Tempting /A Jordan Knight fanfic ✔️

44

Chapter 44: I Have No Right to Hate You

My stomach dropped fast and hard as her eyes met mine in the mirror. The door swung on the bathroom stall behind her that she'd just come out of, and neither of us spoke. She looked just the same as she did on stage, save for the red, blotchy spots around her puffy eyes that told a tale of her tears that she'd come in here to shed in private.

I was probably the last person on the planet she'd want to run into after having just cried her eyes out, but I suppose it's true what they say about karma...

She is one fickle bitch.

Dropping her blurry eyes from mine, Hannah scurried over to one of the sinks to wash her hands. On awkward feet, I walked up next to her to use the sink one over from hers, setting my quick-fix makeup bag I'd nabbed on the way over on the edge.

Feeling a bit daring, I peeked over at her to see if she was doing the same to me.

She wasn't, actually.

Instead, she was busy trying to clean up the mess she'd made of her eye-makeup, aggressively wiping a wadded up paper towel beneath her puffy eyes.

As I watched her struggle, an unanticipated bout of pity blossomed inside of me.

That pity turned a nagging finger at me, scolding me for letting her hang out to dry. Her eye makeup was a total mess, and the bottle of concealer I had hidden in my makeup bag burned through to my palm laying against it.

Sucking back a big inhale, I fingered my way through my makeup bag until I found my concealer and held it out to her.

Hannah's stare cut across to my outstretched hand in the mirror, regarding the gesture with caution. Without sparing me a glance, she carefully took the bottle between her fingers and mumbled out a quiet, "Thanks."

Next to each other, we did our makeup without saying a word until Hannah got up the courage to make awkward small talk.

"How did you and Gabe's routine go?"

I popped one of my shoulders up in a shrug, hiding the smile digging into my cheeks.

"It went well, I think. The audience seemed to like it."

In the mirror, she nodded and again, we fell quiet.

The red around her eyes was now hidden thanks to my concealer, but the swelling was more difficult to hide. Maybe she was just crying because she was embarrassed she fell onstage. Maybe she was upset that she knew, even though the results hadn't come out yet, that she and Daniel had lost such an important competition.

Though, I had to wonder, for all the times I'd worn that same crestfallen guise, if her reasoning for tears was the same as mine when I was in her shoes.

"You want to talk about why you were crying?"

A look of horror washed Hannah's face that she quickly hid by bowing her head towards the sink.

"I really don't think you care why I was crying."

She posed an interesting question.

Did I really care why she was crying or was I just being polite? This was a woman who helped tear down my entire life, so finding her crying her eyes out in a bathroom stall should bring me some sort of happiness, right? There was a part of me that entertained the thought that she deserved to be crying.

Though, that thought became harder to hold on to when I considered the most likely cause for her tears.

"Did Daniel do something?"