming me.”

Ire flamed my chest. “Fuck, Harriet.”

She glowered. “Dude, it’s fine. That was not an invite for you to pity—”

I pulled her into a hug and whispered against her ear that I didn’t pity her. I was angry for her, and fuck, I just wanted to dig out all the hurt she’d ever been through and plant the love she deserved.

In the locker room, Harriet gauges the forceful attention on her. Eliot, standing with a hand planted on the wall like he’s about to push off and attack her adversaries. Beckett and Charlie seated with their skates half-tied and gazes pinned intrusively to her. And Tom beside me on another bench, the only one partially distracted as he shuffles through music. 

I mouth, Sorry, to Harriet.

She shrugs, and I see her processing how much my brothers care if she’s okay. I remember that she likes it. Then she gives me a solid nod. “Doing good, Cobalt boy. Just worry about beating Tommy’s ass.”

Tom swipes on his phone. “Ben Pirrip, I think your girlfriend has a sick obsession with me.”

Harriet retorts, “At least now you know what it’s like to have a fan.”

Beckett contains the start of a laugh, and my smile spreads. Especially as Tom gawks up at Eliot to ask, “Did you hear that?”

“I only saw friendly fire.” Eliot grabs a hockey stick and tosses it to him.

Tom catches it. “Watch your back, Harry.”

“I’m so scared.” Harriet makes a brr motion with crossed arms, then lifts her middle fingers. I’m very fucking thankful she doesn’t let Tom crawl too deep under her skin.

Tom flips her off. “Hope you love making contact with ice.”

She grimaces, and I can practically see her internal panic about being tripped by Tom and needing stiches and a dentist.

“Don’t fuck with her out there,” I warn him.

“Me don’t fuck with her?” Tom blinks hard at me. “She is gunning for me, dude. Or are you saying she’s all bark, no bite?” He waves a hand to Harriet. “Is that it, Harry? You talk a big game—”

“Fuck off, Tom,” I growl.

“Dude,” Tom stares at me like I’m overreacting. But he can’t tell she’s actually scared about getting injured, and Harriet isn’t going to let on that she is.

“They like to nettle,” Audrey tells Harriet. “It’s Tom and Eliot’s specialty, you’ll see.” My sister has been coaching my girlfriend on the dynamics of our family.

Tom rotates more toward me. “I’m not actually going to shove her. I think we should be more worried about her skating abilities. She could be a bowling ball on ice and knock us all down.”

“If only,” Charlie says, yanking at his laces.

Harriet retorts, “That could be you, Thomas.”

Tom glares. “Uh, no. I am a graceful swan on ice.”

“The most beautiful,” Eliot chimes in. “After me, of course.”

“And I,” Audrey pipes in.

“You’re in a league of your own, dear sister.” Eliot plops down between me and Tom. He wraps his arms around our shoulders, hugging us closer to his muscular frame. “We are going to do great things. I vote you two be on the same team with Harriet.”

I start to smile. “Good idea, Eliot.”

Tom smiles off of mine and nods. “What’s our team’s handshake, Ben Pirrip?”

I lean across Eliot and slide my palm twice across Tom’s, hook our fingers, then do a fist-bump. He picks it up without me needing to verbally explain.

Tom smiles back at me like I taught him the keys to Black Parade on piano. My lungs instantly fill. It’s strange how the smallest things make me feel closer to my brothers.

I want to be here.

I have to be here.

I need to be here.

I’m not going anywhere.

Eliot rises off the bench. “I’m full of great ideas.”

Charlie makes a harsh noise of disagreement.

“Hairball, brother?” Eliot asks.

We all laugh. Everyone but Charlie. He sucks an annoyed breath through his nose, then yanks harder at his laces. It vacuums the laughter out of the locker room.

“Someone is in a mood,” Eliot notes.

“Leave him alone,” Beckett says casually while finishing tying his skates.

Tom plays another French EDM song, filling the air with noise, and I like it. A lot more than he knows. The brain-blistering hype music has been distracting me from visualizing terrible fucking things that have not happened yet. That are likely to never happen.

I’m excited to room with Tom when we go back to New York. He’s always playing music. Maybe the sound in his bedroom will take me out of my seriously bad thoughts.

Beckett makes a quiet motion for me to sit beside him. So I switch benches, and he whispers to me, “Mom and Dad asked me if there’s been any pregnancy scares this morning.”

“Fuck,” I curse under my breath. I don’t ask what prompted them to question this. They’re just that good at reading us. “Well, I’m fucked, right? If you lied to Dad, then he’d know you’re lying.”

“Which is why I refused to answer and made Eliot lie.”

I frown, then jerk my head toward Eliot. “You can fool Dad?”

“Getting better by the day.” Eliot comes closer, bracing his blade on the edge of the bench. “I covered for you, but this will not hold long. They’re going to fish.”

“Fish for what?” Audrey asks us, hearing that last part.

“Your maturity,” Charlie cuts in. “A lost cause, seeing as how they won’t find what never existed.”

Audrey humphs. “You will eat those words.”

“Unlikely.”

My head pounds. Charlie could’ve let loose the fact that Harriet took a pregnancy test when I was in Alaska. To piss me off. To poke at me. It would’ve been an easy shot, but he didn’t take it. He even steered Audrey away from it.

He acts like it was nothing as he knots his skates, but it means something to me.

I’ve never really felt protected by Charlie. I’ve felt more like his punching bag, and my throat closes thinking maybe this is changing.

When I peer back at Harriet, she’s staring at her skates again. I abandon my elbow pads and walk over in my blades.

“Fisher.” I squat down to be eye-level, and I rest an arm across her knees, which are pinned together. She’s a vault, so something is definitely wrong.

Audrey says very quietly to me, “Elle va bien?” Is she okay?

“Oui, oui,” I whisper. Yes, yes.

Harriet swishes her cherry jolly rancher in her mouth. “You ready to fly like a bird, Friend?”

“You think Tom will play some Nelly Furtado?”

“No, because his music taste sucks.”

I laugh, and her smile tries desperately to appear. Tom can’t hear Harriet’s diss over the French EDM. I’m almost positive they have near identical taste in rock music.

Harriet runs her fingers very slowly through my thick hair. I’m waiting for her to tell me what’s wrong. I can see her mind processing on how to produce the words.

She ends up glancing at Audrey. “Does your ankle still hurt?”

Audrey perks up, maybe at being included. “Hardly at all. It was just a minor sprain.” She kicks out her leg to show off the white ice skate on her foot. “The doctors were overreacting, really.”

I don’t know if that’s true.

Harriet’s shoulders sink a little, like she’d been hoping Audrey would bail. Her fingers drift back through my hair as her mind takes another journey.

I rest my chin on her legs. “Harriet,” I whisper very gently. “You don’t have to skate today. You know that? You don’t have to play hockey. You can sit with my mom.”

“I can’t.” She bites on the candy. “No offense, but being a team player feels like a general rule to be among the Cobalt Empire, and I’m not ditching you.”

“You wouldn’t be ditching me,” I say strongly.

“It’s not a rule either,” Audrey chimes in. “The only rule, really, is to be yourself. Which if you think about it explains why Charlie is a…” She cups her hand to whisper in Harriet’s ear, and I watch Harriet burst into a laugh.

“Okay, now you have to tell me,” I say to my sister.

She mouths, butthole.

I laugh hard. I’ve never heard her say “butthole” in my life. Fiend, vermin, wretch—yeah. Butthole, no.

When our laughter dies down, Harriet asks me, “So I won’t be like booed for warming the bench?”

My mouth almost falls. “No. We generally try to lift one another up, not cut each other down.”

“Generally,” Audrey echoes with a sly smile. “I enjoy playing defense against a cut or two. No one can harm me. Steel skin.”

Staring at me, Harriet tells her, “I think your brother inherited the soft skin.” The way she says it, I know it’s far from a dig.

“Made of porcelain,” I joke.

“Porcelain isn’t soft, Friend. More like a sunflower.” Her favorite flower. She drags her thumb across my cheek, and her love for me almost burns my eyes. I kiss her knee, then rest my cheek on her legs while she skates her fingers through my hair again.

With my head slightly turned, I see Charlie.

He looks miserable. My stomach backflips, but he’s standing without a word and pushing heatedly into the bathrooms. Beckett is quick to follow.

I don’t understand what I did. Because it was me, right?

Instead of descending too deep into that, I focus back on Harriet and ask, “Can I take off your skates?”

She nods, but adds fast, “Dude, if this were anything else, you know I would be right beside you? I would go camping. I would fly fish and layer on a stupid amount of bug spray. But I really don’t like—”

“Ice skating,” I finish with a smile. “I know. I was honestly shocked you agreed to do this in the first place.”

She releases a hard breath. “I thought I could. Maybe I can. Maybe I should.”

I hear that battle in my head so much, she doesn’t even know. “My mom also hates ice skating, and I bet she’s not questioning her level of love for me.”

Harriet nods faster. “Yeah, that’s true. And Rose is like…” Her smile mushrooms in ways only reserved for my mom. She really loves her already. “The fucking baddest bitch around.”

“Oui,” Audrey says. “My icon.”

“Your mom,” Harriet emphasizes like Audrey is not fully digesting how insane it is to have Rose Calloway Cobalt as a mother.

“Your mom too, once you marry Ben.”

Harriet goes red.

I laugh. “Okay, yeah, thanks, Audrey.” Little sisters.

She feigns innocence with a shrug and a subtly devious smile.

I unlace Harriet’s skates, pulling each one off, and I massage her ankles. She’s relaxed now, her body out of its rigid state. I stretch forward and kiss her. She kisses back to say, “I’ll be cheering you on. Go do your thing in your natural habitat.”

“I’ll try not to stare at you too hard.”

She lightly pushes my chest, and I catch her hand to kiss her knuckles as I rise to my feet. Once she’s headed to the door, she tells Tom, “Peace out, Thomas.”

“Whoa, you’re not playing?”

“She’s keeping Mom company,” I tell him. 

“Oh, I see,” Tom says and raises his voice as she leaves. “You just want to boo me!”

“Thanks for the idea, dude!” The door bangs shut.

Tom shakes his head repeatedly, and I catch Audrey wincing as she rises on her blades. My face immediately falls.

She’s avoiding my gaze.

I am trying not to panic, but her ankle is clearly fucked. My head swerves to Eliot. Thankfully he’s watching us.

“Audrey,” I say. “Can you sit out with Mom and Harriet?”

Seeing her sudden hurt punctures me. “Oh, so all the girls are relegated to sitting in the stands and the boys get to play?”

Jesus. “It’s not like that. Jane is playing.”

Eliot comes over. “You’re a great cheerleader, sister.”

“I am a terrific cheerleader.”

“The world’s best,” Eliot adds. “The varsity team is pitiful without you.”

“Yes, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to cheer from the stands. I want to skate. I’m good at ice skating. The greatest.”

I shake my head. “Not with a sprained ankle,” I tell her, gritting down on my teeth to stop from freaking out. She’s okay. She won’t do further damage to her foot because of me. She’s okay. “Audrey, please.”

“Sit,” Eliot motions her to the bench.

Audrey glares. “No.”

“Sit,” Eliot forces.

“No.”

Eliot clucks his tongue. “You are not going to like dealing with our oldest brothers. Your good fortune is just meeting me. Sit.”

“I will not.” She swats her orange hair triumphantly off her shoulder.

“Please don’t hurt yourself for me,” I ask Audrey deeply. “Please.”

Her lips draw into a deep frown. “It won’t be your fault.”

“I’m trying to tell you…” I lick my dry lips, my heart on an ascent. “I feel like it will be.”

“But see, maybe this is good, Ben. You’ll realize at the end of this game that I’m unharmed. You’ll be better.”

No. “I…” I don’t think it works like that, Audrey. I can’t even stomach letting her down. I naturally want her to feel like she’s made me better. This is killing me.

I can’t remember the last time I’ve gone to Charlie for help, but the impulse suddenly amasses. So while Audrey and Eliot bicker, I beeline for the bathrooms. Tom calls out, “Ben?” as I pass him.

“I’m okay,” I assure him.

He releases an audible breath.

Shoving inside the bathrooms, I rock to a stop. Because Charlie is lying across a bench outside the long row of shower stalls, and his eyes look wet and bloodshot. Beckett is standing and leaning on stall with loosely threaded arms.

Their heads swerve the moment I appear and the heavy door thunks closed behind me.

Charlie rolls his eyes. “Of course it’s you.”

This was a mistake. My breath comes sharp and painful. “Never mind.” I turn.

“Pip,” Beckett calls out.

“Wait,” Charlie says with an agitated tone. He sits up, dropping his legs on either side of the bench. “What do you want?”

“Forget it—”

“You’re here,” Charlie snaps. “Spit it out.”

“What do you need?” Beckett says about a hundred times more nicely.

I comb both my hands through my hair, trying to swallow the bile in my throat. “Um, it’s Audrey. I think her ankle is really fucked up, and she’s going to hurt herself more if she plays. And it’ll be my fault. It’s going to be my fault. And—”

“Okay,” Beckett says calmly, his hand outstretched. “Take a breath.”

Charlie cringes. “Tell her no. She can’t play.”

“I did.”

“You told her,” Charlie says skeptically. “Or did you ask her?”

“I asked her. Eliot told her. She still wants to play. She thinks she’s helping me by playing, and I don’t know…I feel badly taking that from her.”

“Oh my God,” Charlie groans, rubbing his eyes, then pinching them tightly. He springs to a stance, then stares directly at Beckett. “You were wrong. Today is going to near my threshold of aggravation.”

“Thank you,” Beckett says genuinely, deeply, and I have no idea what he’s thanking him for until I realize Charlie is going to help me.

He doesn’t ask me to thank him.

He just exits the bathroom, and I follow out with Beckett.

Audrey still wears her white skates, but she’s seated beside Eliot. They’re laughing over a video on her phone, which isn’t boding well for me. Especially as she snatches her stick and hops to her feet.

“I’m ready,” she decrees.

“You aren’t playing,” Charlie says as he swipes his cane from against a locker.

Audrey threads her arms. “Simply put, Charlie, you are not the boss of me.”

“Your foot,” Beckett says.

“Is perfectly fine.” She presses her hands to her chest. “I am a part of this, our family, and you can’t push me out because you think I’m young and little—”

“Injured,” Beckett corrects her. “You don’t want to tear that muscle. You won’t be able to stand on your foot without pain.”

I swallow more rising acid and sink on the bench beside Tom. I barely feel his hand on my back. I stare off at the ground. No music is playing anymore, and I blink past a filmy haze in my eyes and the pressure sitting on my chest.

Charlie braces his weight on the cane and faces our sister. “I’m not playing. Because my leg feels like it’s going to fucking fall off even standing here in skates, and you’re going to sit out with me and pester me for two hours. And because you believe you’re so mature, you should accept this without throwing a fourth-grade tantrum.”

Audrey considers for a full fifteen seconds. “Thank you for pleading your case, but I am here for Ben. Not for you.”

“You are not here for him,” Charlie says. “You are being selfish in your pursuit of trying to support him. He is too soft to tell you how much he doesn’t want you on the ice, to the point where he sought out me. Use your brain and think about this before mine explodes. Thank you.”

Her chin tries to quake. I’m too far away to comfort her, and my stomach is too knotted to move.

“Oh no, no, no,” Eliot rests a hand on her head. “We don’t cry over Charlie.”

“I’m not crying.” Her voice steels.

Charlie expels a harsh breath. “I’m going to give you thirty seconds. You either sit out with me, or I bail on this entire fucking outing. You are going to be the reason I stay here, Audrey. You want a victory, take it.”

“Fine,” she sighs, more resigned, then sits to unlace her skates. She fumbles with the ties, but Beckett crouches down and helps her. He speaks softly to her in French, and she nods to him and quickly wipes at the corners of her eyes.

I try to relax as the visual of Audrey breaking her foot leaves me.

She’s fine. But my leg jostles, and I picture me accidentally knocking into Beckett. He falls. Breaks a bone. Then what—he can never dance again? My fault.

It gets worse with each minute. I imagine my blade literally chopping off Tom’s hand. Which is so fucking unrealistic, but it’s panicking me enough that my breathing goes labored.

Fuck, fuck, fuck.

This was a mistake. Everyone is here for me, and this is such a mistake. But how can I bail now? Should I bail?

Coward.

Failure.

Fragile.

Ben.

What the fuck am I doing here?

“Pip.”

I turn my head. Beckett is beside me. My siblings are gone. It’s just me and him in the locker room.

My eyes are searing. “I don’t know…” I struggle to breathe. “I don’t know if I can do this, Beck.” It hurts even saying it because… “I want to do this so badly.” I blink back scalding tears. I could scream at myself. I clutch my head in my hands.

He grips my shoulder with a strength I know he has but haven’t felt often. Usually his hand is gentle on me. “Look at me.”

I raise my blistering, pained gaze up to his yellow-green eyes, so full of understanding.

“These thoughts are OCD,” he says. “You don’t need to respond to them. Let them go and keep moving.”

Frederick, my therapist, told me something similar. So I’m not even surprised when Beckett urges me to repeat it.

“These thoughts are OCD,” I say out loud. “I don’t need to respond to them. Let them go and keep moving.”

I shut my eyes, take a breath, and stand up on my blades.

Beckett follows the movement, his hand dropping to my wrist for a brief second. He’s taking my pulse.

“I’m okay.”

“Don’t say you are if it’s not true, not to me,” he whispers.

“I’m getting better.” I want to get better. I swallow hard. “The thought of not trying to get on that rink scares me more, Beck. I want to prove to myself that I can do this.” I blow out a steady breath. “I can do this. I can fucking do this.”

He nods with me. Then he says, “And if you don’t last long, it’s still a success. Being here is a success. And you’ll keep trying. You have all the time in the world.” He says it like it’s the greatest gift known to man.

This conversation strangely eases me. “And you don’t think you do? You’re not much older than I am.”

He smiles. “The body of a dancer doesn’t last forever.”

I nod, understanding him now. For Beckett, dance is life. I never considered how he's counting down toward an expiration date to what he loves.

With another breath, I calm, then pass him a hockey stick. “Are we on the same team?”

“What do you think?” His eyes smile before his lips rise higher.

My smile grows too. “I think we always have been.” Thank you, Beckett.

He curves an arm around my shoulders and guides me forward.

Thank you so much for reading this month's extra bonus! And thank you for your patience!! As promised, we are back in the Winter Break era and giving you all the Cobalt sibling moments. We loved writing this one so much, and it's been really fun to expand the end of Burn Bright with the Cobalt moments. We hope you enjoyed it too!

That's it for the content this month, but we'll be back in December for more written content, more podcasts, and more extras!

xoxo Krista & Becca

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