The Scumbag's Guide To Heroism novel Chapter 359

Chapter 359: 359 | We Won’t Know If We Don’t Try

On screen, the Tokyo hero team was engaging some kind of massive Aspect-generated threat. Explosions. Dramatic poses. The kind of choreographed action that Hiro would have called beautiful and I would have called impractical.

Felicity’s hand stayed on my thigh.

"You’re doing that thing," she said.

"What thing?"

"That thing where you notice everything I’m doing and pretend you haven’t decided how to respond yet." Her thumb traced a small circle on the inside of my thigh, and my whole body registered the sensation like an electrical pulse. "But you’ve already decided. You decided before I sat down. You just haven’t told me what the decision is."

"And what do you think the decision is?"

"I think you’re going to let me do whatever I want because you’re curious about what I’m going to do next." She leaned closer, her breath warm against my ear. "And because, deep down, you like being wanted. Even when it’s inconvenient. Even when it complicates things. The attention feeds something in you that you pretend isn’t there."

I turned my head, and our faces were very close. In the flickering light from the screen, I could see every detail of her expression. The calculation underneath the warmth. The genuine affection underneath the calculation. The hunger underneath both.

"That’s very presumptuous of you."

"Am I wrong?"

I could feel the weight of Sloane’s message on my phone. Celebration tonight. My room. 8pm. Wear something I can take off.

I could feel the Heroine Bond Resonance humming in my chest, the permanent connection to the woman who’d been first to claim me and had no intention of being anything less than primary.

I could feel Felicity’s hand on my thigh and her breath on my skin and her attention wrapped around me like a physical embrace.

"You’re not wrong."

She smiled. It was the real smile, the one she saved for moments when the performance dropped and the actual Felicity emerged. The lonely girl who’d learned to be charming because being charming was the only way to make people stay.

"Good." Her hand didn’t move higher. It just stayed where it was, warm and present, a claim staked without being pressed. "Then watch the movie with me. Let me be close to you without it having to mean anything. And when you go to Sloane’s room, you can tell her your best friend dragged you to a cinema and made you eat criminally good popcorn."

"So no matter what happens in this theater today," I said, keeping my voice steady, "we’re still friends?"

Felicity’s breath caught. Just a small hitch, barely audible over the soundtrack of whatever Tokyo disaster was unfolding on screen. But I heard it. I felt it in the way her fingers tightened on my thigh.

"Yes." The word came out softer than anything I’d heard from her before. No performance. No calculation. Just Felicity Hardy being honest about something she wanted badly enough to risk the answer.

I let the silence stretch for exactly three seconds. Watched the way the flickering screen light played across her face, caught the slight tremble at the corner of her mouth, noted how her pupils had dilated in the darkness.

Then I smirked.

VERIFYCAPTCHA_LABELVerify