I Love You More Than I'm Afraid (Our Forevers #2) by Rebel Hart (the first e reader .txt) 📕

Tristan let out an impatient sigh. “I’m not saying that. I’m not here like, ‘Oh, Hannah won’t talk to me, what a bad friend.’ I know you wouldn’t avoid me or not talk to me unless something was really wrong, ya know? I’m worried about you.” He opened his mouth to say something else, but then stopped.

“What?” I said.

He looked into my eyes. “Is it Arden?”

My heart pounded a couple of times harder than the rest. “What makes you say that?”

“Aria,” Tristan said, sending a streak of irritation through me. “She won’t tell me Arden’s personal stuff, obviously, but I told her I was worried about you and she said she thinks it’s probably Arden.”

Tristan knew some of my history with Arden, but really only in terms of a friendship—nothing romantic. He didn’t even know that, technically, when he and I first started dating, I was still with Arden. Things were already rocky by then. She was upset that I even accepted his request to date in the first place, but it wasn’t like I could say no. The most popular guy in the entire school asked me out, and if I had said no, people would have known instantly it was because I was gay. There was no real option for me, and besides, Tristan was so great. I didn’t think my suggestion to have a mask relationship with him and a real relationship with her would have been so bad. I’m sure Tristan would have understood my position.

It was Arden that didn’t seem to get it.

When everything went down with Aria and her old best friend and my very brief “flame” Lucky, he caught a glimpse of something else. I had come clean that I had Arden’s location saved on my phone, and he wasn’t dumb. That wasn’t something people did for friendships that had been broken for a couple of years, but he was so great, he never pressured me or asked me for more information. He allowed me the space I needed to come to him and tell him the story at my own speed.

I just hadn’t gotten there yet.

My thoughts must have caused me to be quiet for too long, because he leaned back in his chair with a look of total defeat on his face. “I’m sorry. If you don’t want to talk about it, you don’t have to.”

His tone was muted like he was giving up, and it broke me. I felt like so many people had already given up on me. I didn’t want to lose Tristan too.

“I…” I started, but then my voice died. It was like trying to push a square piece through a circle hole. I’d spent so much time telling myself I could never talk about it.

So how could I just talk about it?

“Don’t,” Tristan said. “It’s fine. It’s your personal business. You don’t want to tell me, that’s okay. I’m sorry for making you feel like you were obligated to talk about it.”

It didn’t help at all that Tristan was like the world’s greatest guy. He was patient, respectful, and kind. Above all, he loved me. Maybe he didn’t love me as much as he loved Aria. At some point how much he cared about her would eventually wedge between us, I’d come to accept that. But he was here for me now, and that was more than I could say for most people in my life.

Maybe I was just delaying the inevitable by not opening up more about it?

“It’s a really long story,” I started softly. “I’m just not ready to talk about everything yet, but today specifically… I approached Arden after school. I asked her if she and I could work on being friends again. Just cordial at least, to make things easier for you and Aria. She was really mean about it. Said that she doesn’t need to be friends with me to make things easier for the two of you. She said it’s awful being around me. Well, she said that at lunch, but… yeah. It hurt.”

Tristan frowned. “Wow. That sounds like a very different person from the one Aria’s described. She says Arden’s nothing but a sweetheart.” Then he reached forward and put a hand on mine. “I’m not saying I don’t believe you though. I do. I just can’t believe she has such a different side.”

“Yeah… that’s kind of why I got so angry just now.” I poked at my phone. “She’s at this place called The Undersound.”

“You can see it?” he asked.

I nodded. “I have her location on my phone. Some bad stuff happened in the past and we agreed to share our locations with one another in case anything ever happened again.”

“Share my location?” Arden asked. “I don’t even know what that means.”

“You’re an aspiring inventor. How are you this bad with your phone?” I asked. “Look.” I shared my location with Arden in a text message and then took her phone and clicked the link to add it to her circle and maps. I handed the phone back to her and pointed down at the dot. “See that? That’s me. You’ll be able to open this app whenever you want and see where I am.”

She furrowed her brow. “I don’t need to see where you are. You’re always right here.”

She made such a painfully cute face when she said it that I couldn’t resist the urge to lean forward and peck her on the lips. She smiled and I took her phone back and just shared her location with me for her. I looked up at her and tried not to kill our good mood by being a downer.

“Last summer, I woke up to find out that you were in the literal worst place in the world. You almost died because some people shoved you in a closet and refused to feed you.” My nose was already burning as I fought hard to keep the image of Arden’s emaciated form out of my brain. “I don’t