The Scumbag's Guide To Heroism novel Chapter 439

Chapter 439: 439 | So Manly! [CASTLE BONUS]

"I’m not getting in an Uber without a destination."

"You are absolutely getting in an Uber without a destination. That’s the whole point of Boyz Day. Trust the process."

"The process involves Caden Holt’s judgment and I have documented concerns about Caden Holt’s judgment."

Percy raised his printed document. "I have vetted the itinerary and can confirm it falls within acceptable parameters for recreational safety, legal compliance, and caloric intake requirements given our conditioning schedule."

"Percy vetted it." Caden spread his arms across the back of my reading chair. "Percy. The man who maps fire exits and documents optimal bathroom ventilation rates has personally approved today’s activities. If Percy says it’s safe, it’s safer than your filing status."

That was an uncomfortably fair point.

I grabbed the dark blue fitted shirt from my closet, the one Felicity had picked during a shopping trip that cost more than my pride should have permitted, and pulled it over the compression layer I’d slept in because Demigod kept my body at a temperature that made sleeping shirtless inadvisable in a dormitory where three separate women had arrived at my door after midnight in the past two weeks. I swapped gym shorts for dark jeans, ran a hand through my hair without checking the mirror because the Demigod trait handled appearance optimization passively and anything I did manually would constitute redundancy, and grabbed my wallet.

"Forty minutes?"

"Thirty-seven now." Caden stood from my reading chair and stretched with the theatrical casualness of someone who had never once felt urgency about anything and found the concept philosophically offensive. "Wear comfortable shoes. There might be walking."

"There might be."

"Or running. Hard to say."

"Caden."

"Lukas."

"If we get arrested, I’m telling Steele you organized it."

"Bold of you to assume Steele doesn’t already know." Caden walked toward the door and paused at the threshold, his hazel eyes catching the morning light with the particular warmth he reserved for moments when the goofball register dropped and the real Caden surfaced.

"You’ve had a week, man. Three agency pulls, a federal-adjacent interrogation, and you kissed two different women in the same conference room within four hours. Percy told me about the documentation thing. Not the details, just that it exists and that it’s heavy. Finn mentioned you’ve been training at Field Zeta at hours that suggest you’re not sleeping."

The levity evaporated from his voice with surgical completeness.

"We see you, dude. We’re not blind. We’re just polite about it because you’ve got a thing about people seeing you struggle and we respect the thing even though the thing is stupid. But today you’re not struggling. Today you’re eating food that’s bad for you and laughing at Marco’s terrible jokes and watching Percy try to have a normal human interaction without citing a peer-reviewed source. Today you’re just a guy hanging out with other guys who think you’re worth spending Saturday with."

He tapped the doorframe twice with his palm.

"Thirty-six minutes. Front gate. Wear the shoes."

Caden disappeared down the hallway, and Percy followed after a brief nod that communicated volumes of solidarity through its restraint. I stood in my apartment with the morning light painting geometric shapes across the walnut desk Diane had positioned three inches to the left and the photograph of two dead Heroes who would have had opinions about all of this if they’d been alive to have them.

you seem lighter. what happened.

Boyz Day.

that’s not a thing.

Apparently it is. Percy has a peer-reviewed study.

of course he does. have fun. don’t get arrested.

Bold of you to assume we won’t.

if you get arrested i’m breaking you out and then breaking your legs.

I love you too.

shut up. bring me back food.

VERIFYCAPTCHA_LABELVerify