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

for my family to leave, then deposit all the graduation checks, and it took forever for them to clear…”

I shook my head. “You spent your graduation money on this?”

“Not all of it, but some of it.”

“You didn’t have to do that,” I said.

“What else was I gonna do? It wasn’t like we could do it at your place or mine. Plus, we couldn’t go to a hotel.” I furrowed my brow, confused why we couldn’t, but she was already getting up off of me and stretching, giving me an enticing shot of her beautiful, naked body. I reached out and pulled her back down, sitting up so that I could wrap around her. “Hey!”

“Well since you paid for the place, I’m buying breakfast. I know you love that little diner in town. Let’s go there,” I said.

“Um…” She twisted so she could look at me. “Let’s order in instead.”

“What?” I said. “No, come on. I wanna show off my hot girlfriend.” She stood up off the bed and looked down at me and I didn’t like the feeling I was getting. “What’s wrong?”

“We can’t be seen. Not here,” she said.

I recoiled. “What?”

She crouched in front of me and looked up into my eyes. “Arden, I love you so much, but I’m just… not ready to come out yet. I want to be with you. Can’t that be enough for now?”

My heart started pounding so fast I thought it was going to come out of my chest. “Hannah, the whole point of this decision period was for you to decide if you could be with me fully. What are we doing if you’re not ready? We’re just back to where we started.”

“No!” she said, tears filling her eyes. “Because I’m not gonna date anyone else. I’ll only be with you, I just don’t feel like we have to flaunt it.”

“That’s not the point.” I got up from the bed and quickly started to pull on clothes, not feeling comfortable having that conversation naked. “I’m out. I don’t wanna hide who I am. I’ve already lost my family, suffered public ridicule, the whole nine. I did what I had to because I love you more than I’m afraid.”

“But… But…” She started to cry. “I’m not ready.”

I dragged my hands through my hair in frustration. This was so much worse than if she’d turned me down outright. Now that we had slept together, I was more attached than I already was. I didn’t want to give her up.

But there was a line.

“Hannah… I don’t want to go back in the closet.” I imagined that room that I got locked in at the conversion camp. The endless darkness, the insanity in my mind. “I can’t go back there.” Hannah tried to come up and grab me, but I stepped back. “No! Don’t! Are you ready to be with me fully or not?”

She was sobbing, but slowly shook her head. “I’m scared.”

“I’ll be here for you,” I said. “And Tristan, and Aria.”

“No,” she replied. “I don’t want to lose my family.”

It knocked all the wind out of my sails. “I understand, I do, but if that’s true, then this won’t work.”

25

Hannah

Tristan set a plate in front of me at his dining room table and sat down across from me with his own. The smells of bacon and eggs drifted up into my nostrils, but I just stared down at them as if he’d put gruel in front of my face.

“Hannah, you need to eat,” Tristan said. “It’s been two days since I last convinced you to eat.”

“I’m not hungry,” I responded in a ghostly tone.

“That can’t possibly be true.” The poor guy; he looked an absolute wreck. He’d been juggling Aria and her concussion in one hand and me and my heartbreak in the other and had likely been getting very little sleep himself in the interim. “Your body needs sustenance. You’re gonna kill yourself.” He reached across and grabbed a piece of bacon and lifted it up in front of me. “Please? For me?”

I slipped the bacon from his hands and started to nibble on the tip of it. The saltiness of my favorite food danced across my tongue and reminded me of what flavor was like, on top of reminding my body that I hadn’t fed it for an unreasonably long period of time. Arden’s voice still rang in my mind as loudly and clearly as the day she said the words:

“Let’s just remember last night and go our separate ways. I think that’s what’s best for us both.”

I honestly thought our love would be enough. After everything that we had overcome to get back to one another, I truly thought that just being able to be together would overpower that one tiny thing. Even if I was with a guy I wouldn’t feel the need to broadcast my relationship to everyone. Why couldn't we just keep it between us? It was our business.

“I would really love it if you at least drank some of the Gatorade,” Tristan said, breaking into my thoughts. “I know you’re dehydrated. Then after breakfast you can try getting some more sleep. I’ll lie down with you if you need me to.”

“I’m not tired,” I murmured.

“That’s not true,” he said. “Please?”

I twisted off the top of the Gatorade and took a sip. Its flavor wasn’t my favorite, but again, my body reacted immediately to the hydration and I started to gulp it down in huge bursts. “Slow down!” Tristan said.

“Do you want me to drink or not?” I spat back.

“If you drink that fast you’re gonna get—”

“Hic!” I whimpered out as I got the hiccups.

Tristan sighed. “See?”

“Can I have some water?” I asked.

“Yes.” He immediately hopped up from his chair and walked over to the sink and got me some water before bringing it back and setting it down. Even though I knew how badly he wanted to be with Aria, he was still showing up for me. “Here you go.”

“Thanks,” I said, and when