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

drinking, she just did it here because it’s been kind of our home base and so she thought this would be the best place to do it. I wouldn’t have done it except they’d already put it all together and she paid for a VIP booth and stuff.” Then I stopped myself. “You know what? I’m making excuses. I shouldn’t be here. I promised Aria I wouldn’t come back and now she got hurt.”

“I’m pretty sure Hannah used the fact that you were here to set Aria up,” he said. “She was here with Ceradi and when she saw that Aria got hurt, she took off.”

That shattered me to pieces. “I can’t believe that.” My phone rang in my hand and I answered it immediately without even looking. “Hello?”

“Arden?” Aria’s mom said, fortunately not sounding like she hated me, but she was definitely suffering. “Where are you? What are you doing?”

“We’re still at The Undersound, but we’re leaving now to head to the hospital.”

“Okay. I’ll be leaving work in ten minutes. I’m the only one here so I can’t leave without a key. As soon as my boss gets here, I’ll head to the hospital. Please call me when you get there and if I need to give permission for you and Tristan to be with Aria, I will.”

“Okay, thank you,” I said, crying. “Serene, I’m so sorry.”

“Just go be with Aria,” she said. “I’ll see you soon.”

“Yeah. Bye.” I hung up with Serene and put my hand on Tristan’s back who was clearly so shocked he was frozen. “Tristan, we have to go. Aria needs us.”

He seemed to pull to attention. “Yeah let’s go.” Then he handed me his keys. “I need you to drive. I can’t do it.”

20

Hannah

Immediately upon getting back to Ceradi’s, I went directly to my car. Ceradi followed after me, playing the video of the brawl over and over. I could tell that she was doing it to torment me. I bit my lip, thinking fondly of Aria for the first time since she and Tristan first started dating and I tried to fake it. If these were the kind of people she’d been dealing with her entire life, her strength knew no bounds. Whatever her and my issue was, she didn’t deserve to be attacked the way she was, and she certainly didn’t deserve to have her skull cracked open.

Ceradi was a psycho.

“Hannah, come on. What are you going to do, go to the hospital? That’s about the same as going to the scene of the crime, are you insane?” In spite of the words she was saying, she had an amused tone to her voice and was practically giddy. “Just stay here.”

“I’m not staying here. I need to check on Tristan, I need to check on Aria, and I need to check on Arden,” I said.

“Arden?” she barked. “Why do you give a damn about that dyke freak?”

At that moment, something just came over me. Maybe it was the slur that she’d now used twice in my presence, maybe it was the fact that I knew I also fit into that group she was nastily insulting, or maybe it was just because I loved Arden and couldn’t stand to hear Ceradi insult her anymore. I dug my feet into the ground, balled my hand into a fist, whipped around, and socked Ceradi straight in the nose. She screamed and toppled backwards, landing hard on the ground and sending her phone clattering out of her hand across the pavement, cracking in the process.

“Dyke is a derogatory term!” I screamed. “And don’t talk about her that way!”

“Ceradi?” Milton called, rushing over from the house, and when he noticed her on the ground and me standing over her, he froze. “Whoa! Hannah, what the hell?”

“Get up!” I screamed at Ceradi. “Right now! Get up off the ground! I’m kicking your ass! I’m so fucking sick of you.”

Ceradi seemed truly terrified of me. “You need to get off my property right now before I call the police!”

“Oh don’t be scared now, bitch!” I snapped. “Get up!”

Milton came running over and pushed me backwards a little bit, posturing his body between mine and Ceradi’s. “Hannah, you need to back off.”

“You stay away from my friends!” I bellowed. “If you go anywhere near Arden, Tristan, or Aria again, this will not be the last time you feel my fist against your face.”

I was screaming so loud and passionately that I could barely catch my breath.

“Hannah!” Milton screamed. “Leave. Now.”

Not wanting to get into any more trouble than I was sure I was already in, I took Milton’s advice the second time he demanded it, and turned my back to them. I had no fear that Ceradi wouldn’t come after me, since she only knew how to run her mouth, and a little wave of satisfaction washed over me as I heard Ceradi slowly start to cry.

Good. Let her suffer a little bit for all the pain she’d caused others.

I could have called Tristan, but I was honestly afraid to face him, so I called the only other person I could think of. It was going to be bad and I was likely going to have to hear an earful, but it was worth it to try and get some sort of update.

“Hello?”

“Hey,” I said. “Um… Where are you?”

Arden took a deep sigh. “I’m at the hospital. Where are you?”

She didn’t sound like she hated me, but I wasn’t sure if that was because she didn’t know my involvement, because she was in shock, or a combination of both. “I’m leaving Ceradi’s… I just punched her in the face.”

“Really?” Arden asked.

“Yeah,” I said. “She kept saying really disrespectful shit and I just lost it.”

Arden actually let out a little snicker. “Wish I could have seen it.”

“How’s Aria?” I asked.

“We don’t know yet. She’s been patched up and all of that. She’s not dead or dying, but that’s all the doctors can tell us for now. We have