The Scumbag's Guide To Heroism

Chapter 454: 454 | I Still Come First

The laugh that came out of Sloane was the unguarded kind, the version that crinkled her nose and showed her back teeth and made the Bond sing with genuine delight. I filed the sound in the same category as the forty-seven Radiant videos and the framed photograph on my desk: things worth keeping because they couldn’t be replicated.

She demanded the full story. I gave her the edited version that omitted nothing of substance but trimmed the FMK game down to "Caden has strong opinions about Grande Dame" and redirected through the boardwalk, the ramen, Percy’s first arcade experience. Enough detail that Sloane stopped eating to listen, which meant the story was good because Sloane never stopped eating for anything less than compelling.

"Percy told me he’s going to tell Rina about the arcade because he wants to study the acoustics of her laugh."

Sloane’s expression softened in a way that the Bond confirmed as genuine rather than performed. "That’s the sweetest thing I’ve heard this month and I hate that it came from an analytical observation about sound waves."

"He means it though."

"Obviously he means it. Percy Mendoza has never said a word he didn’t mean in his entire life." She pointed a chopstick at me. "Unlike some people in this room."

"I mean everything I say."

"You mean approximately sixty percent of what you say and the other forty percent is strategy." The chopstick didn’t waver. "I have data."

I pushed off the doorframe and crossed to the bed, sitting on the edge while Sloane continued eating with the container balanced on her knee. The Bond settled into its evening register, warm and steady, the frequency of two people who had fought about something earlier and resolved it through the specific alchemy of time and proximity and ramen.

"Felicity wants to hang out tonight."

Sloane’s chopsticks paused for exactly one-point-two seconds. Not long enough to constitute alarm. Long enough to register that the information had been received and was being processed through the seventeen separate filters that Sloane applied to any sentence containing Felicity Hardy’s name.

"Where?"

"My room."

The Bond carried a flash of heat that was territorial rather than angry. Sloane resumed eating with deliberate calm. "Doing what?"

"She said activities. With a smiley face."

"A smiley face." Sloane ate three more bites of ramen before responding, which I recognized as strategic delay designed to prevent herself from saying the first four things that came to mind. "You told me about this before it happened. That was our deal."

"That’s why I’m telling you."

Sloane set the container on her nightstand next to the chopstick drawer and turned to face me fully. The hoodie, my hoodie, fell off one shoulder to expose the line of her collarbone and the strap of something black and lacy beneath that I hadn’t purchased and didn’t recognize. The Bond carried want and restraint and the specific frustration of a woman who had cancelled her own bathing plan as punishment and now regretted the tactical decision.

"If Hardy touches you tonight," Sloane said, her voice level and her blue eyes holding mine with the gravity of a sentencing judge, "I want details tomorrow. Not the edited version. Not the diplomatic summary you’d give Diane. The real version, with the parts that make you look bad included."

"Deal."

"And Lukas."

"Yeah."

"I still come first."

The Bond carried the statement directly into my chest with enough force to make my next breath catch, not as a question or a negotiation but as the fundamental structural truth of our entire arrangement, the load-bearing wall that everything else was built around.

"Always," I said, and meant it at one hundred percent rather than sixty, and the Bond confirmed the difference for both of us.

I returned to my room at four-thirty, showered the boardwalk salt from my skin, changed into a clean shirt and joggers. The apartment smelled of the sage candle Diane had left during her visit, a scent I associated with maternal affection and federal document manipulation in approximately equal measure. I sat in the reading chair and spent the next twenty minutes reviewing Petra’s Crucible brief. The document was organized with the surgical precision of someone who treated font spacing as a moral issue. Every paragraph was justified. Every heading was weighted. The table of contents alone suggested she had opinions about information architecture that she considered self-evident and universal.

At five-fifteen I texted Felicity: "Door’s open whenever."

At five-sixteen my phone buzzed.

"Give me twenty minutes to prepare the vibe."

I didn’t know what "prepare the vibe" meant. Asking would generate an answer I lacked the emotional bandwidth to process after an already full day. I put my phone down, leaned back in the chair, closed my eyes. The reading chair was the expensive kind that Diane had selected specifically for posture and long-term spinal health, which meant it was comfortable in the way that good furniture was comfortable rather than in the way that felt immediately satisfying. I’d spent enough time in it by now that my body had learned the difference and stopped complaining.

The Bond hummed with Sloane’s presence across campus. Her frequency was settling into the particular wavelength of an evening spent alone with satisfaction and revenge, warm in the lower registers where her real emotions lived underneath the volume and the performance. She was fine. She was always fine in the way that mattered, which was the way she chose to be rather than the way she felt. The gap between those two states was one of the things I loved about her. It was also one of the things that would probably destroy me eventually. The Bond didn’t comment on this observation. It simply carried the warmth across the distance and let me sit with it in the quiet of an apartment that smelled like sage and maternal surveillance.

At five-thirty-six, footsteps in the hallway. A specific rhythm. Platform sneakers on institutional carpet, faster than casual, slower than urgent, with the particular cadence of someone carrying objects in both hands and navigating a doorframe with her hip because her fingers were occupied.

I opened my eyes.

Visit and read more novel to help us update chapter quickly. Thank you so much!