So instead, I go with, “Harrison doesn’t even mesh well with the other players.”
“And how would you know?”
“I just . . . I can tell.”
He scoffs. “I spend all day every day with those guys. You’re grasping at straws here.”
I can sense him hoping that I’ll back down now, that I’ll maybe take a seat so we could have a civil discussion about this. But I don’t. I stay standing, facing off with him.
“Goddammit, Reese.” Emmett begins pacing my office. “Did something else happen with Kaiser that you’re not telling me about?”
“No. No, nothing else happened. But he’s expensive and I have a plan.”
Sure, Harrison tends to talk to me like I’m a silly girl who has no idea what they’re doing around a baseball field, but I can handle that. I’m not so sensitive that I’d make a business decision of this magnitude just because the guy calls me “sweetie.”
Emmett stops in the middle of my office, brows cinched and trying to read me. “Why?”
“Why what?”
“Why are you coming in here and trying to changeeverything?”
Isthatwhat he thinks I’m doing? Because I’m not. There’s so much history of this franchise that I want to protect.
“I have a vision for this club and some decisions that my grandfather made need to be undone in order for that to happen.”
Emmett stays silent, watching me. And he looks utterly heartbroken as he does.
“Like me,” he finally says.
“What?”
“I don’t know why I’m always so surprised by your decisions. It’s so easy for you to drop people, like they mean nothing. And we all know I’m next.” Emmett shakes his head, headed for my door. “Thanks for the reminder, Reese. I won’t be surprised when it’s my turn.”
6
Emmett
“Big hit!” Max says, pointing at my desktop computer while sitting on my lap.
“That was a big hit,” I agree. “That’s Isaiah.”
“Yeah. Zaya.”
His little finger smears across my screen, attempting to follow his uncle as he runs the bases while we watch game film together.
My daughter is sitting on Kai’s lap on the other side of my desk, both watching their son help me prepare for tonight’s home game. All while wearing a jersey with his dad’s old number on it.
“What do you think, Bug. Do you think I should play Isaiah tonight, or should I bench him?”
Max giggles in my lap, as if that was the funniest thing he’s ever heard, and Kai and Miller join in.
We all know I’m not benching my star shortstop.
“No way!”
“No?” I ask. “What if Auntie Ken asked me to bench him for annoying her with that song he always walks out to?”
Max thinks it over. “Hmm. Then yeah.”
