Page 77 of Hello Forever
“Really?”
“Yeah,” I said. “He’s arealpro.”
Mark stole a carrot stick. “Maybe he can teach you. If we all live in onehouse.”
Warmth bloomed in my chest at the sound of those words, and the fact that he’d said them so easily. I wanted to grin and grab him in a hug, but that wouldn’t fly with a teenager. “Maybe he can,” I said instead. “Maybe you canlearn,too.”
“Probably not,” Mark grumbled. Then he wandered toward thefamilyroom.
I felt my shoulders relax by a fraction of a degree. Because this might justreallywork.
ChapterTwenty-Six
Axel
The dayafter I showed the house to Cax, I finally went back to work at the athleticdepartment.
I was still two weeks away from getting the cast off my arm, but otherwise I was doing much better. My ribs felt mostly normal, except when I coughed or sneezed. And more importantly, the vision in my right eye was back tonormal.
“Get yer ass back in the chair!” Boz yelled when I walked into the office. “I’m killing myself trying to cover hockey andbasketball.”
“Nice to see you,too,Boz.”
He smirked at me. “I’m, like, responsible for you now,right?”
“What?” I set the cup of coffee I’d bought down on the desk. “What doyoumean?”
“You know—because I savedyourlife.”
“How do youfigure?”
“Carrying that stretcher, man. Do I own you now, like a slave? Are you going to name your children after me?” He spun his deskchair.
And to think I’d missed this place. “Truth is, I can’t get my boyfriend pregnant. But Boz sounds like a good name foradog.”
He grasped his chest in mock horror. “Adog?”
“That’s really the best you can hope for from CaxandI.”
“I should have left you bleeding in thewoods.”
“Then you’d have to cover hockey and basketball by yourself. You might accidentally work more than forty hoursaweek.”
He picked up a Barmuth Bears sweat band off his desk and threw it at me. “Good point,asshole.”
“I might be persuaded to take you out for lunch, later, though.” I threw the sweat band back, bouncing it off hisforehead.
Boz tucked his hands behind his head and grinned. “That’ll do. Now help me plan a family night at the hockey stadium. Can I just copy your pressrelease?”
“Sure, pal. As long as you remember to put the word ‘hockey’ wherever I wrote ‘basketball.’”
“You could do that partforme.”
“You’re going to milk this whole ‘lifesaving’ thing, aren’t you?” I gave the word airquotes.
“Uh-huh.”
I turned on my dusty computer and started searching for the pressrelease.
