The Scumbag's Guide To Heroism novel Chapter 340

Chapter 340: 340 | Nothing But The Hoodie

"Three hours and forty-one minutes. The research entered a productive phase around two in the morning that I determined should not be interrupted."

"Percy."

"The exemption categories genuinely are fascinating. Category seven in particular contains a definition of progressive manifestation that could encompass virtually any late-blooming Aspect with developmental characteristics that deviate from standard trajectories."

He was handing me a roadmap. Not to fix my fake registration, but to make the fake registration legally defensible if anyone ever challenged it. Percy Mendoza, the anxious blue-haired kid who muttered through his first two weeks at Halloran and apologized for existing, had spent an entire night building me a fortress out of bureaucratic language.

I took the document. Read the first page. Looked at Percy again.

"Thank you."

His pen twitched in his right hand. "You helped me call the timing when we fought Camille and Petra. You told me I was smart when everyone else told me I was weird. This seemed proportional."

He left before I could respond to that, already pulling out his notebook and scribbling something about the morning humidity’s effect on route optimization.

The second half of Saturday belonged to Sloane.

She texted me at six in the evening with a message that said nothing and communicated everything. Three words. My room. Now.

I showered. Changed into the dark blue shirt Felicity had picked out, because the color did something to my jawline that I’d noticed in the mirror and filed under "tactically useful." Walked across campus in the cooling evening air with the Devotion’s Echo humming between us, Sloane’s emotional signature growing warmer and more insistent with every step I took closer to her building.

She opened her door wearing one of my hoodies. Just the hoodie. It fell to mid-thigh on her smaller frame, and underneath it was apparently nothing because the zipper sat low enough to confirm that particular theory.

"Took you eleven minutes," she said.

"I walked."

"You could have run."

"I was savoring the anticipation."

"Don’t use words like savoring when I’m standing here in your hoodie and nothing else."

She pulled me through the door by the front of my shirt. The lock clicked behind us. The window was already cracked, letting in cool evening air that mixed with the warmth of her room and the specific scent of her shampoo and skin that my brain had been cataloging since the day I woke up in this body.

What followed lasted approximately three hours and involved her mattress earning every dollar of its premium price tag.

Sloane on a Saturday night with no early conditioning the next morning was a different creature than the competitive, territorial version who operated during the week. She was softer. Louder. More willing to ask for things she wouldn’t have asked for if she thought she needed to maintain her image. Her Detonation Aspect sparked at her fingertips during the second round, tiny amber flashes that matched my own constructs in color, and for a moment the room looked like it contained two sets of golden fireworks.

Afterward, lying tangled in sheets that needed replacing for the third time that week, she traced the scar through my left eyebrow with her fingertip and said something I’d been expecting since our bond resolved to full resonance.

"I’m not having kids until after graduation."

VERIFYCAPTCHA_LABELVerify