When seventeen-year-old Mark Potts fell from a balcony, he lost both the use of his legs and any faith in heroes. Now twenty-nine, he’s long-since come to terms with his injury. His job provides more opportunities for eye-rolling than for riding to anybody’s rescue, but with two kids to bring up, he barely has time for his husband, much less for heroics. Besides, Starr Bradford is a policeman -- how many heroes does one family need?<br><br>Mark and Starr love each other madly, but stress management is a load-bearing pillar of their happiness. When Mark’s coping skills fail him at exactly the wrong moment, he’s left hanging by a thread of words he should’ve kept in his mouth. He has the power to repair their relationship, but when Starr’s workday suddenly goes south, will he get to wield it? Keeping it together long enough to find out is a job worthy of any superhero!

You Had Me at Hero

But “hero” was a tricky word for Mark Bradford-Potts. Since his earliest memories of Superman birthday parties—and of his father forcibly forbidding Wonder Woman Halloween costumes—he’d longed to be worthy of it, striven to rise to the title. He’d worn a red cape to school into the third grade, contriving opportunities to foil his arch-nemesis The Lunch Lady’s plans to poison his classmates with soggy hot dogs and spiriting the class guinea pig into trees and drain pipes, the better to “rescue” the traumatized creature.


Chapter 4