First Look: Silver Sweet - Chapter One (Patreon)

Happy Birthday, Tom Cobalt! What better way to celebrate this troublemaker's birthday than sharing with all of you the very first chapter of Silver Sweet. This is TRULY a birthday gift since ARCs have not even been sent out yet. (Only a very, very small handful of people have read this book so far.)

As a First Look, since this is early access please be respectful of your fellow readers and do not spoil anything for those who wish to wait to read. We cannot wait for you all to continue the Cobalt Empire this summer with this gem 💜🤘🥁 Happy Reading!!

IMPORTANT: Please do NOT screenshot and/or share any portion of the post. This is an exclusive first look for the Patreon and for your eyes only. Thank you!! 💗

I’m fucked.

Not like “my life is over” fucked.

I suffer from the extreme inability to quit on myself—even when people quit on me. I’m more afraid of my dream decaying into nothingness than I am of what I might do to keep it alive.

Which is why I’m on Craigslist right now.

I’m nearing embarrassing levels of desperation.

“Here’s one.” I stop on an ad and zoom in on my laptop so my brother behind me can see. “This guy is looking for a guitarist near Union Square. He says he plays bass and he’s a singer-songwriter.”

I need a bassist. Like by tomorrow.

I also would like a drummer. Basically, I need to reform my shattered band, and searching Craigslist for potential musicians is the only solid solution I’ve had in weeks.

Eliot peers over my shoulder, a strong hand clasped on the desk chair where I’m seated. He taps the keyboard, demagnifying the ad. “Only two sentences of information?”

“He just says to contact him if interested,” I explain. “He gives his name. Blaine Thomas.”

“I’ve never met a Blaine I liked.”

“Dude, I don’t care if he’s named Beef Hotdog right now.”

Eliot points at another ad. “Check this one.”

“I still think this Blaine guy has potential,” I say, but I go ahead and open the other ad and skim the details. “Uhh, this girl is looking for a guy to sing folk music with her in Brooklyn.” I cringe just imagining myself singing Mumford & Sons covers in a coffee shop where no one gives a fucking damn. Because why would they? They’re not there to be distracted by my life-changing, transcendent vocals. They’re there to sip their lattes, pop in earbuds, and worry about some business report due the next day.

I’m going to be ambient background noise.

Elevator music.

My face twists in a harsher cringe. I blink repeatedly, and I swallow down distaste like a four-year-old learning to eat their veggies.

It’s good for you, Tom.

I could convince her to join my band. Maybe the label would be interested in a guy-girl duo. The type of music, we could work out later.

“Maybe…” I grimace more.

“We don’t do Brooklyn, brother,” Eliot says.

We live in a luxury high-rise in Hell’s Kitchen—apartment 2166—but he’s not snubbing Brooklyn because it’s beneath us. He got in a bar brawl in a Brooklyn pub a few months ago when some drunk idiot called our oldest brother a cunt.

Charlie wasn’t even there, but that didn’t stop Eliot from defending his honor, me joining in, and our bodyguards pulling us out.

I sigh hard at the laptop. “I can’t be picky about where in New York someone is eating and sleeping. I need a viable band to present to the label in two days.” I click back into the list of ads. “And I doubt Charlie would even care that we’ve sworn off an entire portion of New York on his behalf.”

Eliot tips his head. “Vrai.” He says true in French.

After he dismisses three more potential ads—one of which was reasonable, except for the demand that the guitarist be right-handed (I am right-handed…but still)—I whirl around on my six-foot-four, towering, loyal-to-the-bone brother.

Eliot Alice Cobalt is only eleven months older than me. He’s my closest brother in more than just age. I know things about him no one else does. I tell him everything first. Between the two of us, secrets are hard to find, and out of my family—out of the Cobalt Empire—I would’ve never imagined he’d make duct-taping my band back together more difficult.

“What’s with the pushback?” I question. “I’d expect this from Charlie or Beckett. Not you. Okay, you rarely shoot down my harebrained ideas.”

“Best ideas,” he corrects.

“Exactly.” I wave a hand at him. “You think all my ideas are the best ideas. So what fucking gives?”

He threads his arms, his biceps bulging. He really needs to put down the weights. I’m starting to look scrawny next to him.

I hike my brows at his lingering silence. “What is it?”

“I’m just wondering what happened to your standards.”

My standards. I clench my jaw. “Bruised and battered, Eliot Alice.” I can’t even force a strained smile. This concerns him.

I see it in the creases of his eyes, but is it such a bad thing to lower my standards? I’ve been told they’re too high. I’ve been told I should “aspire for less” and this was coming from my own therapist.

And sure, Dr. Carlton didn’t phrase it exactly like that, but I can read between the lines and I can take a hint. I just can’t follow them. Because I’m still aiming for stars in undiscovered galaxies when I should set my expectations on planet Earth.

I’m deeply aware I’ve set unrealistic goalposts, but what is the point of life if not chasing after the thing you want and love?

The downside is that I feel like I’m on my knees, clawing at the ground just to stand back up again, but boots keep slamming on my spine. Rooting me to the dirt when all I want to do is be in the sky.

It would be so much easier if I just accepted gravity and quit.

Quit my passions. Quit my pursuit of making rock music millions listen to when they’re having a shit day, when they need to feel a connection…when they want to feel heard. I got close. I could say The Carraways had a good run before Warner left the band in dramatic fashion.

Warner.

We’d formed The Carraways together back in private school, aspiring to be like the punk-rock greats—My Chemical Romance and Green Day—all while we belted out our feelings after the Dalton Academy bell rang.

Being rich and privileged means I’ve had a head start, and I’m grateful for the boost but I don’t want to be a joke. I thought if I labored over my music, put in the time, perfected every chorus, every guitar riff, every beat, it’d show.

Instead, Warner snapped at me, “We aren’t Beethoven trying to write the next greatest symphony.”

“Maybe we could be,” I combatted. “Let’s just practice it again.”

“The second verse is fine.”

Fine never felt good enough. I couldn’t figure out how to settle with average when I knew if we pushed ourselves, we could be better than ordinary.

We never finished the album.

Now I’m the last remaining member of The Carraways, and the label already wasted funds promoting my band. Not to mention, they were constructing a national tour that’ll likely never happen.

So they gave me a timeline. I have until Monday morning to present a profitable solution. I need a viable band.

In two days.

Or else they’re dropping me for good.

Now I’m in Eliot’s bedroom with a pounding headache, trying to keep my dream alive. When really, I feel like I’m throwing chewing gum at the ceiling and seeing what’ll stick.

“It’s a band-aid,” I tell Eliot. “They don’t need to be the best musicians. They just need to hold a note long enough to show the label my band isn’t on life support.”

“Or…” Eliot outstretches his arms and walks backward toward his gothic, canopied bed. “We go with Plan A.”

Plan A was Eliot’s first idea, and it was already shot down. By me. In two seconds. “I can’t go with Plan A.” I skate a hand through my shaggy hair, pushing strands out of my eyes, then I point at him as he takes out his phone. “You call your theatre friends to come pose as musicians, I’ll be telling them to go home.”

He rests his shoulder on the wooden bedpost. Not dialing anyone yet. “They’re professional actors. This is what they do. Act.”

Eliot is also a professional stage actor in New York, but this isn’t a situation that will be solved with that type of performance.

“I can’t deceive the label. If I get caught in a lie, then I’m going to be known as the Liar Liar Pants on Fire kid to maybe the whole music industry. No one will take me seriously, and it’s already an uphill battle when everyone believes my last name got me through the door.”

And maybe it did.  

Maybe being a Cobalt is why the label even gave me five minutes of their time, but I’d like to believe they’ve kept me around because I have actual talent and promise.

Eliot nods, accepting. He passes his phone from hand to hand. “Another idea: we create a reality show together. You play your music on-air. Everyone hears. They love you. You’re revered. A legend is born.”

I rub at my eyes. “I have no band. I can’t even think about signing on to a trashy reality show when I am at the first stage of this crisis.”

It’s not where I’m at right now.

I drop my hand with a sigh. “I’m fucked.”

“Cobalts don’t get fucked, brother. We do the fucking.”

I would love to inject our family’s pride in my veins as raw copium. Because I am not coping well with the fact that my label will likely axe me by Monday morning.

“Fuck Mondays,” I groan out. “They’re now the worst day of the week. Should be ripped off the calendar.”

“Mondays are over,” Eliot banters. “I only know of Tuesday through Sunday.”

I nod hard. I almost smile, but really, fuck Mondays. Fuck this timeline. But I will find a solution.

I will.

He squeezes my shoulder, then bends over to take a closer look at the laptop. Even when people quit on me, I know Eliot never would. He’d drown in my problems with me, and I’m afraid that I’d let him.

So as he silences a phone call for the third time, I force myself to say, “Okay, stop bailing on the girl.”

“She’s a girl.” He scrolls on the track pad. “The girl is still elusive.”

I shut the laptop.

He careens backward as I leave his antique desk where leather-bound books cover the surface. All a part of his rare collection of 16th-century classics.

Thick, velvet drapes hide the nighttime view of the city. It’s always dark in here. Made even darker with the raven painting on his blood-red walls. I love hanging out in his room.

Not because I prefer the cluttered, macabre thing Eliot has going on.

It’s just what I grew up doing. Sneaking away into Eliot’s bedroom when I was a little kid. I hated whenever I had to retreat into the quiet four walls of mine. So I’d drown my room in music. Pumping bass, raging vocals, heady vibrations that’d shake my bed.

The stillness unsettles me. I don’t know how to sit in calm. I want everything to have sound. Even when I can’t hear, I hope noise will throttle my body.

“Tom—”

“No, Eliot, I’m not occupying your whole night with this shit.” I head to his door. “Go fuck Gertrude.”

“Say it a little less bitterly, brother, and maybe I’d believe you.”

Yeah, I would rather Eliot choose me over a girl tonight, but I’m trying to do this thing where I don’t make everything about me.

It’s hard.

I exhale a breath and say more nicely, “Go fuck Gertrude.”

“Gemma,” he corrects, pulling out his phone. Eliot is dressed like the billion-dollar wealth of our revered family. Pressed navy-blue slacks. Ironed white button-down. I’m betting he has a late-night date with this girl at a high-end cocktail bar. He’ll eventually bring her back to our million-dollar-plus Hell’s Kitchen bachelor pad for a one-night (or two-night) stand.

Eliot’s fuck-and-chuck routine is so predictable at this point, I could set the time to it.

He isn’t calling her yet. “I haven’t seen Gertrude in months.”

“Whatever. Gemma.” We stare each other down, and I can feel Eliot saying, I would rather be here for you. So I assure, “I have this handled tonight, dude.” My chest tightens. “I am desperate, but I’m not without my own willpower. Still intact.” Still making it impossible to quit.

He points his phone at me again. “You will succeed.” He says it like a law he’s passed. Cannot be overruled.

I nod. “Just kill me if I fail.”

“Si tu meurs, je meurs,” he says seriously. If you die, I die.

A smile edges against my mouth. “Nous sèmerions le chaos en enfer ensemble.” We’d wreak havoc in hell together.

Eliot grins. “L’enfer n’est pas prêt pour nous.” Hell isn’t ready for us.

Causing chaos with my older brother is one of life’s greatest joys. I think I’d go berserk within the mundane.

As soon as I reach my bedroom in the dark hall, I brake to a complete stop. Soft, feminine moans trickle out, and a black tie is hooked on the doorknob.  

Fuck, I silently mouth the word and scrape a hand through my hair. Grimacing.

My little brother is fucking his girlfriend. Awesome. Awesome. The woes of sharing a bedroom.

I volunteered to room with Ben when he moved in recently. Eliot and I were already living here with our older brothers, Charlie and Beckett, so the addition of our youngest brother meant someone would need to bunk up. It’s only a four-bedroom apartment.

“You knew this would happen,” I mutter to myself, trekking to the living room.

My bedroom is now a biohazard. Last thing I want is to catch any of my brothers horizontal or being ridden—no, you know what, I’m not going there.

Tonight is already fucked enough. I don’t need a mental image of Ben with Harriet Fisher—this short, punk-rock blonde nuisance. She’s one of the banes of my existence.

But she’s fine.

She’s great (for him).

I’m not at all aggravated that Ben couldn’t have fallen in love with, I don’t know, anyone else.

I stifle my cringe as quickly as possible. Like Eliot might pop around the corner and catch me. He keeps telling me, “I’ll be Ben’s roommate. We can always switch. It’s not too late, brother.”

No.

No.

I’m the best thing for Ben right now. I want to be a good influence on my nineteen-year-old brother. To be there for him when he’s been actively pushing all of us away for…years.

It’s January 4, and I made a New Year’s resolution (the first I’ve ever made) to be the best brother I can be to Ben this year. If he decides Eliot is a better fit as a roommate, then what does that even say about me? I’m a shit sibling?

I can’t have that branded on my soul. I would actually rather die.

So I take my laptop, my headphones, and my issues to the couch. Camping out in the living room with a million-dollar, sparkling nighttime view of New York, and I’m only glued to this Blaine Thomas ad.

I’m considering reaching out.

I start typing a response when the front door swings open.

“Sitting alone in the dark?” I hear the flat, bitter tone of my oldest, wisest, and crankiest brother. I glance up at Charlie, seeing his white button-down half untucked from his khaki slacks like he was mauled in the elevator. Chances are, he just started pulling at his clothes in impatience to hop in the shower.

His golden-brown hair, the same color as mine, is so unruly.

“Tugging at your hair?” I quip back, then focus on my laptop. “Something you always do, Charlie Keating.”

“Sitting alone is something you never do.”

“I’m not alone.” I smile and motion a hand at him. “You’re here now. Take a seat. Relax. Help me with my dilemma.”

“No.” He throws his keys onto the marble kitchen counter.

I make a face. “What’s the point of having a certified genius as a brother if he’s not flexing his intellect for my benefit?”

Charlie appears annoyed. “Because I’m only smart so I can help you.”

“Right, yeah. Your brains were given to aid me in life. Aid me. Please.”

He arches his brows. “You want a solution to your band problem?”

“One that’s better than finding a musician off Craigslist,” I add.

Charlie lets out a sharp laugh of unsurprise, his darkened eyes narrowing on the laptop like it’s a bomb. Yeah, I definitely knew he wouldn’t approve of the Craigslist idea. The last time I considered it as a solution, Charlie straight up said I was an idiot.

Taking a risk does not equal being a dumbass, but I don’t care to defend my intelligence to anyone. I’m smart enough to know he’s a resource I could use.

I raise my hands in the air off the keyboard. “Give me your wisdom, and I’ll ditch Craigslist.”

“You’ll ditch it even if you hate my advice,” he adds, seeing I would’ve slithered out of that deal.

I exhale. “Fine.”

“Promise,” he doubles down.

“I promise.”

“In French.”

I glare.

He cocks his head. “If you weren’t so conniving, I wouldn’t have to ensure you’d be held to your word with some ridiculous childhood pact.”

“That we all made,” I remind him.

Promises in French are blood oaths engraved in the heart, we all agreed. None of us have ever broken a promise in French. We wouldn’t. Not even Charlie.

“Alors promets,” Charlie says. Then promise.

I run my tongue over my molars. “Je te le promets.” I promise you. “Heureux?” Happy?

“Rarely,” he answers in English.

Charlie is always honest. Never wears kid gloves and never tells me what I want to hear. I must really want his brutal advice.  

“Lay your genius on me,” I say. “How do I fix this?”

He locks eyes with me. “Throw in the towel before it strangles you.”

My face falls.

It’s a gut kick. I blow backward, my hands lacing on top of my head. It hurts to hear Charlie tell me to quit, even if I knew it was the easy path. “I can’t do that.”

“Then go solo.”

“I can’t do that either.” I’ve never dreamed of being a solo artist. “We’ve just established I don’t like being alone, Charlie Keating.” My voice sounds softer than I like, and I might be dramatic to the hundredth degree, but it takes a lot for me to shed actual tears.

“Learn to be alone,” he says.

I feel my features contort. That can’t possibly be the solution here. Out of me and my brothers, Charlie would likely flourish in total isolation, but not forever. He’d wish for Beckett, his fraternal twin, to cut through the loneliness. Just like I’d wish for Eliot.

That’s the thing about growing up so close to one brother. Your whole world feels tethered to them in a weird way. Like alongside the existence of air and water is him. Without him, life can’t go on.

“Want to teach me your hermit ways?” I ask Charlie.

Just like that, Charlie disappears to his own bedroom.

Leaving me alone.

“Funny!” I shout after him, then mutter, “Someone should give him his own late-night show.” I pound on the keyboard, my stomach in knots. “I’d watch it.”

I exit out of Craigslist.

Despite the nagging sensation of wanting to respond to the ad, I don’t break my word. Setting my laptop aside, I doom scroll on my phone since my guitar is back in my room unfortunately witnessing my brother getting laid.

“No,” I groan out as I land on a 30-second viral video the algorithm keeps showing me. At this point, the owner of this app must have it out for me. I should swipe away, but instead, I’m stuck watching a shirtless drummer.

I grind my molars while I try to ignore the beads of sweat rolling down his masculine jawline, buff arms, and washboard abs. A red birthmark colors the side of his neck. I kind of like that about him. This imperfection. His white skin is a shade pinker as he puts his whole body into playing drums, exerting maximum effort.

His brown hair is buzzed, and I imagine clutching the back of his skull for one second.

One second.

I am so fucking gay, and fuck, the one guy who does not deserve to be held by my hands or by my eyes is Phoenix St. Pierre.

I force myself to stop checking him out, but my cock strains against my jeans. I palm myself just to kill the brief hard-on.

The video replays. I watch again as this drummer bangs away like his life depends on creating angst-ridden, heart-thrashing rock music.

Acid sears the back of my throat this time.

I hate that I love everything about this song.

I hate that Nothing Personal shares the same music label as The Carraways.

I hate that they’re on the trajectory to be one of the hottest rock bands in the past decade while my band is fading further into the background.

“Quit,” I tell myself. “Just. Fucking. Quit. Tom.”

I look at the band, and I feel my failure. Shouldn’t I be where they are by now? Shouldn’t that have been as easy for me as it was for them?

Why is this so fucking hard?

Am I really talentless?

No.

Nothing Personal isn’t going to kill my confidence. They don’t have that power over me. Fuck them. Fuck Phoenix. Fuck whatever lucky penny they found, and may that lucky penny never find anyone else unless it finds me.

I click out of the video, and as Eliot returns with a giggling, overly handsy Gemma, all I can think about is RJ.

I’m left alone again.

I smear a hand down my face. “Don’t do it,” I tell myself. “Don’t do it.” I’m cringing as I slide through my contacts and land on RJ.

I don’t even know his full name. I could ask our bodyguards. Security definitely ID’d him. I should ask RJ myself, but the times I tried, he just kissed me instead.

I took that to mean, I don’t want to talk. I just want to fuck. I haven’t been misreading those hints. I’m positive he wants to keep our situation extremely casual. He’s said as much, and every time I attempt to dive beneath the surface, I’ve found myself alone in the act.

I don’t want to be alone in a dark, nine-foot deep end.

Every time we fuck, it already ends with me feeling like I’ve been stabbed in the chest because he leaves. He never spends the night. Though he kisses me like he’ll come back. Like he wants to come back again and again, which means the door is open to call him.

Invite him over.

Torture myself just a little bit more. Why not? I run my fingers through my hair, literally a heartbeat away from calling RJ when my phone rings.

I frown and bolt upright. “Hey. Jeremy,” I answer my manager. “I was going to ask about an extension with the label—”

“They were firm about the deadline, Tom,” Jeremy says, sounding in a rush and slightly out of breath.

“In that case, I think I might have found a new bassist. He’s good. He’s from…Brooklyn.” I wince.

“Really?” Jeremy’s skepticism is warranted. He’s been my manager for almost six years and bullshitting him takes actual work.

“I mean, I could have a new bassist from Brooklyn by the morning.”

Jeremy sighs. “How about you don’t do anything stupid. I found something else.”

“Wait—what?” I almost choke on air. Like seriously, what?

“You’ll need to come to the studio tonight—”

“I can do that.” I’m already on my feet.

“We don’t have time to drag this out, so I’d like you to meet him now.”

“Yeah. Yeah.”

“And Tom,” Jeremy says.

My gut drops.

“Try to be on your best behavior.”

Who am I meeting—the fucking pope? I don’t ask who the guy is. I don’t ask about stipulations or the catch. Even if this feels too good to be true, I want to scrape myself off the dirt.

It finally feels like I’m about to.

✨ The First Look at Chapter 2 is coming in 5 minutes after this is initially posted. And it's one of our all-time favorite "meet cutes" we've ever written. ✨

Tom's POV is truly one-of-a-kind, and we hope you loved this little peek at it. He truly is our crash out king 🤭We had the best time writing him and Phoenix's story. It's so different than anything we've ever written, which makes it ten times more special. Their romance has been cemented in our hearts forever, and we are dying for this one to be in your hands.

Thank you for continuing this journey with the Cobalt Empire! We're so grateful for all your love and support of the series. And we're truly just in the beginning 😉

There's more in store for the month of April -- bonuses and podcasts are on the horizon! And we are so excited to be handing out awards in the 4th Fizzies 💖

xoxo Krista & Becca

“Silver Sweet," Copyright © 2026 by K.B. Ritchie