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

His parents didn’t even flinch when he mentioned a gang of guys going up to his buddy Jeremiah’s family cabin in the mountains over spring break. Mark was the most strait-laced and responsible person either one of them had come to know—if they worried about him at all in those days, it was that he wasn’t screwing around enough for a kid his age. He hadn’t pierced his ears or dyed his hair or gotten a tattoo (that they knew about); and, except for that one time in the eighth grade, he’d never smoked—not cigarettes, not pot, not cloves in a coffee house. On weekends he drank cheap supermarket beer out of the back of Jeremiah’s truck, got buzzed but not blitzed, and occasionally brought off one or another of his willing buddies in his jeans.


Chapter 5