Tempting /A Jordan Knight fanfic ✔️

47

Chapter 47: Offer of a Lifetime

Eventually Gabe found me by my car, past the point of hysterics, and closing in on a complete shut down.

I couldn't tell him what happened when he got there no matter how much he pushed me. My mouth literally wouldn't move to do its job. Gabe prodded and coddled me, trying every tactic to get me to tell him what had taken my voice away, but it was no use.

He got me into his car and drove us back to my apartment where I immediately crashed to the couch, soaking the cushions with my tears until I fell asleep somewhere between a scream and a sob.

Gabe woke me up a few hours later with some tea and a shoulder to cry into.

I told him what happened. Every nasty bit of it. Mel's disgust and hatred for me. How I'd ran away from Jordan for the last time in our cataclysmic game of back and forth. The mortifying conclusion to my gutless fling.

A fling felt so frivolous a label for what Jordan and I had, but in the wake of its explosion, that's exactly what it had been reduced to.

Gabe spent the rest of the day trying to distract me using crappy T.V. movies and failing each time I snuck off to the bathroom to call Mel's cell.

She sent each one to voicemail.

Alternating between crying, watching bad T.V., and calling Mel to no avail was how I spent the next day too. Currently, I was balled up on the couch, feet tucked beneath me as I listened to the other end of her voicemail for the 20th time that day.

"Maybe give it a rest for a few hours?" Gabe's voice crept up from behind the couch, soft and careful.

I closed my eyes with a sigh. "I can't. I have to talk to her."

Mindlessly, my fingers clicked her name on my phone's screen again.

The dial tone spread through my ears, taunting me with the rhythm that pulsed endlessly the same over and over again. Yet another way for music to tease me with my feelings. Music caught me in my indiscretions and shined an accusing light on them, winking at me with every beat of the ringing as if to tell me I got what I deserved.

"I really think she just needs some time, babe." The couch rocked beneath me as Gabe sat. "It's a lot to digest, and as much as it may suck for you, she needs space and you have to give it to her. She'll call you back eventually."

"Will she though?" I challenged. "I don't think she will if she thinks Jordan and I are still together, which is why I need her to just pick up once or respond to one of my messages."

"Have you talked to him since yesterday?"

"No." Casting my stare down to pick apart the fibers of the couch, the hollow ache in my chest splintered deeper. "I actually blocked his number."

"Woah, what? Doesn't that seem a bit extreme?"

Shaking my head, I peered back up at Gabe.

"Not if you knew us."

Jordan and I were a force that found energy in the smallest interactions with each other. A glance, a smile, a text. All may seem trivial, but they were enough to light our spark.

Falling in love with each other again and again wasn't a choice for us. It was a demand outside our control.

I was weak for him and he was weak for me, and we couldn't be weak anymore.

"Are you sure you should do this to yourself?"

"What do you mean?"

Gabe shifted closer, draping his heavy hand over my knee. "I mean, it's like you cut off both of your legs at once. Mel knows now, so why don't you try to make things better with her with Jordan by your side supporting you?"