The Scumbag's Guide To Heroism novel Chapter 455

Chapter 455: 455 | Perfect Timing

Felicity Hardy stood in my doorway holding a cardboard box against her chest and a bag of drinks hanging from her right wrist, and she had prepared the vibe with the thoroughness of a military operation conducted by someone whose tactical objectives existed on a fundamentally different plane than anything Halloran’s curriculum covered.

She wore booty shorts. Not the regulation Halloran athletic shorts that stopped at mid-thigh and communicated institutional compliance. Booty shorts. The kind of garment that started at the hip and ended approximately four inches later, leaving an amount of thigh and curve exposed that the word "shorts" could only describe in the most generous legal interpretation.

They were pale pink, thin enough that the fabric clung to every contour of her body without apology or ambiguity. The waistband sat low enough on her hips that the strip of tanned stomach between it and the hem of her top created a gap that made my eyes cross involuntarily, drawn to the shadow of her hip bones and the smooth plane of skin that connected them.

Her top was white, cropped, and tight enough to function as a second skin rather than a garment, cutting off just below her ribcage and pressing against the full, unmistakable curve of her chest with a specificity that left nothing to inference and everything to attention.

The neckline scooped low enough to frame her collarbones and the beginning of cleavage that the Ecchi Logic trait helpfully illuminated in the room’s ambient light, golden from the evening sun streaming through east-facing windows.

Her blonde hair fell in loose waves past her shoulders, still slightly damp from a shower that had occurred within the last fifteen minutes based on the way individual strands caught the light with residual moisture.

Freckles dusted across her nose and the tops of her cheeks, visible without makeup in a way that made her look younger and softer than the put-together version she presented to the world.

Her blue eyes caught mine from across the room with the particular brightness of someone who had planned this entrance down to the second and was now observing the results with the focused satisfaction of a scientist confirming a hypothesis.

"Time to have fun, bestie!"

The box in her arms contained what appeared to be a stack of party games, their corners visible above the cardboard rim. I identified at least two card game boxes and something with a spinner. The bag on her wrist held four bottles of what my enhanced vision identified as flavored soda and one bottle that was definitely not soda and that she had smuggled from a source I chose not to investigate.

She crossed the threshold into my apartment with the easy confidence of someone who considered my personal space an extension of her own, her platform sneakers adding three inches to her height and her hips moving with a natural sway that the shorts turned into something closer to a demonstration than a walk. The box landed on my bed with a soft thump, the drinks clinked as she set the bag on the nightstand beside my parents’ photograph, and she turned to survey the space with both hands on her hips and her head tilted at an angle that said she was already redesigning the furniture arrangement in her mind.

"Okay so I brought Uno, Cards Against Humanity, this thing called Wavelength that Koda told me about, and drinks because hydration matters." She began pulling items from the box and arranging them on the bed with the organizational speed of someone who had rehearsed this layout. "The rules are simple. We play games, we drink things, we do not discuss Petra Lang, and we do not discuss the Crucible, and we do not think about anything that happened before this exact moment because tonight is about having fun and you, Lukas Belmont, have forgotten what fun feels like and I am here to remind you."

She pointed at me. The gesture caused her top to ride up by half an inch, exposing additional stomach that the evening light turned golden.

"Sit on the bed. Pick a game. I’m setting up the drinks."

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