| Cody |

It's been a week since I got out of hospital, my head isn't sore anymore but my neck is still stiff in the mornings, thankfully is eases off as the day goes. Portland won the playoffs, which means I have a date with Ellie, so while Hope and Krashlyn are heading to the airport to pick up Tobin, Kling and Ellie, Alex is left with Jack and I.

"Will you two hurry up, we're meeting the girls at the mall!" She shouts from downstairs.

"Why is it always the mall?" I ask Jack, as she finishes her makeup, making her chuckle and nudge me for making her mess up.

When we get to the kitchen, Alex is on her phone, completely oblivious to our presence.

"Mom, hurry up, we're meeting the girls at the mall!" I yell at her, making her jump up out of the seat, her phone almost dropping to the ground. When she looks up to glare at me, I flash her an innocent smile and run out to the car before she can scold me. When she gets in the car she turns to me with a small smile on her face.

"We need to make one stop before we meet up with the others."

"Where to?"

"The courthouse."

"Oh my god! I didn't do it!" Jack yelps from the backseat, making my mom give her a questioning look while I just laugh knowing that whatever happened, it was probably her fault.

We get to the courthouse, and wait for my mom's name to be called, and when it is we head to a small room where someone sits, I have no idea who, I'm not that interested until she starts calling my name. Apparently I missed everything she said.

"Uh, I'm sorry, what?" I bite my lip, an apologetic look on my face.

"I said, all you have to do is sign here, and your name change is officially legal."

My eyes snap to my mom, who is already watching me as I snatch the pen from the woman's hand, apologizing again, but not wasting anytime signing on the dotted line.

"Congratulations, you're now legally Cody Maxwell Morgan." She reads from the paper, and I jump out of my seat, throwing myself into my mom's arms as I start to cry, happy tears of course.

We leave the woman's small office, to see Jack sitting on the bench out in the hallway upside down, her head swaying from side to side, clearly bored out of her mind, but her antics make me smile.

"We just have one more thing to do here, it'll only take ten minutes."

"What is it?" Jack asks, sitting upright.

"Cody's applying for a passport, we can't drive everywhere."

____________

We eventually make it to the mall, Hope and Ash with their backs to us so Jack and I being the children we are, take a running start and I jump on Hope's back while Jack jumps on Ashlyn's.

"Yeehaaaw! Onward, pony!" Jack yells, pointing ahead of her, but Hope and Ashlyn don't move, instead they shake us off and while Jack was expecting it, I wasn't and fell onto the ground, landing on my ass.

"Eesh, thanks a lot, you're no fun." I scowl lightly at Hope, walking over to Kling, knowing she's fun.

Alex, Hope and Ali leave us eventually, but they've been gone for a while and we're all starting to get bored.

"There's a Nike store there, let's go." Tobin instructs and we all follow her, watching as some of the people in the store recognize Tobin, Ellie and Kling, so while they take pictures and sign stuff, Jack and I look for a ball, deciding we have to entertain ourselves. We pay for it and as we leave the store, Tobin, Ellie and Kling walk up to us.

"Oh, there you are. Alex and Hope would have killed us if we didn't know where you were." Kling sighs out, and I laugh as I watch her relax now that she knows where we are.

"We just went to buy a ball." Jack shrugs, and we all find a quiet place in the mall to play, being too lazy to take the ball outside. We're not doing anything special, just one touch passes, and I'm about to recieve the pass from Tobin when Kling practically yells out.

"Is that Kristie?!" I freeze and the ball rolls away, unfortunately for me it heads right for her. I internally groan, of all the places it could have gone, it just has to go to in her direction.

"Yo Mewis, ball!" Tobin shouts, gaining her attention, and I want to run away and hide as Kristie stops the ball with her foot and flicks it up to her hands, walking over to us to give me the ball back.

"Thanks, Kristie." Kling comes and takes the ball from me as I stare at the blonde in front of me, who is staring right back at me. I don't pull myself away from her beautiful eyes until I hear Tobin clear her throat, just as Rachel approaches.

"Hey babe, Tobin, Ellie, Kling." She kisses Kristie's cheek and I feel a knife going in my chest, which is ridiculous because Ellie is standing behind me, and I suddenly feel even worse. "We haven't met, I'm Rachel." She politely holds her hand out to Jack, which she shakes.

"I'm Jack, this is Cody."

"You're Cody?"

"I am. Why?"

"I've heard a lot about you." Rachel says, and I feel extremely uncomfortable under her stare. It's a hard stare, like she knows something I don't and she's threatened.

| Alex |

Since we finally finished shopping, Hope, Ali and I search for the others.

"Is that them over there?" Ali says, pointing in the distance.

"It is, but who are they with?"

"Looks like Mewis." Hope says and I walk faster. The closer I get, the clearer I can see that Cody is uncomfortable and upset...well, it's clear to me. The walk to her feels like it takes too long but when I finally get there I throw an arm around my daughter, pulling her closer, slightly glaring at Kristie and her girlfriend.

"Kristie."

"Hi, Alex."

"Babe, we have to get going, the girls are waiting." I feel Cody tense when Rachel speaks, and I squeeze her closer, saying goodbye to the couple as they leave.

After the awkward encounter, we all decide it's best to go home. The 'kids' head to the backyard, which means Cody, Jack, Ellie, Kling, Ash and Tobin and they play 2v2's while Hope, Ali and I prepare dinner.

| Cody |

"Aw no fair, I want to be on Cody's team!" I laugh as my best friend, who swears she's not a child, throws a small tantrum before she starts laughing. She only stops because she teams up with Tobin, which I can't lie, I'm jealous about, but I've got Kling so everything is okay.

We play for an hour, Ellie, Ash, Jack and Tobin switching teams but Kling refused to be in anyone else's team but mine, maybe because we won everytime we played before we all head inside to get cleaned up when Alex calls us in.

We all sit at the table, enjoying our time together. I smile as I see my mom chatting away with Ellie, happy they're getting along until someone kicks me and I look across the table to see Kling smirking at me. I kick her back, and it continues until I kick Jack by accident since she's sitting next to Kling. The three of us start fighting, and it's escalating until Hope tells us to quit it, glaring at each of us individually.

Safe to say we didn't make a sound the rest of dinner.

Since it's pretty late, everyone decided to head to bed and I'm still rooming with Jack, so I take the opportunity to bring up a topic we should have spoken about a while ago.

"Hey, Jack?"

"Yezzzir?" I chuckle, shaking my head at my idiot best friend.

"Um...remember when you walking in on me drinking?"

"I do." She responds, looking sad which isn't what I want, so I continue quickly.

"You called Hope 'mom'". I watch Jack as she obviously replays that day in her head, before she starts to smile.

"I did. I miss my mom but I know I'm lucky that I'm not an orphan in a home, or with a family that's horrible." She glances at me, and I don't miss the association with the Dennings, but I can't argue with her point either. "I love her, she's been nothing but good to me, I don't know why she did but I'm glad she adopted me, she's always there if I need her."

I can't help but smile as I watch my best friend's own smile grow as she speaks about her connection with Hope. All I ever want is Jack to be happy and in a loving home, now that both are real I can stop worrying about her so much.