Tempting /A Jordan Knight fanfic ✔️

30

Chapter 30: Snapped

Going into the next day, there was something off. If I had to describe it, I'd say I felt like a bee trapped in a glass jar with small air holes punctured in the lid. I was surviving, but I wasn't happy or at ease. I was breathing, I was walking around and talking like normal, but inside there was a buzzing, subtle but impossible to ignore.

The buzzing kept me on edge all throughout the day. Just like that bee, I was panicked, even though I wasn't in any immediate danger. I was struggling to stay still for no good reason. The feeling that I was slowly suffocating sat on my chest, growing heavier as the day progressed. That feeling was too big not to shatter at some point... It was just a question of when.

"Hey, Beautiful. Can I get a Gin and Tonic?"

The voice of the next customer pulled me from my daze. The smug gleam touching his stare that lowered down my shirt was so very hard not to roll my eyes at.

"Sure thing."

Spinning away from him, I'd just barely nabbed the bottle of gin before his voice rang out again.

"Maybe you should make one for yourself too. On me."

"Oh, that's okay. We're not really supposed to drink on the job."

"Come on. Who am I gonna tell? It can be our little secret."

By this point in the day, I'd handed out so many fake laughs that I was beginning to forget what my real laugh sounded like. Yet here I was, handing out another.

"As tempting as that is, I'm going to have to pass." Turning back, I slid his drink to him and batted a brief smile to the stranger. "But thank you for the offer."

The man scoffed in the face of my kind smile.

"I thought blondes were all about having fun?"

His comment swelled the buzzing in my chest to my ears, grating on my already ice thin nerves.

"Now I guess you'll know not to trust stereotypes."

And that should have been the end of it. But this man had other plans—plans that did not sit well with the desperate bee ramming around inside of me.

"I'd say I just know not to trust sexy blonde bartenders."

The heavy seduction in his voice ran down my spine, and everything in me screamed to turn from him and run—or to just scream in general. One good, long scream that came from the gut.

Instead, I just tossed him yet another polite chuckle. Then I got back to work.

"You see what I mean?" My shoulders tensed up to my ears as the man scoffed. "I give you a compliment and you ignore me."

"I'm just trying to work, sir."

"Work? The bar's half empty!"

"Yes, but I have things to do even when I'm not serving—"

"No, no, no, I don't want to hear your excuses," he cut me off, waving his hand in front of his face. "I just want you to let loose and have fun, okay? How about a shot? Just one shot with me, come on."

"Like I said, I can't—"

"Jesus fucking Christ, it's one shot!"

The slap of his fist against the bar snapped a sharp breath back into my lungs. The man leaned over the bar, nearing himself and the off-kilter look in his eyes.

"You know the polite thing to do when a man offers to buy you a drink? Say yes. It's not gonna kill you."

Just then, at the hands of his bitter words, his entitlement, and the millions of other triggering catastrophes in my life, I reached the when. Inside my chest, the glass walls trapping the bee cracked like lightning, loud and dangerous all the same.