Tempting /A Jordan Knight fanfic ✔️

46

Chapter 46: Two Halves of a Heart

Betrayal.

What a messy emotion. It was the emotional equivalent of a volcano. Toxic. Explosive. Deadly.

From across the room, the eyes of my sister read nothing short of volcanic. Lava closed in around her pupil, incinerating the color in her eyes to crystalized charcoal. The look of them poisoned my heart, turning it sick and so, so heavy.

"Put me down," I muttered to Jordan. "Put me down!"

His arms loosened around my body so I could scurry away from him to put distance between me and the red-handed prints I left on his body. The second my feet touched the ground, Mel turned and beelined it for the exit.

"No." My heart threw itself forward, slamming against my ribs as I watched her go. "No, no, no, no. Please, no."

I was running on numb feet in Mel's direction with no thoughts in my head at all. Just desperation pumping through my veins to catch her, to explain to her, to beg her to listen.

"Mel! Mel, wait!"

Heads turned my way as I ran through the audience that was filing through the exit. I threw apologies left and right as I barrelled through them, keeping my eye on the brunette head of hair that shifted through the crowd further and further away from me.

"Mel!"

I screamed like I had been shot as I burst through an opening in the crowd as they funneled their way into the parking lot. Mel didn't even flinch as I yelled after her, but kept her head forward as she fast-walked through the lot of cars.

I pushed my legs to run faster after her, barely registering the slaps of chilled wind against my cheeks and bare arms as I caught up to her.

"Mel, please stop! Stop and talk to me! Mel—"

She whipped around to face me so fast that my dance shoes almost slipped on the gravel as I skidded to a stop.

"What the fuck was that?!"

A gasp cut through my throat as we locked eyes, hers vibrating with rage and an unmistakable vein of hurt that beat like it had a heart.

Fuck, why did it have to happen like this? Why couldn't it have happened on my own terms so I could have told her like I wanted to and not only because I'd been caught? Had I been able to go about this how I wanted, I would have planned out exactly what I was going to say and how and when.

"Amber!" Mel yelled in my lack of response, startling my poor, weeping heart. "You better start talking right fucking now or so help me—"

"I don't know what to say," I blurted out.

"You don't know what to say?" Her words and the incredulous mask that slipped over her face with them were taunting, electrifying the hairs on my arms. "How about you start by saying why I just found you wrapped around my ex fiancé looking like you were about three seconds from fucking him in front of everyone in the theater!"

"I didn't know you were coming."

It was a pathetic excuse, but it was true.

"Of course I came. This is a big day for you. The date has been up on the fucking refrigerator door since before you moved out."

Somehow, the vest of guilt I always carried around with me these days got heavier. I physically slumped over with the weight it bared on my shoulders, hunching into myself and trying to breathe through the pain.