Rock My World/ A Jordan Knight FanFic✔️

32

Jesse

I was out of bed on the razor's edge of dawn. It was a cool morning so I put on a hoodie and went for a run alone. Jude wouldn't like it, but I needed some time to think. I'd been doing too much of that lately, probably, but it was harder than fuck to climb up out of this place once I was all down in it.

I hated feeling powerless, but every time I spoke with my sister, that's exactly how I felt.

My conversation with Jay last night kept rolling through my head; pretty much the same as every other conversation we'd had in the past nine years.

Before the tour, I'd managed to get some time with her while I was in L.A., and she'd seemed better than she had in a long time. More like her old self.

Then just when things seemed to be going well, like always, she withdrew.

Disappeared.

And as always, I'd skirted around the issue when I saw her last night, afraid if I confronted her about it directly she'd bail and disappear even longer.

I was pretty much running out of shit to say to her. I hated sounding like a nagging broken record. Brody was probably right. Maybe I should talk to a therapist or something and they could help me figure out how to get through to her. Because what I'd been doing for the past nine years wasn't fucking working.

She still refused to commit to anything.

She still refused to stay in one place longer than a month.

She still refused to come home.

The only thing I was totally sure of was that I had no idea how to talk to her, about any of it. She just kept pretending that everything was fine, and when I pressed, she pulled away.

It was fucking impossible.

I was still going over it in the shower and afterward, over breakfast with Nora. At least she seemed to be doing better than she was yesterday when she showed up at the restaurant, but she still looked tired and on edge, like she hadn't gotten a good sleep in a week. Which would make two of us.

She was her usual sweet self, but kind of preoccupied, texting with Devi. She tried to bring up what we talked about last night, asking if there was anything she could do to help, but by now I was so wrung out over all of it I just downplayed the whole thing.

"It's probably not as bad as I made it sound," I said. "I've just always felt responsible for her, you know?"

"But you don't think she's happy." She studied me with her keen blue-greens, her brows pinched together and her pink mouth in a thoughtful pout.

I shrugged and stuffed my mouth with eggs, and when she tried to press the issue, to gently get me to open up, I mumbled something about my imagination and started pretending to read the paper. Like a dick.

She gave me a long, unsure look, then went back to her phone.

"Shit. Have you seen this?"

She handed the phone to me. Her browser was open to an article on some trashy entertainment news website, "news" being a loose term.

There were two images side-by-side at the top of the page, one of Elle and I at the show last night, and one of Katie and I, also from last night. The headline above the images read Bizarre Love Triangle. A larger photo below the first two showed Nora and—

I looked up at her and her eyes went huge. "It's not what it looks like."

What it looked like was Nora and her ex-fiancé tongue battling. They were pressed together and he was gripping her by her arms. Their mouths were locked together, eyes closed, but I recognized the red lace dress she'd worn to the VIP party in Vancouver and I knew the image was from that night. It was taken from a high angle in the corner of the otherwise empty hallway where I found them, obviously from a security cam. Which meant that either the douche himself or one of his staff had given the image to the media.