The Scumbag's Guide To Heroism Novel - Chapter 446

"You introduced the concept. You own the consequences."

The boardwalk appeared through the windshield four minutes later, a stretch of weathered planks running along the coast with the Pacific glittering behind it.

At nine twenty on a Saturday morning the place held joggers, dog walkers, an old man with a fishing pole, and the kind of empty commercial charm that suggested the funnel cake stand would be open because funnel cake stands operated according to economic principles nobody had successfully explained.

The Uber driver deposited us at the southern entrance and departed with the quiet efficiency of someone who had already composed his two-star review and was waiting for a stoplight to submit it.

Salt air hit me the second I stepped out. The smell underneath carried the specific coastal California combination of sunscreen, aging infrastructure, distant kelp. Something in my chest loosened by three percent. Enough to notice. Not enough to acknowledge.