The Scumbag's Guide To Heroism novel Chapter 358

Chapter 358: 358 | I Have Many Wants [PS BONUS]

I sat. The chair swallowed me in a way that felt obscenely comfortable, the kind of comfort that made you realize how tense you’d been carrying your shoulders for the past two weeks.

"What are we watching?"

"No idea." Felicity was already tearing into butter packets, drizzling them over the popcorn with surgical precision. "Whatever’s playing. That’s part of the ritual. You don’t choose. You surrender."

"That’s very zen of you."

"I’m a very zen person." She offered me the bucket. "Popcorn?"

I took a handful. The butter situation was, in fact, criminal. It was also exactly as good as she’d promised. Maybe better. The salt-to-butter ratio suggested she’d been doing this long enough to have developed strong opinions about it.

The lights dimmed. The screen flickered to life with a studio logo I didn’t recognize, something vaguely European with too many production companies listed in succession. Felicity shifted in her seat. Her shoulder pressed against mine in a way that could have been accidental if anything about Felicity Hardy was ever accidental. It wasn’t. I knew it wasn’t. She knew I knew.

"Hey." Her voice was softer now, pitched for the darkness and the privacy that came with it. The theater was filling in around us but the armrest was up and the space between us had collapsed into something that felt deliberately shared. "That speech was really something."

"It was words arranged in order."

"It was more than that." She was looking at the screen, watching the opening credits roll across it with what should have been attention. But her focus was entirely on me. I could feel it like a physical pressure, the specific weight of Felicity Hardy’s interest when she wasn’t performing for an audience of more than one. "You made people feel like they mattered. Not like you were promising them things, or asking them for things, or managing their expectations. You just looked at them and told them they were worth more than what other people said they were."

She paused. The theater went darker. Her voice dropped to something quieter and more deliberate.

"That’s rare."

"Diane would say I peaked too early on the emotional appeal."

"Diane sounds like a professional." Felicity turned her head, and in the dim light from the screen her eyes were very close and very blue. "But I’m not talking about technique. I’m talking about what you actually meant."

"What do you think I meant?"

"I think you meant every word." Her voice dropped lower. "I think you’re the kind of person who hides how much he cares behind jokes and strategy and that whole arrogant untouchable thing you do. But when it actually matters, when someone needs to hear that they belong somewhere, you can’t help yourself. You have to say it."

The observation landed somewhere between my ribs. I didn’t like how accurate it was.

"That’s a lot of analysis for a movie theater."

"I’m a very analytical person." She smiled, and there was something underneath it that I’d been pretending not to notice for two weeks. "Also, I’ve been watching you. In a totally normal best friend way. Not a creepy way."

"Clarifying that it’s not creepy makes it sound creepy."

"I’m owning it." She shifted again, and now her thigh was pressed against mine through the fabric of her skirt and my training shorts. Warm. Present. Deliberate. "You’re interesting, Lukas Belmont. The most interesting person in our cohort, if we’re being honest. And I like interesting people."

The screen was playing something about a hero team in Tokyo. I wasn’t watching it. I was watching the way the flickering light played across Felicity’s features, the curve of her mouth, the fall of her blonde hair against her shoulder.

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