The Scumbag's Guide To Heroism novel Chapter 349

Chapter 349: 349 | The Cardamom Escalation

Nine o’clock gave me three hours to shower, change, and develop a strategy for handling Camille Ortega in a confined space without cameras. The last time we’d been alone in my room at night, Petra Lang had interrupted before anything could resolve. This time there would be no interruption.

The dormitory had settled into its evening routine, with most students in their rooms or the common area, and the hallway traffic pattern that Percy had documented in exhaustive detail showed minimal foot traffic on the second floor of the East Tower between eight forty-five and ten thirty on weeknights.

At eight fifty-seven I sat on the edge of my bed in a clean t-shirt and joggers, the room lit by the desk lamp and the fading remnants of sunset through my window. The sage reading chair sat in its precise position. The walnut desk held my laptop and a water bottle.

My hero costume hung in the closet with the shoulder tear from Camille’s rivet graze still unrepaired, a reminder of what happened when Camille Ortega pointed something at you and pulled the trigger.

Three knocks at eight fifty-nine. One minute early. Camille Ortega did not arrive late to anything.

I opened the door.

She stood in the hallway wearing a cropped cream hoodie that stopped about four inches above her waistband and dark shorts that sat low enough on her hips to show the defined line where her obliques met her hipbones. The outfit was comfortable.

It was also the kind of comfortable that a woman puts on when she wants a man to notice that she looks good without appearing to try, which is considerably more effort than actually trying and infinitely more dangerous.

Her two-tone hair fell loose around her shoulders, the bleached blonde on top transitioning to warm brown roots, and her face was clean of the intensity she wore during training hours. No orange glow at her fingertips. No competitive edge hardening her jaw.

This was Camille after hours. The version of her that existed when the cameras turned off and the performance stopped and whatever lived beneath the surface got to breathe.

Her brown eyes swept my room in three seconds. Desk. Bed. Chair. Window. The framed photo of Marcus and Reina on the desk caught her attention for half a second before she dismissed it as irrelevant to her current objectives.

"You said chill." She walked past me into the room. The scent of warm spice followed her. That cardamom lip balm again. "This looks like a trap."

"It’s a room with a desk and a bed. The trap is the cafeteria ramen."

She almost smiled. Almost. The corner of her mouth lifted for a fraction of a second before she killed it and sat in the sage reading chair like she owned it, pulling one knee up to her chest and wrapping her arms around it.

The position was casual and closed off simultaneously, communicating that she was here but had not yet decided what being here meant.

I closed the door. Not locked. Closed.

"I’m running for representative," I said.

"I know. The entire building knows. Caden made signs."

"I want your vote."

Her brown eyes found mine with the focus that most people reserved for target practice. "You invited me to your room at nine o’clock on a Monday night to ask for my vote."

"Among other things."

VERIFYCAPTCHA_LABELVerify