I Love You More Than I'm Afraid (Our Forevers #2), Rebel Hart [best adventure books to read .txt] 📗

her face. I wanted to yell at her, or at least admonish her with a scathing expression, but she wouldn’t even meet my gaze, just stare at the floor.

The bell rang signifying class was about to start, and given that Tristan and I shared our first class, and Aria and Arden shared one, we parted ways to get to our separate locations. Once Aria was gone from earshot, Tristan looked over at me with a frown.

“Why did you pull yourself back so violently before?” Tristan said. “You hurt my hand.”

“I’m sorry. I heard Aria and just panicked,” I said.

“Why?” he asked.

I looked over at him with a half-lidded gaze. “Why else? Your girlfriend walked up. If she saw you getting all snuggly with another woman, your ex, no less, she’d flip out.”

“Uh, not Aria,” Tristan said. “She knows I’d never cheat on her or anything. She doesn’t mind.”

I just shook my head. “No woman is just okay with her bf being all snuggly with someone else. Even if she tells you to your face that she’s fine with it, she’s not, trust me.”

Tristan just shrugged. “I don’t think you know Aria very well.”

And I had absolutely no care to.

Still, I owed her for going to drag Arden out of The Undersound. Every time she went to that seedy place, it was another risk that she was going to get herself killed. On top of that, I firmly believed what I told Tristan. No girl was fine with her boyfriend being hugged around another woman. I needed to thank and apologize to her or my conscience would never settle down, so though it was like pulling teeth to do so, I sought her out during the study period that we shared.

She was sitting at one of the long tables in the study hall, with her headphones in, bopping her head to the music while she typed away at her laptop. There was no one sitting around her, and thankfully Ceradi and Milton, who also had the same study period, seemed distracted, so I walked up and sat down across from her.

She was too consumed with what she was doing to notice me right away, so after waiting an awkwardly long time, I tapped the top of her screen. With a jump, she pulled out one of her wireless headphones and looked over the top of her computer at me.

“Hannah, hi.” She offered me a friendly smile that made me want to groan. “How are you?”

“I’m doing okay,” I said. “I, uh…” God this was the worst. “I wanted to thank you for going and getting Arden last night. I was worried, but I knew she wouldn’t listen to me, so…”

“Oh no! I’m the one who should be thanking you. I had no idea she hung out at a place like that. How did you know she was there?” she asked.

I swallowed hard, not sure if I should share the truth or not. “We, uh… we shared our locations with one another a long time ago. I guess I never took hers off.”

“Would you mind sharing it with me?” Aria asked. “That way I can make sure she doesn’t do anything like that again in the future.”

I didn’t want to do that at all. I liked knowing that it was one piece of Arden that I had that Aria didn’t. “I’m not really comfortable doing that. You know, without her permission.”

I prepared myself for a fight if Aria gave me one, but she retreated immediately. “That’s totally cool. I’ll talk to her about it myself.”

A frown came to my face thinking that Arden would probably give Aria her location if she asked. I shouldn’t have said anything at all. It was the only thing I had, and Aria would probably have it before the end of the day.

“Um, also…” I said, desperate to change the subject from Arden. “I’m sorry about earlier.”

She cocked her head to the side. “Sorry for what? Did you end up chucking the coffee?”

“N-no. I drank it. I meant for Tristan. We were all cuddly and stuff. I didn’t want to make you uncomfortable.”

Aria shook her head emphatically. “No! You totally didn’t!”

I leaned a little over the table. “Aria, it’s okay. I know that was out of line.”

Aria reached across the table and set her hand on mine. “No, really. I felt bad because it seemed like I interrupted. I love that you and Tristan are so close and I would never want to interfere with that. I know that your intimacy with one another is just friendly. I trust Tristan not to cheat on me or anything like that. You guys are just friends and I adore your relationship. Please don’t change it on my account. You shouldn’t feel weird at all. You were his best friend before I was his girlfriend. I think technically you have seniority.” She laughed at her joke.

“You’re just… cool with it?” I said.

She looked legitimately confused. “Yeah. So few people in this world have such wonderful relationships with their besties. I’m happy for you guys.”

“O…okay.”

She was such a shining person that it made me sick. No one was just fine with something like that. It was impossible to be that kind, that considerate, that caring, that trusting. What, she was just the embodiment of perfection fallen from the sky? Did she not realize how hard some of us had to work for perfection? How dare she think she could just make it look easy like that?

For some reason, that conversation put me in a terrible mood and I found myself wishing I hadn’t approached her at all. Arden wasn’t really my concern, so I didn’t actually need to thank her for dragging her out of that ditch, and it was Tristan’s responsibility not to make Aria feel uncomfortable, not mine. It was stupid for me to even think that I had to say any of that to her.

It just made me more angry.

I was still seething by the time the end