Page 116 of The Baller

Millie looked up from removing her laces. “I think… as loathe as I am to say it… he’s right, and not because he was staring at my ass. There’s no chemistry between them. They were way too wooden and stiff to be happy.”

“See? We’re already agreeing on stuff,” Tanner winked at her, earning himself a snarl.

It took ten minutes of changing out of skates, another five for Tanner to get more donuts, and maybe fifteen for the girls to go to the bathroom before we made it back out onto Fifth Avenue.

“Okay,” Ace said, clapping his hands together. “Let’s go back to the apartment and get warm.”

“Good idea,” I replied, as Millie turned to walk away. “Millie, where are you going?”

“I still need to do some last-minute shopping before the stores close.”

Tanner dropped his arm around her shoulders. “If you change your mind and wanna come over, you can stay in my room and we can practice being undercover again.”

The extension of her middle finger was her only response as she shrugged his arm off and headed down the sidewalk.

I leaned into Radley, brushing my lips to her ear. “Well, that went about as well as expected.”

TWENTY-THREE

RADLEY

It’sa strange thing seeing a guy you’d only ever known as an unwavering beacon of strength, fidget like there were red hot fire ants crawling in his pants.

In the last fifteen minutes, I’d watched Lux stand up, sit down, stand up again, check his reflection in the mirror, smooth his hair, rub his hands together, change his shirt, rub his hands down his pants, smooth his hairagain, flip through a magazine laying on the coffee table, and go back to the mirror.

“Babe?”

No answer.

“Lux?”

His head snapped in my direction to where I was still laying in the very comfortable bed at the Four Seasons, where I’d hoped we’d be staying for most of the day. But something told me that wasn’t going to happen.

After six days apart, I’d been waiting for him the second he’d touched down at Ronald Reagan airport this morning. Thirty minutes later, he’d checked into the Four Seasons, and we’d barely come up for air since. Tonight, he would be coming for a quiet dinner to meet my family where my brothers promised they’d be on their best behavior, even though I knew Ben had bought the new season Phillies uniform.

I’d expected to be more nervous than Lux, because that was the frequency I ran on, but watching Mr. Squirmy, who was now flicking back through the closet again, apparently I was wrong.

“Huh? What? What did you say?”

I got up on my knees, wrapping myself in the comforter. “Babe, it’s just dinner at home. I thought you were chilled about it.”

“I am chilled, but I’m also meeting your parents for the first time and they need to love me, and it might be home, but it’s also the White House. I’ve never been to the White House before.”

I shifted to the end of the bed, beckoning him to me. “They’re going to love you. Why wouldn’t they?”

“They’re Phillies fans for one, who are notoriously tricky to win over. I mean, every time we play you, the haters are out. Why couldn’t you support someone else?” He dropped his head with a grumble.

I grinned. Was it wrong to kind of enjoying seeing him like this? That, for once, I was the self-assured, confident one? “Babe, to love me is to love my allegiances, and I’m a Philly for life.”

“Goddamn Phillies. How am I going to spend the rest of my life withPhillies fans as my family?” He turned back to the closet like he hadn’t just dropped an atomic sized bomb of information on me.

“What?” I blinked.

“What?”

“What did you say about the rest of your life?”

“That I’m going to be related to Phillies fans,” he repeated, two lines appearing on his brow, marking his otherwise perfect skin, “and I need to make them love me, why else do you think I’m nervous?”

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