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

“I guess.” My head fell back down to the table. “I just… I can’t do that.”

“Okay.” Tristan’s hand rubbed my head once again. “You don’t have to. I’m glad you told me anyway so that I know what’s going on. Is there anything I can do to help?”

I sniffled. “I’m hungry.”

He laughed. “I can definitely do something with that. I know a diner uptown that opens at five. Come on. My treat.”

I heard the table creak as Tristan climbed off, then I took a deep breath in and got up out of my spot. We walked back over to Tristan’s car and he opened the door for me. Just before I was about to climb in, I stopped and looked at him. All things considered, as shitty as I’d been lately, when I needed him he came running. That meant a lot to me.

“Thank you for always being there for me,” I murmured.

He took my head and pulled it towards his, setting his forehead on mine. “I always will be.”

12

Arden

Three designs had survived my weeks-long, grueling, narrowing process for which one I was planning to submit with my application for Y.I.I.P. I didn’t expect that the actual selection process would take me as long as it did, but before I knew it, it was the middle of April, and the application was due the first of June. I still had to actually build whatever I picked, write the application essay, get my letters of recommendation, and schedule my interview. There was still so much to do. On top of all of that, I was grinding my way through final projects and exams, and preparing for graduation.

So I was feeling a little overwhelmed.

“Ar-den!” A thump against my head snapped me to attention and I looked over to see Aria leaning in my direction from her desk. “What’s going on? I’ve called your name like three times.”

“Sorry,” I replied. “I’ve narrowed my application down to three designs and I can’t decide which one I want to build. The most impressive of the three is going to take forever and it has a lot of electronic parts that could be faulty or get damaged during travel. The simplest and cheapest one to build is a little underwhelming, and the one that strikes right in the middle of those two, I don’t know, I just don’t feel like it really screams Arden.”

“Miss Namon, Miss Montel. Focus please,” the teacher, Miss Eastman, called.

“Sorry,” we resounded.

Aria leaned back in her chair and then a few seconds later a chat request popped up on the L.E.D. screen laid into my desk. It was from Aria so I clicked it.

“Let’s meet after school and pick a design. Eastman’s final is the most difficult in the whole school. We really should be paying attention, especially you because you’re already miserable at history.”

I snorted and replied, “Why do I need to know when a whole bunch of problematic people were born or when countries were founded on the blood, sweat and tears of the same people they now persecute? Unless it’s unpacking and disregarding history, I’m not interested.”

As soon as I hit send, Aria let out a snort and her hands flew up to her mouth. Miss Eastman looked up from her lecture, her eyes narrowed on Aria. “Have I said something funny, Miss Montel?”

Aria shook her head. “No ma’am. Sorry.”

“I expect the disruptions from our resident class clown,” her eyes briefly flicked to me, “but you’re usually much better behaved than this. All of this material will be covered on the final, so please pay attention.”

“Yes ma’am. Sorry.” A few kids giggled and Aria seemed legitimately embarrassed. I felt bad. She wasn’t entirely a goody-two-shoes, but she was pretty damn close, and it was clear she didn’t take well to getting in trouble. If she wasn’t trying to keep me in line, she wouldn’t have any problems.

I opened our chat and typed, “Sorry I got you in hot water. I’ll pay attention. Coffee’s on me after school.”

Aria side-eyed me with a smile and nodded and I was glad I was able to paper over it pretty easily. I would have rather dragged my fingernails over a chalkboard than stopped working on my application to pay attention to history, one of the few classes dragging the lessons all the way out to the end of the year. But it was important for me not to cause any more issues for Aria, so I closed the e-docs with my designs in them and opened a clean document to take notes.

It wasn’t the only time throughout the day that I had to be reminded to focus. In fact, it wasn’t the only time in that week or the next one. Even though Aria was doing the best she could to try and help me get my application completed in time while finishing up everything that was necessary to get done for school, her schedule was getting busier too. She’d already tested early into her college of choice and was taking a couple of classes in the evenings so she could attend part-time and work the other part in the coming years. Between that and balancing her time with Tristan, the time she had to help me was getting thinner and thinner. I didn’t blame her, we were busy.

But it wasn’t a surprise I didn’t handle stress well.

Though she helped me narrow down which specific design I was going to do, I was hoping for more late night building sessions or her help writing the paper because she was awesome with words, but work and school had her swamped. I had to appreciate the effort she was putting forward to try and help keep us both afloat, but one night I found myself all alone with very little attention span.

And all it took was one call to send me off in the wrong direction.

“Hey baby!” Suli greeted me happily when I answered the phone. “How’s it going?”

“Stressful,” I answered honestly.