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

squinted my eyes and could just barely see another broken stick in the distance, pointing in our direction.

How intelligent.

“Okay.” Hannah came back to my side and slung her arm behind my back again. “We’re close. Can you make it?”

“I got no choice,” I huffed.

She rolled her eyes and scoffed at me. “That’s such a you answer.”

Though my chest burned as I did it, I laughed. “And it’s so you to be annoyed with it.”

“If we can just get to the road, the rest is pretty easy,” she said. “Let’s go.”

Following the direction of the broken branch, Hannah and I continued through the woods, both of us beginning to shiver in the rain, until finally, the darkness was pierced by man-made light. I’d never been so happy to see a street lamp, poking out between the leaves of the trees like a beacon of hope in the distance. Keeping our breathing even to maintain a good pace, we charged through the mud and brush until we were finally able to leave the forest behind and step out onto pavement.

And the street was totally empty.

I still had no clue what time it was, because I wasn’t sure when I’d fallen asleep or when I’d woken up. The clouds blocked out the moon’s glow, so I couldn’t get any help that way, but I had to imagine it was after midnight at least.

“It was like an interstate earlier,” Hannah whimpered. “So much traffic. It was hard enough for the person who brought me up here to drop me off.”

“Did you get into a car with a stranger?” I asked.

Hannah shrugged, starting back off towards the forest where we could hide under the trees. “An older couple got me to the city limits, then I hopped in with a trucker to get up north. He had to take I-20 though, and had to let me off, so I did a literal thumbs out, walking backwards up the road hitchhike and a family headed to their cabin brought me this far.”

“Do you have any idea how dangerous that is?” I asked.

“I don’t care,” Hannah replied. “Once my mom told me you had gone to a summer camp, I knew something was wrong. I looked the place up and…” Her eyes registered horror. “I guess it’s really as bad as people say.” She looked over at me. “Were you really in an isolation chamber?”

Hannah was such a sweet and innocent spirit, that I at first planned to not tell her about it, but if she’d read about it on the internet, hearing it directly was probably better. “Yeah.” Bracing me against one of the drier trees, Hannah pulled her arm from around me and then started to undo her jacket. “Whoa. You’ll be cold,” I said.

“It’s fine,” she said. After she got the jacket off, she laid it on the ground, and then guided me down onto it. I slid over as far as I could so that she could drop down next to me, and though trickles of rain broke through the tree cover, we were mostly protected. “Here.”

She nuzzled closely to me, wrapping an arm around my back, and pulling my injured ankle up into her lap. I dropped my hand against my leg, and Hannah’s other hand came forward to draw circles in my palm. We didn’t look at each other at first, but then she looked up at me. “You’re thin… not in a good way.”

It felt dumb to be as happy as I was just to be so close to her, given the circumstances we were in. “Yeah. Um. In the… chamber, they don’t really feed you. Bread and water every…” Time was still hazy for me. “Week, maybe? I think I’ve only eaten twice.”

Her jaw dropped. “They only fed you once a week?!” Her head fell against mine. “How long ago were you in there?”

“I actually just got out around lunchtime,” I said. “My friend Codie said I was in there for eighteen days. The longest anyone was in there, at least this summer, as far as anyone knows.”

Tears filled her eyes. “They only fed you bread and water twice in the last eighteen days?” She dropped her head. “Shoot. I should have come sooner.”

“It’s okay, Hannah. You’re here now. It’s okay,” I said. “You did a James Bond breakout. It almost made it worth it to see that determined look on your face.”

Hannah looked at me sadly. “I’m… so sorry. I can’t believe they would send you to a place like that.”

“Yeah, well my parents are a unique breed. Although, I’d like to think they didn’t—”

“I’m sorry,” Hannah said, shaking her head, “but all I had to do was type the name of the place into Google and the first thing that popped up was an article urging parents not to send their children there. Horror stories of stuff exactly like you said. Assuming your parents found this place on the internet…”

“They knew exactly what it was,” I finished her thought, and it actually broke me more than I was already broken, which was saying something. “Well I suppose that tracks with a long life of holy rolling and homophobia, so I guess I’m not surprised.”

It was clear Hannah was still terrified by the thought. “It’s horrible. Just because…” She bowed her head. “I don’t think it’s so bad that we…”

I watched Hannah in surprise. I’d known that I was in love with her since she played mommy and I played daddy when we were little kids, but she’d never mentioned feeling similarly. In fact, after learning that her parents were against homosexuality, she’d gone out of her way to project an air of straightness.

Now, however, she almost seemed on the verge of admitting the same feelings that I had.

“I feel like I need to apologize,” I said, bringing Hannah’s gaze back up to me. “When I was down there… they make you say stuff. They want you to deny it and swear—”

Hannah set her forehead against mine. “Don’t