Page 33 of Endurance
I laugh. Truly laugh. I can’t believe this is the same man I was screaming at before, first in anger, then in pleasure.
“They’ve never touched this table.”
He exhales with relief and it makes me giggle around another bite of food. Indie’s told me how close she and Tanner have become, and his reaction just now secures that fact for me.
After we finish eating and clean up, I stride into the living room and flop myself on the sofa fully prepared to ignore the sexual elephant in the room.
“Shall we discuss that email?”
Tanner nods, joining me and pulling his mobile out of the pocket of his jeans. He looks delicious in worn jeans and a T-shirt, his black inked arms on display. Or perhaps he looks more delicious because I’ve had his cock inside of me.
“It’s not quite as painful as I anticipated,” Tanner says, scrolling through his mobile as he sits down beside me. I try not to take his comment personally, but I need to remember and hold on to the fact that, despite everything Tanner said before he shagged me senseless, he still has walls up when it comes to me. “We have to go on a London Eye double date with Cam and Indie. He wants us to do that next. Talk about cliché and touristy.”
This is the one event I am actually looking forward to. “I’ve never done the London Eye.”
“What?” Tanner exclaims. “You grew up in London. Didn’t your parents ever take you, or wouldn’t you go there for a school field trip?”
“No,” I reply with a shrug. “Never. We had a nanny growing up, but the London Eye wasn’t on our list of approved sites to visit.”
He blows out some air. “That’s a shame. Vi took us on a regular basis as kids. We even knew the best times to go to avoid the long queues.”
Hearing about Tanner and Camden’s family life is odd. They all seem so close despite losing their mother at a young age. Perhaps that tragedy only unified them more. I’ve never had that with my brother. We had completely different interests, and his constant need to please our father was so off-putting, I could hardly stand to be around him.
“Anyway, what else is there?”
“Bethnal Green has a home match in two weeks that they want us to attend as…spectators.” He grinds the words out as if they are painful to say. “Then there are a couple of dinner things. Pretty typical stuff.”
My brows lift. We actually won’t have to see each other all that much, based on this list. I can’t help but wonder how us sleeping together will change any of that. Regardless, I have to do my part in all of this and get back in good graces with Dr. Miller.
“I have one event I need to add to the list that might be a bit of a headache.” He looks at me with curiosity. “My attending talked to me today…my boss. She wants me to get you and some of your footballer friends to come to a benefit the hospital puts on every year to raise money for research.”
He looks surprised but not put off. “All right then. I’m sure I can get my brothers to go at the very least. What kind of research is it?”
“Baby saving stuff. To make what I do possible.”
He turns, pulling one leg up on the sofa so he’s angled toward me. His steely blue eyes look serious. “I don’t think I realised what it is you do exactly until you told Sedgwick. It sounds…heavy.”
I exhale through my nose. “It is heavy. It’s hard and it’s heartbreaking and it’s awful, but the payoffs when it works are just…”
“Aces?” The corner of his mouth tugs up.
“Yeah.” I smile. “My boss has thousands of baby pictures all over her office of the little patients she’s saved. Little babies that probably would not have even made it to delivery if it wasn’t for what she does.”
“What made you want to go into that field?” he asks, looking at me with honest and genuine curiosity.
I prop my feet up on the coffee table. “Is this Tanner Harris Deep Talk again?”
“It is if you want it to be.” He waits for my reply.
Perhaps it would do Tanner good to hear some real world, scary shit. My eyes narrow at this challenge. “You’ve heard Indie and me talk about our Tequila Sunrise outings, right?”
I look over at him and he nods. “But it honestly sounds like an excuse to get pissed,” he replies, draping an arm on the back of the sofa. His fingers accidently brush my hair and the sensation makes my eyes close.
“It kind of is, but it’s so much more.” I shake off the warmth of his touch that’s in the forefront of my mind. “The reason we started that tradition is the reason I selected this specialty. When we were interns at the hospital, the first death we witnessed was a little baby girl who died from SIDS.”
He frowns. “What is SIDS?”
“Sudden infant death syndrome,” I reply, letting the weighty words have a moment in reality before explaining further. “It’s unexplained and doctors can’t correlate it to any specific cause. It’s just…random.”
