42. Tom Cobalt #2
Someone bulldozes into the room, and I have to blink multiple times to realize…it’s Phoenix.
Phoenix is thrusting Justin off my brother and body slamming him into the ground.
Phoenix is laying one, two, three punches in Justin’s face.
Ben is breathing heavier, his eyes wide. Neck swiveling as he takes in the total annihilation of our bedroom. Dents in the walls. His bed keeled over to the side as if a leg broke. My blue Gibson has been bumped off the rack and lies face-down on the ground.
People are shouting. Screaming. More bodies swarm my bedroom, but these are older men. Bodyguards. My vision blurs too much to count how many are here, but our security detail quickly separates Phoenix and Justin, wrenching them to their feet.
“What the fuck, Justin?!” I scream at him from the ground.
Justin’s nose flares, and he points accusingly at my little brother. “That shit started it, Tom.”
“I highly doubt that. And that shit is my little brother.”
“Our little brother,” Eliot says, storming into the room while buttoning his pants. He was probably getting head in his bedroom as chaos reigned in mine.
Phoenix is trying to wrestle out of my bodyguard’s restraint. “I won’t! Okay, Ian. I’ve cooled the fuck off.” He hasn’t cooled off at all, and it shouldn’t make me smile. But I love how hot he burns. His intense eyes keep darting over to me.
Ben glowers. His bodyguard has a protective hand on his chest, preventing him from charging Justin. “Tell them what you said to me,” Ben growls. “Tell them, you fucking coward.”
“Speak,” Eliot sneers.
Justin raises his hands. “I didn’t know she was your girlfriend.”
Fuuuuck. He went after Harriet? “Get the fuck out,” I snarl.
“Make that everyone,” I hear Beckett from the doorway.
Then Charlie yells from the hall, “Everyone out! Party is over!!”
Justin doesn’t move. Not with Eliot obstructing his pathway out the door. Eliot’s bodyguard and mine—the Wreath brothers—are on the tips of their toes, ready to pounce between us and Justin.
Spots dance in my vision, and I’m trying to focus back on Phoenix. I can’t until he’s inches from my face.
“Tom?” His palm hovers near my jaw, and his voice carries alarm. I think he looks distraught? At least, I’m going with that.
“I’m fine—” I start.
“Repeat it,” Ben snaps at Justin, cutting our attention to him. “Repeat what you fucking said.”
Is Ben worried I’ll think he overreacted if I don’t know the exact details? Because anyone going after Harriet is justification enough to lay them on the floor. And yeah, this is coming from me. I’m the only one who gets to pick on her.
Justin’s muscles flex. His skin purples on his jaw and cheek, and his lip has been badly busted open.
He wipes at his bloody mouth with the back of his hand.
His shredded shirt dangles off his shoulder.
Ben’s tee didn’t fare any better. I can see my brother’s left pec and all six abs.
Some reddened spots mar his torso, but his face isn’t beat up like Justin’s.
“I made a joke about the short blonde with the big rack,” Justin admits. “It was a joke.”
Ben glowers. “‘Put her on the counter and she’s at the perfect height to motorboat me.’ That’s what you said, you motherfucker!
” He has to scream the words because the Wreath brothers are pulling Justin out of my bedroom.
They’re trained to deescalate. I can’t tell who wants to kill Justin more—Ben or Eliot.
Probably Eliot. He’s the one who follows our bodyguards out and threatens Justin’s entire Dupont lineage.
Ben stays in the bedroom.
Phoenix is breathing hard, his glare pinned to Justin’s back. But he isn’t abandoning my side. The commotion dies down as more of our guests leave. I collapse on the foot of my bed.
My eye waters, throbs, and it hurts to blink.
“Tom?” Ben’s chest caves in a heavy breath.
I sit up lightning-fast so he doesn’t think I’m mortally wounded. “I’m fine, dude,” I say with a raised hand. “All in one piece.”
He looks around our bedroom, blinking a ton like he’s coming out of an angry fog. He has the shortest fuse of all my brothers. Ironic, really. Since he wouldn’t hurt a fly. People aren’t off-limits, though. At least people who deserve his wrath.
He picks up glass shards on the floor. From my painting. The ornate frame is bent, and the canvas is clearly ripped. I don’t care as much as I care about him.
“Hey,” I call out to Ben. “It’s not a party unless something gets broken, Ben Pirrip. You should have seen when we burned our couch.” I laugh. “Good times.”
Phoenix might be doing an eyeroll. I can’t tell through the hazy vision. “Your friends are pieces of shit.”
“Ex-friend,” I say. “He is permanently banned from every guest list from now until eternity. And in my defense, Justin had a girlfriend last I remembered. So maybe they broke up and he megamorphed into a monster-size asshole.”
Ben places all the glass shards on the dresser.
“Leave it, dude,” I say. “I can sweep it up, and we have a cleaning service coming in the morning.”
“Your painting—”
“It was meant to be destroyed,” I cut in. “It’s called Destruction. You don’t need to get me another one.”
He nods, but his shoulders look painfully constricted. His continued panic is a shotgun blast to my sternum.
He’s fine, I tell myself.
My pulse quickens.
“Ben!” Harriet tries to come into the room, but a couple bodyguards are blocking her. She kneels, then crawls through a gap between their legs.
I don’t see her reunite with Ben because Phoenix is cupping my jaw with a strong hand and turning my face to his. He’s inspecting my injury, and it sucks that he’s so blurry. He has a good face. One that doesn’t deserve to be out of focus.
“Open your eye, Tom,” he encourages.
I didn’t realize I had it closed. I blink through the sharp pain.
“Can you see?” he asks.
“You have a nose. A mouth. Two eyes with central heterochromia. Brown-blue eyes. Really pretty eyes.”
“That tells me nothing since you’ve memorized what I look like, nepo baby.” He blows out a tight, worried breath. “Just answer my question.”
“Yes, I can see. I think I’m going to have a black eye though.”
“Your second one, right?”
He remembered.
Phoenix scans me again like he’s X-raying me for broken bones. I like that way too much. Being hurt around him has its perks.
Security takes ten minutes to clear the rest of the guests. All my brothers are caught up on what happened in my room. Ben finally stops apologizing for ending the party early, which has to be a good sign, right?
Still, remembering how he kept saying sorry, over and over, for destroying my painting is a stab to the chest. Fear rampages my insides when I consider that the birthday brawl might be the reason he bolts to Alaska again.
This was the exact opposite of how I wanted tonight to go. I am the chaos maker. A lover of mayhem. So I loved everything about tonight. Loved it so much. How many times do I need to tell him this for him to believe me?
I’m vacuuming the last of the glass, alone in my bedroom, until Phoenix returns with an ice pack. “I was going to go for a bag of frozen peas,” he says. “But you have a scary amount of these.”
“They’re Beckett’s,” I explain.
Phoenix presses the soft ice pack against my eye, and his lack of hesitation to touch me, even with an ice pack, does something to my soul. Comforts it. Embraces it. Makes love to it.
I can’t get glassy-eyed right now. Not with a throbbing eye.
“How’s your hand?” I ask.
He switches hands on the ice pack, then opens and closes his knuckle-busted right one. “Fully functioning.”
“You have a nasty right hook.”
Phoenix doesn’t look proud of this, so I add, “It was hot.”
“The punch or me coming to your defense?”
“The latter, and dude, that was more than one punch.”
He laughs. “You could see that with one eye?”
I glare. Thankfully Beckett and Eliot come into my bedroom so I don’t have to think of an S-tier comeback.
Beckett glances warily between Phoenix and me.
My drummer still doesn’t know anything about Ben’s OCD.
I’m guessing Phoenix just thinks our hyper-concern for Ben is wrapped up in him being our youngest brother and more tenderhearted than us.
“Ben’s still sleeping on the couch tonight,” Beckett says.
The update shocks me. “He’s not running?”
Beckett gives me a tougher look. “He’s fine.”
He’s fine—like he doesn’t have bad thoughts anymore? He’s fine—like he’s still thinking of packing his bags but just not right now?
The vagueness suddenly spikes my pulse.
I go toward Beckett, which pulls Phoenix’s hand off me, along with the ice pack.
My stomach clenches, but I tell my brother, “I should remind Ben again that this is my fault.” I head to the door.
“I invited Justin. This is my party. I take full fucking responsibility for the fight, for the damage, the chaos. All of it.”