Page 7 of Endurance
“ALL RIGHT, SO WHERE AMI dropping you?” Belle asks as we get closer to Bethnal Green.
Anxiety shivers over my skin. Or maybe it’s just the cold air because I’ve left the window open. I roll it up and look over at Belle, bracing myself. “Look, Ryan, I erm…don’t have my flat keys or my mobile.”
“Or your clothes,” she adds.
“Right, and well, you could run me out to my dad’s in Chigwell, but I’m in the shit with him as it is. And on the off-chance that this night doesn’t end with me being London’s front-page news tomorrow, it’d be really spectacular if you’d maybe…”
“What, Tanner? Find the plot,” she snaps.
“Can I stay at yours?” I force a toothy grin, hoping she will remember my moment of nobility with Sedgwick and not the mess I’ve found myself in.
Her dark eyes narrow and her black lashes are so thick I can only catch a sliver of glossiness through them. It’s not easy to stay trained on her eyes right now, though. Her straight, dark hair is hanging down loose over her shoulders, which brings my eyes to her chest. Her black tank top is so thin that with the glow from the dashboard, I can see the outline of her nipples almost perfectly.Fuck, I need to stay focused on her face. Focus on that one tiny freckle on the right arch of her lip. The one I noticed at Old George when I was so close to her that I could smell her strawberry lip gloss. That’ll keep me busy. That little spot will keep my eyes up. But now I’m thinking about her lips, about kissing her lips, about where her lips could go, what her lips could wrap around, how deep she could take—
Christ, Tanner, stop your line of thinking or you’ll get a stiffy under her cardigan. You know she’d never let you live that down.
“Tell me how you ended up like this and you have a deal,” she says simply.
I exhale and turn to look out the window. Just when I thought I was making some ground with Belle, I’m about to get properly thrust back into the muck.
“It’s probably one of the things you’ve already mentioned.”
“Jilted husband?” she asks.
I shake my head.
“Boyfriend?”
I shake again.
“Fiancé again?”
“Again?” I scowl.
She half smiles. “I saw it on Twitter last week. You were trending with the hashtags ‘Harris Hustle’ and ‘Tanner Tanks Again.’”
I drop my head back against the headrest. Of course I was. Knowing she won’t let this go, I answer, “It was her sister.”
Belle gasps. “Ew! Like incestuous sisters wanting it at the same time?”
“No!” I exclaim and look away.
“Well, I wouldn’t put it past you. I don’t think you have much of a standard for the women you pick.”
“Like you would know,” I scoff.
“Tanner, I’d have to be blind, deaf, and stupid to not know what kind of women you’ve been dipping your dingle in these past couple months. It’s all over social media, the papers, the blogs.”
“Oh, and you read all that rubbish?” I grind my teeth together with annoyance. “Don’t believe everything you read, all right?”
“I used to read it and enjoy it. It was my guilty pleasure. But you seem to be taking slutty footballer to the next level, sucking all the pleasure out of it for me.” She shakes her head and focuses back on the road, leaving me alone with my thoughts.
Silence stretches out and the longer it goes, the heavier the tension gets. I can tell she’s mad. Her knuckles are white on the wheel, but it’s not like I’m her problem. She’s no picnic to tolerate either. Belle Ryan drives me fucking insane. She says whatever she wants, whenever she wants. She doesn’t ever even consider holding back or biting her tongue. She’s a fucking force of nature so sure about everything, she has no problem destroying anything in her path.
“So what happened then? You still haven’t said,” she utters.
I sigh heavily. “I was with a girl and her sister came home, and I’d been with her sister, too. I said some stupid things. Things I regret. Things I didn’t mean.”
“Like what?”
