Tempting /A Jordan Knight fanfic ✔️

33

Chapter 33: I Fell and I Crashed

I need to talk to you when you get here.

The first words I woke up to Thursday morning set a load of bricks in my stomach from the moment I stepped out of bed.

Jordan's text message came in at 1:13 am last night and had been swirling through my mind the entire drive over to their place. We were all supposed to be leaving together for my parents tonight.

By the time I pulled up and parked in their driveway, the size of my uncontainable thoughts had doubled and my head felt more like a hot-air balloon than anything else. My overnight bag in hand, I walked up to the front door and let myself in.

Immediately, I ran smack dab into a wall of silence.

The living room and kitchen were empty. The T.V. was off and there were no voices coming from any area of the house.

Maybe I should text Jordan that I'm here?

Just as the thought crossed my mind, a noise struck my ears—and it came from my old bedroom.

Curiosity leading me that way, the sound drew me in like it had thrown a rope around my body and was pulling me until my ear pressed against the cool wood of the bedroom door.

I listened for only a few seconds before realizing what the familiar noise was. Heart leaping up my throat, I pressed my fingers to the door, swinging it wide open.

Mel's head jerked up, her watery eyes landing on mine and punching a hole clear through my heart so it was gaping and bleeding and gasping for life.

"Can you shut the door please?" Mel demanded through a sob.

I followed without even the slightest pause, closing the door behind me and hurrying towards the bed.

"What's wrong? Are you okay?"

"No, I'm not fucking okay. Do I look okay?"

Truth be told, she looked like I'd never seen her look before. The bags beneath her eyes and the exhaustion leaking down her face in wet streaks combined to create something I never thought I'd ever see in my big sister.

Defeat.

My badass, independent, take-no-shit sister looked utterly defeated.

"Did something happen?"

Please be work related.

Please be about losing a case or her job.

Please be anything other than what I'm thinking.

Sucking down a jagged breath, Mel exhaled two words that would define the inescapable heartbreak lingering inside of me for the rest of my life.

"It's Jordan."

As she said his name, I felt it float from her mouth and burrow into my chest, sinking through each layer of my heart until it reached its core. His name wound around my heart's core like a weed until it wound so tightly, it'd cut off all circulation. The cold of a dying organ trickled through my body, the chill reaching out, stiffening my blood to ice so I was numb from the inside out.

"What about him?" I asked, already hearing the distance needled in my voice.

Mel choked on one of her cries, having difficulty getting the words out.

At seeing her pain, I willed the numbness to drive deeper.

"I think he wants to break things off between us."