The Scumbag's Guide To Heroism novel Chapter 147

Chapter 147: 147 | Good News Is We Found the Upper Limit

The laughter wouldn’t stop. Not the kind of laughter that comes from something being funny. The kind that happens when your brain encounters a situation so far outside its expected parameters that comedy becomes the only processing language left.

I sat on the stool in the middle of Diane Fitzgerald’s ruined gym, surrounded by drywall dust and a dead heavy bag, holding my stomach while tears ran down my face and my abs burned from the convulsions.

A two-hundred-pound bag. Across the room. Into the wall. Hard enough to leave a crater.

I was still wheezing when I heard the footsteps. Two sets. One heavy and fast, coming down the stairs like a stampede of one very angry person. The other lighter, quicker, the careful pace of someone who hadn’t bothered putting on shoes and was navigating hardwood in bare feet.

The gym door swung open.

Sloane stood in the doorway wearing an oversized sleep shirt that hung to mid-thigh and nothing else. Her pink hair stuck out at four different angles from the side of her face she’d been sleeping on, and her blue eyes were narrowed into the kind of slits that usually preceded someone getting punched through a wall.

Behind her, Diane appeared in a black silk robe that she’d thrown on without tying, the lapels hanging open over a matching black lace bra and panties, her own pink hair loose around her shoulders and her expression somewhere between maternal concern and professional assessment of property damage.

Sloane’s gaze moved from me to the crater in the wall. To the dead bag lying on its side like a leather corpse. To the hole in the ceiling where the chain mount used to live. To the hook embedded in the opposite wall. Back to me, sitting on a stool, covered in sweat and drywall dust, laughing so hard my ribs ached.

"No," she said.

One word. Flat. Final. The vocal equivalent of a brick wall.

"Sloane, I can explain—"

"No." She held up one hand. The other rubbed her left eye with the heel of her palm. "It is one in the morning. I have training in four and a half hours. I am not doing this."

She looked at the crater again. At the ceiling hole. Back at me.

"You’re insane and I’m going back to bed."

She turned around, shoulder-checked past Diane in the doorway without breaking stride, and her footsteps retreated up the stairs with the rhythm of someone who had made a firm decision about the amount of nonsense she was willing to process before sunrise. Her bedroom door closed. Not slammed. Closed. Somehow that was worse.

Diane remained in the doorway. She took in the destruction with the slow, methodical scan of someone cataloguing insurance claims. The bag. The wall. The ceiling. The hook. Me. Her blue eyes completed the circuit and landed on my face with the weight of a woman who had spent two decades making sense of people who destroyed things and needed her to make it look intentional.

"Lukas."

"Yeah."

"Are you hurt?"

"No."

VERIFYCAPTCHA_LABELVerify