Series: Cobalt Empire Series by Krista Ritchie
Total pages in book: 220
Estimated words: 215301 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1077(@200wpm)___ 861(@250wpm)___ 718(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 215301 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1077(@200wpm)___ 861(@250wpm)___ 718(@300wpm)
“Water. We’ve got a fucking leak,” I say. “I need you to call Vincent.” Our landlord blocked my number a year ago when I cussed him out for not taking care of termites.
“I can’t.”
“What do you mean, you can’t?”
“Vincent is spending the month in Bali. Remember? It’s one of those bougie holistic retreats where they confiscate your phone.”
“Great,” I growl.
I don’t ask Scally to call the building manager instead. No one calls Freddie for help since my brother banged and ditched him in the middle of the night. That was two years ago, but Freddie acts like it was yesterday. My brother fucking the building manager is just one item on the very long list of messy shit he’s done with hookups.
Then again, I’m not one to talk. I just jacked off while imagining my new bandmate. So maybe I’m the one who likes living in a dumpster fire of mess.
Scally’s examining me with a heavy-lidded gaze. My muscles tense. He can’t read your fucking mind. But he is my childhood best friend. I’ve known him since I was five years old. Yellow school bus friendships are hard to kick, especially the kind involving busted knuckles after defending each other from seventh-grade bullies.
So I’m sure he’s zeroing in on the sleepless circles beneath my eyes and my twitchy fucking hands. “You sleep at all?” he asks me.
I don’t want to lie to him. “I’m going to pass out in a couple hours.” Hopefully.
“Mmm,” he says in drunken disapproval. “Mmmm-hmmm-mmmm.” I roll my eyes. Somehow that chain finds his mouth again. It’s nasty how much he nibbles on it, and it’s mind-boggling how many girls fawn over him for it. “Do I need to wake Birdie?” he asks.
“To what? Read me a bedtime story? Count sheep with me?” I stomp my foot, water splashing, reminding him there’s an actual issue here and it’s not me. “What I need is a toolbox.”
“Your brother lent that out to Daphne in 4C.” Scally smiles. “You want to wake her up?”
“No, I’m going to let the one who’s been in her pussy do that.” I reroute back down the hall and continue banging on Birdie’s door for a solid minute.
It still doesn’t open.
Now I’m worried. I ram my shoulder against the wood, breaking it off its hinges only to find his tiny room completely empty. Bed made. No clothes on the floor. It’s like he never made it home.
And he’s not here.
He’s not here.
I grab my phone off my bed, and while I jump into a pair of pants and a long-sleeved shirt, I try calling him. He’s not answering. When I check his location on the app, I barely expel a breath.
“Scally!” I yell out.
“Yeah?” Scally sticks his head in my door. His socks are soaked but he might still be too drunk to care.
“Call an emergency plumber,” I tell him. “I have to go get my brother.”
Birdie and I grew up in a three-bedroom house in Quincy, Massachusetts—just south of Boston.
We had to share a room, but we never cared. By the time we were teenagers, we spent most of our time in the garage anyway. One night we’d been there until 4 a.m., and Birdie asked me, “We should keep going, yes?” His breath was labored and sweat dripped down his temples.
My raw hands gripped wooden sticks, blood splattered on the drum kit. He held the guitar against his body like it was an appendage he couldn’t drop.
“Yeah. Let’s go again.” I counted us down, and I used the pain in my hands and ache in my biceps as fuel to power forward. We played like it was life or death.
Like we were on the brink of survival, and it wasn’t because we were starving artists. It was because rock music was our unrelenting passion. We knew we’d never leave our parents’ garage unless we gave every ounce of ourselves, all the blood and heart and breath we could offer without flat-out dying. It was the price our parents said had to be paid—because guys like us don’t just make it big on desire and a whim.
We have to work and work and work.
And even then, it may never be enough. Just because you want something more than someone else doesn’t mean you’ll get it.
Birdie was the one who never gave up hope. Even after the collapse of Sophomore Summer, he never stopped trying to chase after our teenage dream.
So it’s difficult to walk into a practice room at a nearby music school in Greenwich and see my brother on a stool with a cello between his legs.
I know for a fact it’s not where he wants to be.
Shades are drawn closed, the room dark and gloomy. Birdie is too absorbed in the music and doesn’t hear me enter. I recognize the piece he’s playing. Shostakovich’s Cello Concerto No. 1. It grates on my nerves, and my pulse quickens under the ominous, unyielding, ruthless tone.