The Scumbag's Guide To Heroism

Chapter 302: 302 | I Don’t Need Luck, I Need a Tissue

Her hand flew to the left ear, which was indeed the specific shade of pink that appeared exclusively when Sloane was flustered about something she refused to acknowledge. The movement dislodged a strand of pink hair that fell across her face, and she shoved it back with the aggressive precision of someone who wanted to punch physics for allowing hair to move.

"I’m going to my room to change," she said. "I need to be in my training uniform for combat class."

"You want me to walk you?"

"I’m capable of walking across a campus, Lukas."

"I know. I asked because I wanted more time with you."

That stopped her. The bond carried a flash of something bright and warm that she suppressed before it could reach her face. She stood there for two full seconds with her tray in her hands and her pink ears and her blue eyes that looked at me like I was both the best and worst thing that had ever happened to her.

"Fine," she said. "You can walk me. But keep your hands where I can see them and don’t look at any other women on the way."

"That second condition is physically impossible."

"Then close your eyes and I’ll lead you."

"That defeats the purpose of walking together."

"The purpose of walking together is proximity, not visual stimulation."

"Those aren’t mutually exclusive."

She hit me in the arm hard enough to leave a mark. The bond sang with her affection, contradicting the violence so completely that I laughed, and she glared at me, and we bused our trays together like normal teenagers having a normal lunch at a normal school where nobody had supernatural abilities or emotional bonds that transmitted feelings in real time.

We walked out of the cafeteria into the midday sun. The campus stretched before us in white concrete and manicured green, students moving along covered walkways toward afternoon sessions. Some jogged, still working off morning conditioning. Others walked in clusters, comparing notes on lectures and assignments.

Sloane’s hand found mine without discussion, her fingers threading through mine with the specific pressure that communicated ownership. People noticed. A few 1-A students exchanged glances when they saw us together, and I caught one guy elbowing his friend and nodding in our direction, probably connecting the infamous Lukas from the kissing footage with the terrifying Sloane from the combat rankings.

Let them look.

"He’s going to be incredible," Sloane said quietly as we walked.

She wasn’t talking about me.

"Radiant?"

She nodded, eyes forward, her jaw set in the specific configuration she used when experiencing emotions too large for her usual containers. "I was seven. The flood hit our neighborhood during a storm that knocked out power to half the Eastside. Water was rising faster than emergency services could respond. Mom couldn’t get through to anyone at her agency. The landlines were down. Cell towers were overwhelmed."

I stayed quiet and let her talk.

"I remember standing at the upstairs window watching our street turn into a river. Cars floating. People on rooftops. A woman across the street was holding her baby above the water and screaming for help." Sloane’s grip on my hand tightened. "Then the sky opened up. Just, opened. Like the clouds split apart and something came through them. He dropped straight down from about two hundred feet, hit the street so hard it cracked the pavement, and the displaced air from his landing pushed the water back in both directions like Moses parting the sea. Not a metaphor. The water literally moved away from him."

"I’ve seen the rescue footage."

"The footage doesn’t capture what it felt like." She looked at me then, and her eyes held something I’d never seen in them before. Not the competitive fire. Not the aggressive confidence. Something older and quieter and far more honest. "The water came back, of course. Physics doesn’t care about dramatic entrances. But he was already moving. He picked up the woman and her baby, put them on a balcony three stories up, turned around, and started pulling people out of flooded houses faster than the water could fill them. He was in our neighborhood for forty-seven minutes. He saved two hundred and sixteen people. I know the number because I looked it up every year on the anniversary."

The bond carried her emotion to me unfiltered. Reverence. Gratitude. The specific quality of devotion that only forms when a child witnesses something that reshapes their understanding of what the world can be.

"That’s why you want to be a Hero."

"That’s why I need to be one." She corrected me without heat. "Not want. Need. The distinction matters."

"I know."

"Do you?"

"Sloane. I watched you train for two months. I’ve seen what you do when nobody’s grading you and nobody’s watching and there’s nothing at stake except your own standard. You don’t train like someone who wants something. You train like someone who would die without it."

She didn’t respond. The bond said everything her mouth couldn’t.

We reached the fork where the path split toward her dormitory. She turned to face me, her hand still in mine, the afternoon sun catching her hair and turning it gold at the edges. The faint pink had spread from her ears down to the top of her cheekbones.

"If I cry when I see him," she said, her voice low enough that only I could hear, "you never mention it. To anyone. Ever."

"Deal."

"Not to Caden. Not to Felicity. Not to Mom."

"Sealed. Locked. Thrown in the ocean."

"I’m serious."

"So am I."

She released a breath that I felt through the bond like pressure leaving a valve. Then she went up on her toes and kissed me. Not the possessive kiss from the training field or the territorial kiss from the cafeteria. Something softer. Something that tasted like gratitude and nerves and the specific vulnerability that Sloane only allowed herself to show when she was absolutely certain no one else could see.

"Go to class," she said when she pulled back. "I’ll text you after."

"Good luck."

"I don’t need luck. I need a tissue."