Heroine Complex

by Sarah Kuhn

  A fierce bolt of lust stoked my power rush even more.

  I tossed the mic to the side and took a flying leap, launching myself at him. I smacked into him and his arms went around me, hoisting me off the ground. I could feel his heartbeat against my fingertips, pulsing faster as I locked my legs around his waist.

  “You’re okay,” he gasped, as if reassuring himself. “You’re okay.”

  I kissed him hard. My mouth was open and wet and wanting—no warm-up, no breathless anticipation. Just pure need, heightened by the blaze of adrenaline singing through my veins. He stiffened in surprise. But then his mouth opened to mine, his need matching my own.

  The crowd screamed around us, a drunken mob fueled by a wild night that was being capped off by the beloved daughter of San Francisco dry-humping some dude on the dance floor.

  How’s that for showmanship?

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  “OW.” I WINCED as Nate’s fingertips brushed my swollen nose.

  Me, Nate, Aveda, Bea, Lucy, and Scott were crammed into The Gutter’s minuscule kitchen, breaking down the events of the last hour and doing our best to dry off using Kevin’s supply of Gutter swag hoodies (“You will, of course, have to pay for those,” he’d sniffed). The thin material of my dress had mostly aired out, but I could feel my damp hair starting to curl around my ears as my glamour faded. Snippets of sound wafted in from the party in the bar, drunken celebratory screams mixed in with the off-key stylings of patrons trying karaoke mash-ups.

  I stole a glance at Nate. We’d reset to our awkward state as soon as the dance floor make-out moment passed. He was touching me very carefully as he examined my face for injuries. Very professional, very doctorly, his eyes keeping me at a distance.

  “So how do we know Maisy’s gone for good?” I said.

  “She did go up in flames, love,” Lucy pointed out. “That’s not a bad sign. Particularly since Tommy and Stu don’t seem to have returned after meeting a similar fate.”

  I shook my head. “I wish I could have convinced her to . . .”

  “Talk it out?” Lucy said.

  “Not try to kill everyone?” Scott said.

  “Well, yeah,” I said. “I figured that’s what I’d do after the whole singe-and-subdue-her thing.”

  “Yeah, it really didn’t seem like she was up for anything like that,” Bea chimed in.

  “She was about to do some serious damage to everyone here,” said Aveda. “And she would have if you hadn’t stopped her.”

  I nodded. The image of someone I thought I’d known for so long going up in flames was disconcerting, to say the least. But I guess I hadn’t really known her. I’d thought she was a very grating, very human gossip blogger. Instead, she was apparently a demon princess bent on mass murder.

  “Nothing broken,” Nate said tersely. He stood, striding with purpose to the back of the kitchen.

  “Can we talk about the part where you apparently figured out how to move that fire?” Scott said. “What happened?”

  “I don’t know.” I flexed my fingers, examining my palm. “After so much trying, it happened when I wasn’t trying at all. Something clicked.”

  “Whatever happened, it was an impressive display of badassery,” said Aveda. “You should be out there enjoying the moment, Evie.”

  I noticed Scott giving her a look of surprise.

  “Or you could enjoy it,” I said. “Deglamour yourself and we’ll switch outfits and you can go greet your adoring public.”

  “Oh em gee!” Bea shrieked, waving her phone around. “That public has increased, like, a thousandfold. That video of you incinerating Maisy has gone even more viral than the Yamato one. I can’t keep track of all the new Facebook fans.”

  Nate strode back to us and handed me an ice pack and a bowl of something. I was suddenly starving. I set the pack to the side, focusing on the bowl. Lucky Charms.

  “And Aveda’s just been invited to be the official ribbon-cutter for San Francisco’s Small Business Crawl,” Bea continued, typing on her phone. “Total prestige position. I’d say tonight’s a win.”

  I couldn’t think of how to respond. Right after my karaoke triumph, I’d felt electrified. As if my fire and the sheer awesomeness of The Bangles had come together to totally defeat evil.

  But what if Maisy came back? What if this wasn’t the end? The thought cut through my sense of victory, making me jittery.

  I stared into my bowl and absently swirled my index finger through the mix of processed sugars, searching for the purple bits. I saw pink, yellow, green. No purple.

  No purple.

  My head snapped up, my eyes going to Nate. He was leaning against the counter, avoiding my gaze.

  “We can count tonight as a win for now,” I said, setting the bowl to the side. “But we still don’t know how Maisy—or this new breed of demon-human hybrid things she created—works. We can’t let our guard down and we have to keep trying to learn more about them.”

  “Oh, speaking of!” Bea put the phone down and rummaged around in her pocket. “I brought the You Need stone with me to monitor that number. You know, see if it ticked down further.” She frowned, reaching deeper into her pocket. “Except . . .” The color drained from her face. “It’s not here. It must’ve fallen out of my pocket.” She gave me a stricken look. “Evie, I’m so sorry. I—”

  “It’s okay,” I said gently. I was bone-tired and in the grand scheme of things, losing a stone seemed fairly minor. “I’m not sure what more it would be able to tell us at this point. We can ask Kevin to keep an eye out for it.” I turned to Aveda. “I’m going home. Do you want my dress?” I gestured to my blood-crusted finery. “You could be, you know . . . you. Just make sure you’re sitting down so they don’t notice your limp. And you’ll need to hide your cast. Maybe you can sit behind the bar or something.”

  Her eyes drifted to the doorway, lingering on the snippets of party.

  “No,” she said. “I think I just want to hang out. Have a few drinks. With people. If, um, people want to stay.” She threw Lucy and Bea and Scott a hopeful look. “I think Rose is still out there, too. You sure you don’t want to stay, Evie? We could make you look like someone else if you don’t want to be Aveda, either.”

  “Nah.” I stretched. “You guys go on.” I turned to Bea. “Soda. Nothing else.”

  Lucy tossed her keys to Nate. “Take my car. We’ll cab it later.”

  “Oh. That’s okay.” A huge yawn escaped me. “I’ll make it back myself. Nate can stay.”

  Nate met my eyes, no longer keeping me at a distance. The cramped space of the kitchen suddenly felt too warm.

  “Does this look like something I’d enjoy?” he said, inclining his head toward the party. The sound of someone screeching “FREEBIRD!” rocketed its way through the kitchen door.

  Point taken. Instead we’d have to settle for the most awkward car ride home ever.

  The silence in the car was worse than I’d expected. It wasn’t even a pure silence, since Lucy’s rattletrap of a vehicle emitted a yowling hum as it carried us home. And it was raining again. Mist dotted the car windows, distorting the deserted late-night streets with a mosaic-like overlay.

  “I can’t believe I just won a karaoke contest,” I blurted out. It was a dumb thing to say, but I wanted some other sound in the air, something to break the bubble of awkwardness. My fingers wrapped tightly around the cereal bowl in my lap. I’d decided to bring my Lucky Charms with me. I was still starving. Yet I couldn’t bring myself to eat a single bite.

  “I believe the word Bea used was ‘shredded,’” Nate said. My head jerked up. I wasn’t expecting him to respond. “I’m not sure what that means,” he added.

  “I don’t understand, like, eighty percent of what she says,” I said. “It’s all about the context clues.”

  “So when she said she was ‘scouting The G
utter for some major boy band bootie,’ what does that mean?”

  A helpless laugh burbled out of me. “I think it means I’m glad she’s with responsible adults, at least one of whom is armed.”

  “You’re not worried?”

  “No.” I answered without even thinking about it.

  I searched myself, deep down. I wasn’t worried. Two weeks ago the suggestion of Bea so much as glancing at a boy would’ve sent me into a panic spiral, would’ve sparked the need for me to lock her in her room or send her to a convent. Then again I couldn’t imagine the me of two weeks ago winning a karaoke contest. Or entering a karaoke contest. Or tossing around fireballs and incinerating a demon princess. Exhilaration surged up inside me—that same unhinged feeling I’d had just hours earlier, when my fire took flight and Maisy exploded and the ground shook beneath my feet. I stared down into my bowl of cereal. No purple.

  My gaze drifted over to Nate. His hands were precisely positioned at two and ten o’clock on the steering wheel, eyes focused on the rainy street.

  “Stop the car.” The words spilled out of my mouth like a string of fireworks, cutting through the car’s persistent hum.

  “What? Why?” His eyes didn’t leave the road. “We’re almost—”

  “Stop the car.”

  He looked around, trying to find a safe place amongst the unwieldy sea of parked cars, then deftly moved us into a loading zone.

  “What is it? Are you worried about Bea? I didn’t mean to scare you, I was just—”

  “Not Bea.” I shook my head vehemently and stared out the front window. I gripped my cereal bowl, watching as the rain morphed from mist to storm, water smacking against the car, droplets expanding to splashes. Exhilaration was still whooshing through me, but it was pierced by fear. I had a sudden, vivid image of water bursting through the windshield, flooding the car and taking me under.

  I squeezed my eyes shut, as if this would make me invisible.

  “Nate, I . . . I want to try.”

  I let my little sentence sit there in the open air. Set free, his for the taking.

  Instead, there was more silence.

  “I’m going to need you to elaborate,” he finally said, his tone gentle but confused.

  “I want to try . . . us.” I closed my eyes even tighter, until fireworks bloomed in front of my pupils. “You and me. Together. Actually together, not just for orgasm purposes. Like, maybe we would go on an actual date or something. Or maybe we’d never make it out the door, because . . . sex. Not that I only like you for sex. I like that you’re good and decent and kind. That you always look surprised when you laugh, like you genuinely weren’t expecting to laugh, ever. That you don’t think I’m weird because I pick things out of my cereal. That you pick things out of my cereal for me. And God, I love your mouth. Okay, so that part is about sex, technically, but . . .” I took a mighty inhale, trying to motor through. “Aveda said the other day that I always pretend I don’t want things. I know it’s because I’m scared. And I know I’ve been saying that a lot lately, but that’s what these last two weeks have taught me, bit by bit: that everything comes back to me being scared of actually living my life in any kind of full, meaningful way. Every time I’ve experienced a fully living life-type emotion in the past, it’s led to something bad, whether that’s torching the library or being consumed with grief because my parents are gone or loving Bea so much that it takes over my entire being and she resents me at every turn. But now I’m realizing that awesome stuff can come from big emotions, too, and shutting myself off from feelings altogether—shutting down like I did with you—is keeping me from the awesome stuff.” I swallowed hard. “I’m tired of being scared and I’m tired of pretending I don’t want things. There are things I want so badly. I want to not be scared of my fire-freak status. I want Bea to be okay. I want the world to be safe from vengeful demon princesses like Maisy. And I want you. I want all of you. I will totally help you shop for a new bed.”

  Tears gathered behind my squeezed-shut eyelids. I forced myself to open my eyes, to blink the tears back. To breathe deeply. I didn’t know how to end this latest bout of emotional vomit, so I just said, “What do you think?”

  Silence descended on us again, punctuated by the smack of rain against the windows. This silence seemed to stretch on forever, rebuilding our bubble of awkwardness. My tears loomed, ready to make a break for it.

  When he finally spoke, his tone was not gentle or accepting or placating. It was completely exasperated.

  “Evie . . .”

  “No, it’s okay,” I interrupted, my eyes still trained forward. “I get it. I freaked out and pushed you away and then I’m, like, throwing myself on top of you on the dance floor and then I yelled at you to pull the car over for no good reason and . . . and . . . I know I drive you crazy. Like, all the time. I can hear it in your voice right now. I wouldn’t want to date me either. I absolutely respect your decision. I—”

  “Evie.” His voice was even more exasperated now. I felt his hand curling around mine. “Will you look at me, please?”

  I turned in my seat, reluctantly meeting his eyes. His gaze was sweet and earnest and so tender I thought my heart might split in two.

  “It’s not like you’re the only one who’s been acting irrationally,” he said. “I’m sorry I was so strange and insistent about our dating status. I was out of my mind with worry about what might happen to you tonight and I don’t have a lot of experience with these sorts of situations and as we’ve established, I’m not very good at putting words together. Using evidence to determine what was going on with us . . . it’s the only way I know how to do things. I realize now I should have told you what I wanted and asked you how you felt. I was trying to make you hear me by not hearing you.” He brushed my damp hair off my face. “But please hear this: I’m on board. I’m on board for everything. I don’t know how you’ve managed to miss this, but I like you driving me crazy. You don’t have to talk me into it. You don’t have to dramatically chase me through the rain. I’m here. Now if you’re done trying to convince me of something I’m already convinced of, I’m going to kiss you. Okay?”

  “Okay,” I said, my voice faint. “But I was definitely going to chase you through the—mrph.”

  His hands tangled in my hair as his mouth claimed mine. It was a continuation of our kiss on the dance floor. All fierce need with no warm-up.

  I stretched over the space between our seats, trying to bring us just one iota closer. A craving sparked low in my belly, a craving for his hands all over me, shaping and stroking the spots he’d gotten to know so well.

  No matter how much I contorted myself, I was still not close enough, so I tossed my bowl of cereal into the backseat and clambered over the gap between us, hefting myself into his lap. My foot jutted out, smacking against the parking brake, and the car moved, rolling backward down the steep hill.

  Nate’s hand snaked around me, closing over the brake and yanking it upward just as we were about to smack into a parked car.

  “Always an adventure with you,” he murmured, his lips finding mine again.

  I responded by pressing myself more firmly into him, sucking at his lower lip. I slid my hand down the front of his jeans and stroked, my fingers closing around the long, hard length of him. He shuddered against me.

  “Evie,” he gasped against my mouth. I felt a thrill at how out-of-control he already sounded. “Glove compartment,” he choked out.

  Um, what? “Glove compartment”? As dirty talk went, that wasn’t particularly hot.

  “Open the glove compartment,” he managed.

  I reached over and did as I was told and was rewarded with an avalanche of condoms. They slid onto the floor in one slithery, multicolored mass.

  “What?” I squeaked. “Does Lucy just have piles of these things waiting for me everywhere?”

  “I put those there.” He was s
till breathing hard, but managed a smile. “After the day we almost . . . in the car . . .”

  I looked at the mass of condoms still spilling onto the floor. “You were certainly ambitious.”

  His smile widened. “I was hopeful.”

  I couldn’t help but smile back. I reached behind me and yanked down the zipper of my dress. It had a built-in bra, so I wasn’t wearing anything underneath.

  Nate’s eyes went wide as the dress fell to my waist. He was giving me that look that made me melt, that look that had my heart rising in my throat and all available oxygen fleeing my lungs.

  “Wow,” I said teasingly, trying not to show him how much that look got to me. “We’ve been apart for all of two days and you’re looking at me like you’ve never seen breasts before.”

  His eyes locked with mine. “You take my breath away. Every time.”

  He pulled me close and kissed me. Exhilaration sang through me again, but this time there was no fear.

  I wasn’t afraid of anything anymore.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  I’M GOING TO have nightmares.

  The thought swam through my brain before I passed out in bed with Nate wrapped around me.

  Because even though I’d managed to incinerate a demon threat and fulfill the dubious bucket list item of having sex in a haphazardly parked car, I had been so overloaded with thoughts and feelings and terrifying images throughout the night, I figured it was inevitable that some of them would re-form in my subconscious as a fucked-up Voltron of a dream tableau.

  But I’m ready for it, I thought as I drifted off. I’ve conquered my fears and I can do anything. Bring it on, brain!

  I even made a rallying fist-pump in my sleep.

  But there were no nightmares. My sleep was dreamless. When I woke up, I felt rested and happy and ready to have regular ol’ bed sex with my newly minted boyfriend.