The Scumbag's Guide To Heroism novel Chapter 293

Chapter 293: 293 | The Emotional Duplex Is a Two-Way Street

Across the field, I watched Camille’s expression darken as she observed our proximity. Petra’s jaw tightened. Felicity’s eyebrows rose in a way that communicated amusement and curiosity in equal measure.

The System had put me in this position. The Heroine Bond Resonance had locked Sloane’s attachment at a minimum threshold that made her devotion permanent and unshakeable. The mechanics of my new existence meant that moments like this, genuine connection wrapped in the framework of supernatural manipulation, would continue to define my relationships for the foreseeable future.

But standing here with Sloane pressed against me, feeling the warmth of her body and the pulse of our shared emotional connection, I couldn’t bring myself to care about the mechanics.

She was mine.

I was hers.

Everything else was just context.

"Switch positions," Steele called from across the field. "New stretches. I want to see hip flexors and hamstrings."

Sloane pulled back with visible reluctance, her hand lingering on my waist for a moment longer than necessary before finally releasing. "We should probably look like we’re actually stretching."

"Probably."

"Before Steele decides to assign us extra miles."

"That would be bad."

"Very bad."

Neither of us moved.

The moment stretched between us, suspended in the warm afternoon air, charged with the accumulated tension of sixteen hours apart and the bone-deep certainty that the separation had been too long. Her blue eyes held mine, and through the bond I felt the complexity of her emotions layered beneath the surface, the relief at seeing me again threading through her thoughts like warmth spreading through cold limbs, the possessiveness that flared hot and immediate every time another woman looked at me wrong, the genuine affection that had grown from attraction into something more substantial than either of us had been prepared for when we started this.

The Oracle Feed remained mercifully silent. Even it seemed to recognize that some moments didn’t require commentary.

"Sloane."

"Yeah?"

"Your stretching form is terrible."

She laughed, the sound breaking the tension and replacing it with something lighter, easier. "You’re the worst."

"You really do love me."

The words came out before I could catch them, careless and honest in a way that surprised us both, slipping past the careful deflection I usually maintained around statements that carried real weight. Sloane’s eyes widened. The bond between us surged with emotion that neither of us tried to name, a complicated tangle of feelings that ran too deep for simple words, too complex for the casual framing I’d wrapped them in.

She stared at me for a long moment, her expression shifting through surprise, uncertainty, hope.

"Maybe," she admitted, her voice soft. "Maybe I do."

Then she dropped into a hip flexor stretch before I could respond, her body folding into the position with the easy grace of someone who had been doing this her entire life. The moment passed, but the emotional residue of it lingered in the air between us, warm and heavy with possibility.

I joined her on the grass, positioning myself for the assisted stretch and letting her hands find my thigh as she helped me deepen the position. Her touch was professional now, focused on the actual mechanics of flexibility rather than the charged intimacy of our earlier proximity.

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