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“What are you still doing here?”

I haven’t felt the need to spend all day at the field when I have so many better things to do… Like wait for my assistant to turn up. But I tell her, “Trying and failing to work on my speech.”

She places her palm on the side of my face, digging her fingertips into my beard. I like when she does it, almost as if she’s anchoring herself to me. Really, I think she simply likes the way it feels. “Failing?”

I sigh my answer, and after one more scratch, she pivots from me to put everything away. “Can I help?”

I dump some granola into a cup of Greek yogurt, watching as Millie pours her Diet Coke over ice then puts the oranges in a bowl on the counter and unwraps the plant, which I assume is germinated but has yet to sprout. I smile to myself as she moves it three times before she’s satisfied with its placement. Then she empties a few nuts into her palm and stretches up onto her toes to put the bag away in Harold’s cabinet before crossing the living room to greet the bird. After a couple quiet words exchanged between them, she feeds him the treats, and by the time I’m finished with my snack, she’s still talking to him, narrating everything she’s doing in a funny voice—filling up his water and food, changing his bedding, and then taking him out of the cage to play with this toy that looks like a cell phone. She has him trained to press on the number she calls out and gives him a treat after each time he accomplishes the trick.

I’m really starting to like the godforsaken thing.

Fucking love the girl, though.

Mumbling to myself about how this is not what I had on my bingo card for my life, I throw myself onto the couch, waiting patiently until Millie pays attention to me. It’s a good fifteen minutes until she does, when she finally puts Harold away and turns her radiant smile on me.

“Hi.” Her dimple pops, and I love her so goddamn much. She crawls to me, placing her hands on my knee and her chin on top of them. “Let me help you with your speech.”

I stroke her hair, the copper strands falling through my fingers. “You can’t.”

“I can.”

I eye her. “I wish you could, but you can’t.”

“It’ll be fine. I took AP English.”

“Of course you did.”

I blow out a breath, lacing my fingers together on top of my stomach and dropping my head to the cushion. It won’t be fine because my father will expect a good speech. The audience won’t be expecting me to be genial or even polite, but I’m sure they’ll expect me to pay homage to the man who raised me. Especially standing next to my brother, who no doubt will have jokes at the ready, cute paternal stories to tell.

I don’t know why I said yes to this stupid event.

Except Millie shifts, sitting next to me on the couch, cuddling up to my side like a cat might, wrapping her arm around my torso, holding on tightly. I said yes for her. Not because it will matter to her, but because I want to prove to myself and everyone else that I can do this. I can be the better man this once.

I could be good for her, if nothing else.

After a minute, she lifts her chin so I’ll meet her gaze. “I can write something generic for you to read. Like a Hallmark card. You don’t need to stress yourself out over it.”

I’m not stressed over the speech.

Well…I am. I’m very fucking stressed, but more about the fact that all this fanfare about my father is holding up a microscope to my family, forcing me to face everything that’s happened between Brett, Kira, and me. Making me pretend like any of it is normal—my childhood, the rivalry with my brother… Hell, the rivalry with my own father.

Because that’s what it feels like. I’m not his son. I’m his rival. Brett is too; he’s just better at hiding it. He gets off on the competition.

I might too, if I always came out the winner.

But when you’re a loser like me, it’s hard to enjoy it. Thirty years of being the spare.

That doesn’t leave me with a whole lot to write a speech about.

And the knot of tension that I haven’t felt in weeks is back, first in my stomach when Millie shifts to a cross-legged position so she’s able to stare at me more easily.

I’ve never met anyone like her. She is one of a kind, but she’s also one of the few people who isn’t afraid of me. Who doesn’t blink away when I meet her gaze. Doesn’t balk when I glower. Doesn’t even seem to care that she knows if she were any other person, I’d have thrown her out of my house for asking, “Are you worried about the game?”

“Millie, stop,” I mutter with an annoyed shake of my head, but she doesn’t stop. Only follows me when I stand.

“Because it’s understandable if you are. It’s a big deal to be chosen for the All-Star team.”

Yeah, which is why I’ve been trying not to think about it since it is a very big fucking deal to be chosen to play for my league. Alongside my brother, of course. It’s the first time I’ll be on the same team as him since I broke his nose. And I’m sure part of the decision is because it’s high drama. Everyone will want to know how we’ll act when we’re back on the field, when he’s catching for me. But I don’t even fucking know. I haven’t spoken to him. Didn’t offer him congratulations when the baby was born in the spring. Didn’t respond to the voice mail he left.