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

my confidence. I started thinking about all of the things that could happen to Aria if she got arrested and began feeling like maybe it was a little too much. She’d pissed me off by taking my best friend and ex-girlfriend from me sure, but maybe she didn’t deserve whatever it was that Ceradi had up her sleeve.

“Okay,” Ceradi said. “I’ll really take care of everything, so Hannah you can just sit back and enjoy the sweet revenge. Mil, I need you to have that phone going. I want footage.”

“You got it gorgeous,” he responded.

“You know, Ceradi, we don’t have to go like full-force,” I said. “I want my revenge, don’t get me wrong, but I don’t want her to get in any serious trouble or anything, you know?”

“Trouble isn’t really what I have in mind,” Ceradi said. “So don’t worry your pretty little head about it.”

Somehow, that wasn’t as comforting as I think Ceradi meant it to be. From the way she said it, it sounded like what she had in her mind was going to be worse, but what would be worse than getting Aria arrested for being at an underage bar?

“What are you planning?” I dared to ask.

“It’s like I said,” she replied. “I’ve got everything under control. We’re just going to have a little bit of fun, and don’t worry, you won’t be attached to this at all. As far as we know, we were all at my house together all night. We won’t get in any trouble, don’t worry.”

It seemed I wasn’t going to get any information out of Ceradi before game time. “Okay…”

We climbed out of the car into the early-summer evening, and I already found myself looking around in paranoia. How Arden could handle coming out to a place like this all the time was beyond me; my nerves were shot just being two blocks away. Ceradi and Milton walked with confidence though, striding up the sidewalk in the direction of The Undersound like they were just a couple of downtown bar hoppers out for the night. I looked back at Ceradi’s car, thinking that I could easily turn around and just wait at the car, but in a way, it felt like not being there to see what went down would be worse.

This was the bed I made, I probably should lie in it.

As we got close to The Undersound, we bumped into the long line. It was a Saturday night after all, and the crowd was thick and the energy was sickening. I wasn’t cut out for that sort of lifestyle. Drinking at my friends’ house was one thing, but people were bumping into one another, swearing at each other, and sweating up a storm. Half the guys we walked past tried to reach out and touch me, only not doing it to Ceradi because she was hanging off of Milton.

I wanted to go home.

Finally, we got to the front of The Undersound and Ceradi found a spot to stand that wasn’t interfering with the line, but gave us a clear shot of the front of the building. There was a massive security guard checking IDs and waving people inside, and my heart leapt when I saw the gun on his hip.

“Ceradi, let’s just go,” I said. “I’m not even sure if Aria will come to the front, or she might just try and call Arden out.”

“We’re already here, Hannah,” Ceradi quipped back. “Come on, just relax. Everything is going to be fine. As soon as we see her, my plan will go into action.”

“I’m just gonna go back and wait at the car,” I said, trying to turn around and leave, but Ceradi grabbed my arm and held me in place. “Please let me go.”

She had an evil glare on her face and Milton had a matching, intimidating look on his face. In short, they were telling me that I didn’t have a choice.

“Don’t be such a baby, Hannah,” Milton grumbled.

Ceradi pulled me back to her side. “Yeah, come on, this was your idea.”

Objectively she wasn’t wrong, but I already felt like whatever was about to happen was a far cry from what I’d tipsily proposed. Even that plan was one I now realize was a little too far for how frustrated I was. I just wanted Aria to feel a fragment of the pain I felt losing Tristan and Arden, but Ceradi clearly intended to go far beyond that.

With no choice but to stand there and wait for the inevitable, I hoped that maybe Aria would at least come up the street the same way we did and I could interfere. If she saw me there with Ceradi, she’d know something was amiss and leave. Saving face with Ceradi later on, or just letting her go altogether all sounded like better plans than following through blindly with Ceradi’s maniacal personality.

About thirty minutes passed of people flooding in and out of the front door, and we didn’t see Aria. Ceradi started to get impatient, tapping her foot against pavement and drumming her fingers against her arm. “You did tell her to come, didn’t you?”

“You heard me tell her to come,” I spat back.

Milton lifted his head and looked down at me like a bug on the ground. “Did you text her and tell her not to come?”

“No. Irritatingly enough that hadn’t occurred to me before this moment,” I replied.

“Maybe she doesn’t actually care about this girl. I assumed they were dyking it out, but maybe they broke up?” Ceradi said.

I balled my hands into fists at the slur and bit the inside of my cheek so hard that I was certain to bite through it any moment. Of all the things I’d learned about Aria in my short, reluctant time with her, I’d learned that she cared deeply for Arden. She wouldn’t tell me she was coming if she actually wasn’t. “She’ll be here.”

“You’d better hope so. I left my own after party to come have some fun, and one