Tempting /A Jordan Knight fanfic ✔️

21

Chapter 21: I Wanna Kiss the Stars

"How much have you had to drink?"

Jordan shrugged, his eyes as lazy as his smile. "I didn't keep count, Mom."

Searching around the living room, there were at least three empty shot glasses lying around, trying to seem innocent.

"It's just... it seems like you drank a lot."

"Well, there wasn't anything better to do." The kitchen light above his head illuminated this sort of dark fog blanketed over his usually bright with life stare. "I tried watching T.V., going for a run around the neighborhood, even reading a book, but nothin' worked so... I drank."

"What do you mean nothing 'worked'?"

The darkness over Jordan's eyes solidified to a coal, burning with the same fractured intensity. For several seconds, he said nothing. He simply stared me down with eyes as black and as intimidating as a starless night sky.

Before I could lose my tether on the ground and get pulled into his orbit, he perked up and asked, "Do you want a drink?" He lifted a mostly empty bottle of rum high in the air. "Either a celebratory drink or a concilila—conciliatory—fuck that word's hard to say. You pick based on how your date went."

"I don't want a drink."

"Does that mean the date didn't go well?"

"No. That means that I currently make drinks for a living and I already had a glass of wine tonight, so I'm good."

"Ah." Jordan glanced at the little alcohol left in the bottle, and I breathed a sigh of relief when he set it down untouched. "So," he said, biting the single syllable between gritted teeth. "Wanna tell me how your date went with Peter?" Mm

"Not really." I hung my purse on the arm of the countertop stool, avoiding all eye contact with Jordan.

"Why not?"

"Because it's personal?"

"Personal?" Jordan rounded the corner of the kitchen counter to meet me in the living room. "What's so personal about it that I can't know? Peter's my good friend and you're about to be my—" He paused for a beat. It was long enough to pique my intrigue as he loaded up a sharp sigh. "Sister-in-law."

God. The way he said it made my blood curdle beneath my layers of crawling skin. 'Sister' sounded like a curse coming from him—like the worst kind of slander he could think of.

"So what's so personal about the date that I can't know?"

Grabbing a hold of the chair next to me, I unclasped the backs of my heels whilst trying my best to deter Jordan's questioning so I could just finish this night and go to bed.

"There's nothing to tell. I don't know why you want to know so badly anyway."

"I just wanna make sure he treated you the way you deserve to be treated."

I stopped myself from asking how he thought I deserved to be treated. That was a question loaded with worms that would spill out all over the floor and muck up my attempt to recover from my feelings for him.

"He did. He was a perfect gentleman."

"Does that mean he didn't try to kiss you?"

The question spilled out of Jordan's mouth like it had been sitting there, waiting to be heard since I came through the door. It brought with it an uncomfortable clenching in the pit of my stomach, and an uneasy tension that laid out between us.