Page 57 of All Superheroes Need PR
“I said I’d try. It’s a process.”
She clears her throat. “I, um ... I’d like to try for you too.”
I cock my head, confused. She exhales, and my pulse thrums with a zing. Something is happening.
“You read my file.”
“Shit, Nessa—I mean ...”
“No. Just ... let me finish, because I need to, um ... say this.” So I wait. I wait like I’ve never waited before. It’s unbearable. She exhales, her curls leaping up before fluttering back down to touch her cheek. “You read my file. You know already that I grew up in a not-so-nice family and that I was fortunate enough to find a new, amazing one. That file ... you might have seen the pictures of the ... what I looked like when I was rescued after all those days alone. The people who kept me homeschooled me because there’s no regulation on homeschooling in most states, and they weren’t ... good.” She exhales deeply, which is nice for her because I’m not fucking breathing at all.
“But what that file doesn’t show is the other stuff they did. They ...” She shakes her head, and I’m so shocked by the lack of rage in her features because that’s all I feel right now. And then she looks up, directly into my soul. Her hand reaches in and takes hold of all my bones.
“If you want to know about me, you have to ask. You can’t ... surprise me. You can’t call me names. You can’t threaten me. You just can’t. I can try, and I will try to be honest and not retreat from ... this,”she says, gesturing between us, “but you can’t just try ... Youhaveto be the hero in this, for me.”
I swallow razor blades. All I can do is nod. It takes me a while to be able to speak. I feel like I’m sweating even though my body doesn’t really do that. The sweat just evaporates. It takes every ounce of my power to remain seated and not go to her, wrap her in my arms, and squeeze her until I absorb her entirely.
“I swear it, Nessa,” I say. I choke. “I’ll be the hero for you.”
She nods down at the table and then takes another breath before meeting my gaze and nodding again. One corner of her mouth quirks, but it’s shaky. “Thank you.”
“You don’t have to thank me. Jesus.”
I card my fingers through my hair and drain my glass. She’s still blushing at me when I put it down. “I also, um ... I want you to know that ...” She reaches for her glass, but her hand is shaking. She curls it into a fist and brings it to her lap in a way that makes my stomach melt. “You mentioned that you wanted this to be a real dinner ... date. I’m okay if you want to drop thefakepart of this thing that we’re ... doing here. I am ... um ... I’ll resign from the Lois Lane contract. I’ll just, um ... be your girlfriend, I guess ...”
I’ve tried as long as I can. I launch out of my seat so quickly, the chair topples back and lands on the floor with a hard slap. I round the table and hinge at the waist, and I grab her face, and I kiss her deeply, tongue down her throat, lips hard and beseeching.
I kiss her long enough to be satisfied, which means I’m there for a long fucking time. She’s not the one to break the kiss, though, and that makes me happy. I pull back on a growl. My chest is making that sound that even Emily can’t figure out, and it’s loud.
Her eyes are still closed, her abused lips red and parted. I stroke my rough thumb down her cheek, careful not to accidentally scratch her. “Marry me,” I growl.
“Rollo!” she squeaks. Her eyes fly open, and I stand up fully when she pushes me off with a smile. She shakes her head.
I begrudgingly move away from her only to see several people in the restaurant with their phones out now. I glare at them until they put them away and pretend to keep eating. The elderly couple seated a table away is grinning at us. The man has both of his thumbs and eyebrows up. I laugh at him and shake my head before picking up my chair and falling into it, unburdened.
“So is that a yes?”
“Rollo!” She smiles at me, and it’s a magical thing. She’s wrong. She got it all fucking wrong. I’m not the one who carries magic. “Can we at least get through dinner first?”
“How many dinners until I get to marry you?”
She balks. “That’s not how it works.”
“It’s the deal we made for ... other stuff.”
She blushes darker, and it’s the cutest fucking thing. And then, once again, my Nessa says the last thing I expect. “Twenty-two.”
I grin like a maniac. “Then get a white dress, because twenty-three days from now, you’re going to be mine for real. Forever.”
She just rolls her eyes and orders from the waiter when he eventually stumbles back over. It’s cute that she doesn’t believe me. I reach for my wineglass and let the topic lie for now, instead changing the subject to her life, her family. I want to know more about her, and she’s right. I don’t want to have to root it out; I want her to tell me.
And she tries for me, just as she promised she would.
We talk about her brothers, the dicks who fought me. I like ’em, even though I’ve only met them once, because she tells me all the ways they’ve had her back over the years—ways I even had the privilege of witnessing when her youngest brother beat me upside the head with a lacrosse stick.
We talk about her parents—her real, adopted ones—about the movies she likes and hates, and then spend the next two hours talking about books. She rants about the underrepresentation of women—Black women, in particular—in sci-fi blockbusters over the past fifty years for a solid half hour, citing movies I’ve never heard of, but Ipretend. And in return she gets to hear about my weird-ass childhood, my time in the SDD discovering my powers, the foods I hate, and how much I hate haircuts.
“How was it? Rescuing those people? Doing hero shit?” Vanessa’s a little tipsy. Her tongue sticks out to wet her lower lip in a way I don’t even know if she knows is dangerous. Course she doesn’t. Nor does she know how desperately I’m hanging on.
