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I could lunge and grab his thin, billowing white button-down, untucked from his black jeans.
They’re too unaware that a celebrity just passed them by, with his unkempt, sandy-brown hair that takes flight with the summer wind.
If Charlie wanted to disappear, he’d vanish into thin air.
All three famous families are considered American royalty, but the Cobalts are the gods among the princes, and now that I protect them, I still think it.
Charlie is different. For one, he’s an adult.
The sleeve of his white button-down hangs limply off his shoulder, ripped and dangling by a literal thread. Popped buttons expose his bare, lean chest, and fresh pink marks mar his fair, white skin like fingernails raked his body.
Charlie lights a cigarette. “I thought maybe you’d take the hint this time,” he says and blows smoke into the warm night air.
“It’s not just you.” His yellow-green eyes flit to me. “Anyone. I don’t need a constant shadow parading behind me.”
In the alleyway, Charlie barely glances at the bloody spot and says, “It hardly even stings.” He flicks his cigarette to the side, and I catch a faint note of disappointment in his voice.
Charlie is the only one gallivanting across the city in the middle of the fucking night like a blood-thirsty vampire.
Charlie finally glances at the red stain on his white, shredded button-down. “No Band-Aid. It’ll sell more if it has my blood on it.”
Charlie closes his eyes like he’s going to take a nap on the ride to Philly. I should do the same—sleep when I can—which is practically never. But my mind is on high-speed.
Charlie is kicked back and balancing on two legs of a patio chair, all while Audrey Cobalt talks his ear off. He rolls his eyes at whatever his carrot-orange-haired little sister says.
The one good thing about Charlie being around family—they always try to drag him into their orbit. When he’s tethered to the rest of the Cobalts, it’s easier to keep track of him.
We’re all a lot of where we come from, just as much as we are the people who raised us and who we’ve met along the way.
Charlie rubs his fingers over his lips in thought.
“I can pay whatever you want,” Charlie says casually like his checkbook is open on the table.
Charlie twists the gold ring on his finger. A Faust Academy crest of a falcon and crown rest in the center. He never had to tell me, but I know that’s his father’s high school ring.
Most of the world truly thinks Charlie Cobalt is as narcissistic and self-serving as his father, but I’ve been around him long enough to know that he has motives.
“I don’t give a shit if people love me. Or hate me. Or think I’m an entitled, spoiled brat. I’d have to care enough about them to care about their opinions—and I don’t give a shit. You want honesty, I have reasons I want my life filmed, but I’m not going to tell them to you. And if you think I’m going to care about exposing myself to the world—I won’t. I don’t.”
“If people think that I’m betraying my family, they’re dumber than I thought,” he says. “Which is saying something because I think the human race has a chronic case of idiocy.”
Tom is the lead singer of an emo-punk band called The Carraways, and he looks the part with ripped jeans, skull-and-crossbones black shirt, and a 90s haircut.
While Charlie looks…well, Charlie looks bored.
Eliot Cobalt is Tom’s older brother by only eleven months, and they’re as thick as thieves.
Cobalts place the bar so high for themselves, they can’t see the ground anymore.
Charlie doesn’t look up from his cell as he replies, “I was always going to help him.”
Charlie smiles, but it’s a bitter one. “I’m an open book.”
Charlie clicks his phone and jumps off the bar.
“Because I don’t like calling in favors with girls I’ve fucked.” He sticks the cigarette between his lips and mumbles out. “It’s uncouth.”
“Touché,” Charlie breathes. “She asked. I said yes.
Charlie laughs and blows out smoke. “Because I’m me.” We reach the front doors that lead out into the bustling city. New York is always moving, but he stops a foot short and glances at his phone.
“What does ‘because I’m me’ mean?” I ask further. He shrugs with one shoulder. “I’m a genius who doesn’t give a shit.”
Charlie sleeps three rows back, a Cobalt Diamonds-branded mask covers his eyes and bright pink earplugs cancel out all noise.
No matter how many times Charlie comes back to see the Winged Victory of Samothrace, a gorgeous eight-foot marble sculpture of a winged goddess, he still has that same awed reverence in his eyes as the first time I saw him here.
His reply never changes. He smiles bitterly as he says, “My money is inherited. It doesn’t matter. It’s all the fucking same.”
Sitting at his usual table, with a cigarette between two fingers, is Charlie Keating Cobalt.
No one really knows Charlie but Charlie, and probably his twin brother and father.
He’s enigmatic and alluring to the world, but what they don’t realize is that he’s just as destructive as his brothers. He’s simply better at fooling people.
He glares up at the stars. “No one deserves to have their life attached to mine.”
He inhales a giant breath like he’s trying to suffocate on oxygen before his head dips back down to me.
His lip rises with a nod of agreement, and he sticks his cigarette in his mouth. “L’enfer est vide et tous les diables sont ici.” Hell is empty and all the devils are here. I recognize the Shakespeare quote. The Tempest.
He’s not the only self-destructive client, but he’s the one who runs the most laps around the world.
Charlie is a bunch of contradictions. Whatever moves he is making, they’ll be what he said: selfish and selfless. Oxymorons to the tenth degree.
“I like you!” I yell from my gut, from my heart. “I like you, Oscar!”
“I like you so fucking much that the idea of losing what we have makes me sick. I don’t want to shut the door on possibly the greatest opportunity of my life, and it’s right here—it’s you.”
Charlie tilts his head, avoiding a ray of sun. “Because I’m the son of Connor Cobalt. And the only reason this company hasn’t dissolved is because I’m still a part of it. I will concede—you do own the board, Ernest. I have no control over them. But you don’t own me.”
“Story of my life is being surrounded by people who aggravate the fuck out of me.”
He leans against a mossy boulder, book in one hand and a blunt between his other fingers. He doesn’t glance up at us as we arrive.
The more I’m understanding Charlie, the more I’m realizing he’s more of an open book than people would believe, but his pages are written in an ancient language.
Charlie flips the page of his book, smiling at something he’s reading.
