“I’ll help you,” Max said. “We can sit down on Saturday and goover it. It’s actually super easy once you get it, and you’re smart. You’ll getit. You just haven’t come at it from the right angle yet.”
“So did you meet any cute girls?” Zoe asked in a blatant attemptto change the subject.
Max laughed, deciding to drop it until he had time to actuallyhelp her. “No cute girls today, no.”
Hehadgotten the feeling Connor was flirting again, butthat was harmless enough. Fun, even.
He definitely wasn’t a girl, though.
“You’re blushing,” Zoe said. “You know you can tell me, right? Whoam I gonna tell?”
Max cleared his throat. “No cute girls,” he said. “You’re the onlycute girl in my life right now.”
Zoe rolled her eyes and sipped her hot chocolate. For a moment,she almost looked as though she wasn’t in any pain.
Then she winced, her leg jerking, and whimpered as she settledback into the pillows. She moved the hot water bottle to her bad hip, tears inher eyes again.
Max’s heart sank. She needed a hip replacement, and she needed itas soon as possible. No one should have to live like this, but athirteen-year-oldabsolutelyshouldn’t have been in as much pain as hecould see Zoe was.
There were dark circles under her eyes that made her look forty.Pain was written all over her face, all the time, even when the painkillerswere actually working.
Juvenile rheumatoid arthritis wasbullshit. She’d hadflareups before, but then she’d been okay for a while, and now…
Now she was worse than ever, and all Max could do was watch. Shortof winning the lottery.
He thought back to the competition Connor had been looking atearlier in the day. It wasn’t quite the lottery, but…
It was enough. Forty thousand would cover Zoe’s surgery, and ifthey split the prize money fifty-fifty, that’d leave a little left over for hismom to take a break, too.
Connor had seemed sure he could win. Sure enough to bedisappointed he couldn’t enter, anyway.
If all he needed was someone to get married to… Max could be thatsomeone.
He would have given Zoe a kidney or a lung if she’d needed it.This was such a small thing.
It was a long shot, and maybe it was stupid, but Max wasdesperate. Desperate to see his little sister happy again.
He sipped his hot chocolate, a plan forming in his head.
He was going to ask Connor to marry him.
Chapter Five
The bell above the door jingled as Connor wandered into thebookstore, and again as he closed the door gently behind him.
He was really starting to like that bell. It told him he was amongfriends.
His heart leapt as he saw Max behind the counter, a smile turningup the corner of his lips.
It was about time he accepted that he had a crush on Max, and itdidn’t feeltotallyone-sided. Everyone in this town was nice, but Maxwas… different.
And really hot. Connor adored everything about his faded punkaesthetic, from his visible roots and chipped nail polish to the heavy blackboots he wore.
He was the kind of person Connor could have scrubbed clean just tomake a mess of him all over again.
It’d been a while since he’d gotten laid, and maybe that wasinfluencing his thinking, but he’d always secretly had a type. Max was it.
Besides, his biceps were straining the hems of his t-shirt sleeves.Who could say no to that, at least once?
