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

you dare apologize for doing what you had to do to survive that. They only fed you twice. You could have starved to death if you’d stayed longer. I don’t blame you for something like that.”

“I hate myself for it though,” I said. “I would never deny how I feel about you.”

“You say it as if I haven’t already done that way too much,” Hannah replied.

“Maybe I’m just hallucinating because I was locked in a dark, empty closet for many days, but it almost sounds like you’re confessing,” I said.

Hannah looked into my eyes. “Would that be bad?”

“N-no,” I said. “I’ve been waiting.”

She was staring down at my hand, still dragging her fingertips across my palm. “I got so afraid when I started reading those stories, and it just…” She sniffled in and a couple of tears hit my arm. “I was afraid that maybe something would happen to you without you knowing and…” She lifted my hand against her face and kissed it softly. “I’m so happy you’re okay.”

My heart started beating double time. After everything I’d just gone through, to have it result in Hannah finally admitting to her feelings made me feel like I’d do it again. “I’m so sorry because I just need to make sure I’m not misunderstanding you, but… are you saying you’re… Do you love me too?”

Hannah’s eyes lifted again, locking back in my own. She seemed conflicted and terrified, and after seeing what I’d gone through at the camp, I couldn’t blame her. The big question was, which fear was smaller: the fear of losing me, or the fear being outed?

“I do,” she said. “I love you.”

A smile slowly came to my face. “I love you too.”

I slid my hand around to Hannah’s cheek and looked into her comforting, brown eyes. I knew I had never kissed anyone before, mainly because for as long as I could remember, the only person I wanted to kiss was Hannah. She, however, had been on a much larger crusade to pretend as if her circumstances weren’t different. With our parents, I couldn’t be mad at her for it, but it did mean that maybe she’d kissed someone before me.

Suddenly, I didn’t care.

I leaned in, nervous that Hannah would stop it, but she didn’t. Her eyes drifted closed and she leaned towards me as well. I’d dreamed of the moment tons in my first fourteen years of life, but that second my lips pressed to Hannah’s, I realized my brain could have never prepared me for the feeling. Soft, slightly salty, but all-around incredible. Being connected that way to the girl I’d fallen for was a joy I had begun to convince myself I’d never experience. It was freezing and we were soaking from the rain, but in that moment the warmth of us holding one another was enough to make me feel blazing hot.

As I pulled away, I let out a little chuckle and said, “Yep.”

She tilted her head, an adorable blush staining her entire face. “Yep, what?”

“Yep, I’m definitely gay,” I replied.

Hannah just shook her head and laughed. “Dork.” The hiss of a car coming up the road pierced the silence of the night and Hannah started to jump up. “A car!” She was careful as she untangled herself from me, but when she was on her feet, she broke out into a full sprint. Waving her arms above her head back and forth, she started to scream, “Hey! Help!” The car pulled over to the side of the road, and when the window rolled down, Hannah smiled. “Hi, Marnie!”

“Hannah,” the driver from the inside said. “Are you headed back now?”

Hannah nodded. “Yeah. Can you bring us back down? My…” She looked back at me and frowned. “My friend is hurt.”

Hearing ‘friend’ in that moment stung a bit, but Marnie was just some stranger. It didn’t make a difference if Hannah couldn’t admit it to her, right?

“Tell you what, I’m done with my delivery, are you headed back to the city?” Marnie asked.

“Yeah.”

Marnie undid her seatbelt and climbed out. “I’ll bring you home.”

Hannah ran over to me, bending over to help me up. “This is the same woman who brought me the last leg of the journey,” she explained. “She said she’ll bring us home.”

“Okay,” I said, leaning against Hannah so she could get me to my feet. Marnie had opened the back door of her car and was sliding things aside, so thankfully not paying attention as I said, “Hey, um…”

Hannah looked over at me. “Yeah?”

“Am I just a friend?” I asked. It probably wasn’t the best time to ask, but I couldn’t help it. After everything that had happened at the camp, I just wanted to know—needed to know—that it wasn’t all for nothing.

We stopped where we were as Hannah considered the question without looking at me. “D-does it have to have a label?” A question offered in lieu of an answer.

My heart sank. “No,” I replied.

Little did she know, it was all the answer I needed.

1

Arden

Morning light was finally shining through my window, so I closed my blueprint book and leaned back in my desk chair. It creaked as I stressed it far past its suspension abilities. It was the exact same desk chair I’d had since I was about nine, and given that my age had doubled since then, it was understandable that it was screaming for me to stop begging it to hold up my weight.

“Just a few more months,” I huffed at it as I stood up. “Soon, I’ll be off and paying some post secondary institution a mortgage for only slightly better a chair, and you’ll be free.”

Still, I smiled at the faded blue fabric only barely covering the foam that was spilling out in several places. Even more than my bed, that chair had been my favorite piece of furniture. As a chronic shitty sleeper, I was more often than not in my chair, working on new inventions, trying to design the next