Not Your Villain (Sidekick Squad #2)(86)

Bells falls back into the dirt, barely keeping his eyes open, and slumps forward into—Emma.

“Bells, Bells! Are you okay? What the hell was that?!” She wraps him in a tight, fierce hug.

It’s chaos when they return to the Guild; everyone talks at once, recounting what happened. Bells serves himself another helping of rice and beans. He slumps against his chair, and Emma pats him on the back. He can barely follow the arguments: finding the Resistance or starting one from scratch; who is going to do what, if they should do anything; and possible ways to change the League from the inside.

Brendan is asleep, having found the nearest couch. Abby and Jess are talking quietly in a corner; Bells overhears something about Abby’s powers and steps back, not wanting to interrupt an intimate moment.

“You look like you’re ready for, like, three day’s sleep,” Emma says.

Bells yawns. “Probably.” He’s barely holding it together. “Wanna take a walk?”

“Sure,” Emma says.

They follow the dark tunnels until they reach the chute with the viewing platform and slowly climb up. The night sky gleams above them; stars wink at them gracefully. Bells sits next to Emma, looking over the edge. He’s aware that they’re pretty high and that the last time he was here he couldn’t leave the safety of the wall.

It feels like a lifetime ago.

He’s still afraid of falling, but he trusts himself more. Trusts Emma. Trusts that where he’s sitting is solid. Safe.

They watch the stars, neither one saying anything, and Bells thinks about how far away those galaxies are and how long it took for their light to get here.

“What you did. On the train,” Emma says.

Bells braces himself for the lecture: putting himself in danger, trying out a new version of his powers.

Emma looks at the stars. “When you raced off on that motorcycle, I didn’t know what you were doing. I didn’t know if you were going to come back and I was so scared, Bells. I thought I would never get to tell you, and you didn’t know—”

Bells puts a hand on her shoulder. “I’m sorry, Em.”

“I love you,” Emma says softly.

“Love you too, Em,” Bells says automatically, opening his arms for a hug.

Emma shoulders out of it. “No, I mean, I love you. Romantically. Like. Relationship kind of way.”

The wind rustles through the trees, and Emma looks up at him.

“What are you saying?” Bells asks, not daring to hope.

“I mean,” Emma says, kicking at nothing in particular. “About what you said, being on the spectrum. I’m still figuring it out, and I’m still confused on some things, you know, like sometimes it feels right, but not, right right, you know? Like attraction? Relationships?” She makes a flyaway gesture.

“Okay…” Bells doesn’t know where this is going.

“There’s all sorts of in-between, but I do know there’s one thing I’m not confused about.”

“And what’s that?’

“It’s how I feel about this one person,” she says and smiles as if the words come easily. “I’ve always known, even if I didn’t have a word for it. And I just—I didn’t know how to deal with it, you know? I didn’t want to ruin things.”

“Ruin things?” Bells’ heart skips a beat.

“He is my best friend,” Emma says pointedly. “It was easy for me to ignore what I was feeling, to think about what was easy, what was in front of me…”

“I—” Bells doesn’t know what to say.

Emma leans forward, a question in her eyes, and Bells thinks about last summer, when he thought this could happen, how easy it would be, and he answers her with a kiss.

Emma kisses like a dream. Bells barely knows where he is, the way her hands are on the sides of his face, the softness of her mouth, the way she sighs, and he can feel her smile against his lips.

Keep me here. This is a dream, part of him thinks, as Emma’s curls fall into his face.

He can’t control his emotions, doesn’t know which way the shift is taking him, and he feels his features flash. Emma keeps holding him throughout, and he gasps, because he doesn’t know what he is anymore. Is he the air, wrapping around Emma’s cheeks, kissing at her skin? Is he the soft cotton of her T-shirt, running down her back?

“Bells?” Emma asks softly. “Is this too fast for you?”

“Yes,” Bells says. “Sorry.”

“Don’t be,” Emma says, and she scrambles off his lap, settling to sit next to him. He throws an arm over her shoulder, and she rests her head on his chest.

Bells kisses her forehead. “We’ll have lots of time.”

“We will, won’t we?” Emma muses.

Home is calling them, and Bells is tired of the indecision in the Villain’s Guild. Although Genevieve and Chloe seem to be disagreeing on how to go about things, it looks as if they’re going to stand up to the League.

“You ready to go home, son?” Nick asks.

He is and he isn’t. He’s ready to move forward on the threshold of this new thing with Emma. She’s got her own ideas, about her and Bells, about what the Resistance really needs to be doing right now.

“It doesn’t exist,” Bells said, laughing.