All Superheroes Need PR (Supers in the City, #1)

by Elizabeth Stephens

And not only is the Pyro seeing me, he’s making me visible to everybody.

squeeze. “I may be many terrible things, Vanessa,” he whispers, and his voice is rougher, like he swallowed nails dipped in whiskey and gasoline. “But I would never do that.”

Me? I pitied them, knowing what it’s like to be alone as a child. After all, they arrived here twenty-two years ago when they were children with no memories of where they came from.

She’s a monster movie fanatic and does not discriminate against a film’s age—or its quality. She really fits all of those typical second-generation Ethiopian, Mezcal-slinging, monster-loving, shrewd lawyer stereotypes.

There are only two truths I’m sure of in this moment: I’m stupid obsessed with Vanessa fucking Theriot, and I’m absolutely going to kill something.

Vanessa. My girlfriend. My cheeks heat at the thought and then, when I glance down at her, heat some more. Even if they are making her uncomfortable, the reporters have to live. Vanessa likes her job. I can’t fuck this up for her.

I’ve spent my entire life—that of it that I can remember, anyway—bored and unable to escape the feeling that I’m waiting for something . . . I think I might have found it. And I’m not letting her go until I’m sure. They call me hero now, but I’m a bad fucking dude. I want to kidnap her. If she hadn’t agreed to let me move in with her, I might have had to.

don’t know what it is, but when I first saw her, every instinct in my body told me to do one thing: protect her. I feel that again now.

don’t like things touching her. Only me. And only with consent. I didn’t like the way it felt when she recoiled from me. I liked the way it felt when she swooned toward me after the Marduk attack, seated on Mr. Singkham’s desk. Whether she was aware she’d done it or not, I wanted her to do it again.

Her competence makes me wanna perform hara-kiri because I know I’m not worthy and then shove my organs back into the slit of my stomach just to perform the ritual all over again knowing that I’m the reason she’s in this position. I forced her to be here.

And when it’s all over and we’re back in the safety of a quiet conference room in the COE building, Vanessa turns to me and looks up at me with those big doe eyes, a single note card still nervously clenched in her right fist. She says, “Thank you, Roland.” I feel the fabric of my being shift. And that’s it. It’s decided. She’s mine. I’m gonna grab her, steal her, take her away so nobody can fucking find her again . . . No. That’s what a madman would do. My hands flinch and react toward her in menacing, kidnappery pulses that she doesn’t seem to notice, and I know that if I stay here another second, she’s going to make a villain out of me.

“How the hell do you get close to anybody if you never open up?” He’s leaning in even closer. And now I’m leaning in even closer. “Maybe I don’t.”

“Fuck you, Nessa, and fuck that. You may be my fake girlfriend, but you’re still mine. And I look after what’s mine.”

I felt safe enough to shout at somebody,

“Sometimes superheroes don’t give a fuck about the world. Sometimes they just want the girl.”