Beautiful Chaos/A Jordan Knight FanFic/ Book One in the Beautiful series. ✔️

31

Jordan

SITTING IN THE WAITING ROOM OF a hospital while my dad is dying behind swinging double doors is purgatory. Hell would be knowing my last words to him were "cold, heartless, mercenary bastard."

The acrimonious words we flung at each other over Christmas pile up in my mind like stones until my head is too heavy to hold up. I drop it into my hands. I'm exhausted, but it isn't just fatigue weighing me down. The guilt, the regret, the anxiety. Shit, the fear. They are all bricks tied around my neck, pulling me under. Even though I sit here in this uncomfortable chair, perfectly still to the naked eye, inside I'm flailing. Gasping. I can't breathe.

"I'm gonna step out and get some air, Bris."

My sister nods, but doesn't look up from her focus point on the floor. I don't look at her before heading out of the waiting room and toward the cafeteria. I haven't been able to look her in the eye since my mother called. We were just about to board the flight for Los Angeles, Bristol maintaining a constant flow of shit I didn't want to talk about. The interviews I did in Chicago. How well the shows went. What we should keep for the tour later this year. What we might want to reconsider. How to work Petra into a few cities.

All I could think about was getting home to L.A. and bee-lining for Dallas' apartment. I was prepared to sit on her stoop until she got home if she was working.

Grady may be right. Dallas probably does need space to sort out her feelings. To figure out what our next steps should be, but I can't leave it all up to her. A week with no word was long enough to show me I'm not that guy who does the wise thing when something I want this badly is slipping through my fingers. I'm the kamikaze who flies in knowing he may not come out successful, but dammit I go down blazing for the mission.

And, no, I wasn't planning to apologize. Fuck no. I was actually going to make sure she knew I'd do it all again. I'd pay her mother's measly medical bills off a thousand times. If anything, I would have done it months ago. And I sure as hell wasn't planning to apologize for having sex with her. I planned to force my way past that door and figure out how to do it again, only slower and in a bed this time. I'm not going anywhere. I'm not giving up. "Relent" is not a word I allow myself in anything, definitely not with Dallas. It's been long enough. If there was any question about us staying in the friend zone, the Richter-busting sex should have answered it.

I was going to say all of that. Do all of that. I had a plan, but that apple cart got tipped over with my mother's frantic phone call. Shit's been rolling at my feet, out of my reach and control, getting away from me ever since.

And now I cannot fucking breathe. My lungs constrict, and the air I keep pulling in through my nose and blowing out of my mouth doesn't help. Doesn't relieve this suffocation of guilt and desperation. They wrap around my face like a clinging plastic bag.

" ... cold, heartless, mercenary bastard."

Those words pound in my head like hard rain. Like a hailstorm of things I wish I'd never said, but can't take back. That I may never get a chance to apologize for.

I wander into the cafeteria, not really even remembering how I got here. Maybe a cup of coffee will do me some good. I'm studying the menu up on the wall when someone squeals behind me.

"Oh my gah!" A brown-haired girl wearing—I kid you not—a T-shirt that says "Mrs. Jordan Knight" on the front, explodes into my personal space. Her hands are on my shoulders. She's kissing my cheeks and chin and any part of me her eager body can reach. I'm too tired to freak out. Between the physical exhaustion of the trip and the emotional turmoil of the last few hours, she could shank me where I stand and I'd barely muster enough energy to bleed.