I Love You More Than I'm Afraid (Our Forevers #2)

by Rebel Hart

  Copyright © 2021 by Rebel Hart

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Contents

  PROLOGUE

  1. Arden

  2. Hannah

  3. Arden

  4. Hannah

  5. Arden

  6. Hannah

  7. Arden

  8. Hannah

  9. Arden

  10. Hannah

  11. Hannah

  12. Arden

  13. Arden

  14. Hannah

  15. Arden

  16. Arden

  17. Hannah

  18. Hannah

  19. Arden

  20. Hannah

  21. Arden

  22. Hannah

  23. Arden

  24. Arden

  25. Hannah

  26. Arden

  27. Hannah

  28. Arden

  About the Author

  Also by Rebel Hart

  I LOVE YOU MORE THAN I’M AFRAID

  Rebel Hart

  PROLOGUE

  Arden

  I squinted my eyes as I stared at the darkened cement wall in front of me. Despite what I knew—that I was in a totally enclosed room with no windows and just the one door—I suddenly felt like I could see my reflection in the wall. My lilac eyes were puffy and exhausted, my blond hair was a mess, and though I usually weighed around 120, my stomach was much flatter and I could swear I could see my ribs. As if to confirm, I looked down and rubbed my stomach, but I could feel the full flesh of my torso, and had to poke my finger so far in that it hurt before I reached any ribs. I wasn’t that emaciated.

  Was it all in my mind?

  “I’m hallucinating,” I mumbled. “Hey! “Let me out of here!”

  Though it was incredibly difficult, I crawled off of the small cot I’d been provided, dropping to the concrete floor with a painful thud. I dragged myself forward, sucking air in and out in painful breaths until I was able to get to my feet. My legs wobbled and my entire body shook, but I managed to make my way to the small pass-through door where I was occasionally slid meager meals. In my mind, I was pounding on it with all my force, but the sound of my fist hitting the metal sounded like I was flicking it at best.

  “I’m scared!” I screamed. “Please! Let me out!”

  I was certain neither my wispy voice nor weak pounds had been enough to communicate with the outside world, but a loud latching sound echoed through my chamber. I dropped to my knees so I could stare through the small window, then it opened, blinding me with light from outside.

  “Arden.”

  The nun who stood outside the door was named Sister Flint. Her kind and bubbly disposition belied the fact that some period of time I could no longer remember ago, she snatched me out of bed, a hand over my mouth, dragged me down three flights of stairs and tossed me into this isolation chamber single-handedly.

  “Sister, please,” I whimpered with tears in my eyes. “I’m scared. I want to come out of here.”

  “The room of reflection is time you are meant to spend with yourself and the Lord. If He has not spoken with you, it’s because He believes your heart is still steered down the wrong path,” Sister Flint responded.

  My forehead fell against the concrete of the door in front of me. “Please… I’m only 14… I can’t live like this.”

  “Can you promise me that you will begin listening to the teachings of the Father who gave his only Son for your life?” Sister Flint asked. “Will you admit to me now that homosexuality is a sin of the highest order, and that you will leave this lifestyle choice behind and follow the Lord’s holy path?”

  My nose burned and my throat tightened. A single face came to my mind. Beautiful, long blond hair. Stunning, sparkling brown eyes. A smile that made everything seem okay even when it obviously never would be. That laugh, sweet like honey, and her dorky, confusing sense of humor.

  The girl I loved and always had.

  “Yes,” I hummed. “I promise.”

  “You promise what?” Sister Flint asked.

  Balling my hands into fists and gritting my teeth, I whined out, “That homosexuality is a sin in the highest.”

  “Which…?”

  I sniffled in my emotions. “Which the Lord will not accept in the kingdom of heaven.”

  Sister Flint hummed. “Good, and if…?”

  “And if I want to avoid the pits of hell, I must denounce my—” I nearly choked on the word, “—choices, and swear my life to the Lord God Almighty.”

  “Very good. Stand back from the door, my child.”

  It wasn’t so much of a stand as much as it was a clumsy stumble from my knees back onto my butt. Hannah’s face glowed in my mind, and I just hoped that she would forgive me for what I’d done. I didn’t give a damn about any lord or his stupid, selfish rules, but her judgment scared me. Would she understand that if I stayed in this room another second, that I’d die? If I could just get through the camp. Just get back to the outside world, I’d never deny my love for her again.

  Would she understand that I was just trying to survive so I could get back to her?

  The deafening click of several loud locks filled the room, each of them making me jump with how loud they were compared to the silence I’d been stuck in. The door creaked open, slowly because of how thick and heavy it was, and light spilled into the room. I had to hold up my hand and shield my eyes from it because it burned, but then Sister Flint’s small visage stepped into the door frame. She was nothing but a silhouette at first, until she stepped forward and held out her hand with a bright smile on her face.

  “It’s good to see you, my child. Come, lunch has just begun. I’ll help you upstairs.”

  Though I would have rather driven a stake through the side of her neck, I reached up and took Sister Flint’s hand, simply because I didn’t have the strength to do anything else.

  And I had no stakes.

  She lifted me from the ground like I weighed no more than a feather and guided my arm around her shoulders. She was five feet tall if she was lucky, so standing at just under six feet, there was almost a full foot between my head and hers. That considered, I was hunched over and barely able to keep myself on my feet, so she was bearing almost all of my weight as we walked down the hallway.

  “This is the beginning of a much happier and healthier life for you, my child,” Sister Flint said. “Don’t you feel a weight has been lifted from your shoulders?”

  “Totes,” I huffed ironically, because even at the brink of death, I just couldn’t keep my snark at bay. I could hear Hannah berating me for it, but whatever. This holy bitch locked me in a cement storage closet for anywhere from a day to a month, she could take a little bit of sass.

  It took the better part of twenty minutes for us to get up the single flight of stairs that led from the basement of the camp building where I was being kept, to the main floor with the food hall and other activity spaces. On the other side of the inconspicuous door that led down to the isolation chambers was the fun, cute looking camp that my parents had dropped me off at. There was artwork on the walls, adorable daily goal sheets decorated with stickers, and a display board of all the incredible activities a camper could look forward to. My parents were cruel, but I had to believe that if they’d known that a refusal to conform to heteronormativity would result in being locked in a room alone getting only bread and water for meals for who knows how long.

  Wel
l… at least my mom would have put up a little bit of a fight.

  Then again, maybe their lesbian daughter was just that much of a pall on their picture-perfect Christian, nuclear family. It’d probably be their preference at this point to just send me up the river and pretend as if they only had two daughters as opposed to three. Little did they know that’d be my preference too. I was more than ready for them to quit trying to “save” me, and just let me go live my best, gay life.

  Yet here I was with no more strength than a newborn bird being dragged through a bright, sunshiny camp with unkempt hair, bad B.O., and guilt for denying my identity.

  Isn’t that the American Dream after all?

  When Sister Flint pulled me into the food hall, the quiet chatter dulled to nothing as all eyes turned around and looked at me. I scanned the room, looking for a friendly pair of eyes, and found them looking back at me from a table near the back.

  Codie was my only real friend at the camp, a boy who would gladly date all the men I’d never touch in my lifetime. My heart seized up when I noticed how much longer his light brown hair was from the last time I saw it.

  How long was I in the basement?

  He jumped up from where he was sitting and scuttled across the room to where Sister Flint was holding me aloft. He snaked his arm under mine and looped it around my back. I put what little energy I had into wrapping my arm around his shoulders.

  Sister Flint relinquished me to him with a sweet smile and a “Thank you, child,” then she twirled off to torture some other poor, gay soul and left me to sob on Codie’s shoulder.

  “Shh, I know,” Codie said. “Come on. Let’s get some food in you first, then we’ll talk it out.”

  Everyone kept their eyes trained on me as the only sound that filled the entire, massive eating hall were the sounds of my sobs. One of the other campers had gone in the time that it took Codie to get me back to his table and retrieved a plate of food. She set it in front of me along with a couple of cups of water and then rushed off.

  Unseasoned chicken and a mush of peas and carrots never looked so good. I couldn’t even wait for Codie to offer me his fork. I grabbed the chicken with my hand and lifted it to my mouth. It was dry and lukewarm, but none of that bothered me. I chomped into it like a dog off the streets, and Codie just sat and let me. He’d gone to the isolation chambers early in the experience, and knew all too well the stress I was under.

  “I’m sorry,” I choked out between tearstained bites. “I’m sorry for what I said.”

  “It’s okay,” Codie said. “I would have been mad too if I didn’t know. You get it now. Saying it is the only way out.”

  Not long after Codie got out of the isolation chamber, and only once he’d recovered some of his strength and sanity, did I scold him for lying about his sexuality. Coming in, I believed nothing was worth denouncing something that was just as much a part of someone as their eyes or natural hair color.

  I understood better now.

  “I just…”

  “Shh.” Cody combed my hair down with his fingers, no doubt trying to make it look a little more presentable. “It’s okay. I told you already, I get it. Just eat.”

  Eventually, the attention left me and the chatter slowly rose up again. I had to have eaten at least four people’s worth of food, but there wasn’t a single person around who questioned it. Everyone had either been to the isolation chambers or had someone close to them who had. It was already about a month into the summer, without adding the time I’d been locked up. The staff just worked their way down a list alphabetically, and fortunately, my last name started with an ‘N.’ There were very few people who hadn’t been there yet.

  Even with the food slowly working its way through my body, it still took Codie aiding me to get me back to my room. A pair of staff gave us wide smiles and wiggled their eyebrows at us as we passed. When the big fear is being gay, the thought that a 14-year-old and a 17-year-old might go into their bunk and fuck just never crossed their minds, or maybe it did, but it was conducive to their goal, so they allowed it to happen.

  “Here we go,” Codie said as he guided me down onto my bed. “Just rest. They usually leave you for a few days after the chamber without asking questions. I’ll bring you meals, so don’t worry.”

  He started to walk away, but I reached up and grabbed his arm. “Codie… How long was I down there?”

  “Eighteen days,” Codie replied. “I was starting to get worried. I mean, I started out worried, but I was beginning to think you were only coming out of there on a stretcher. I’ve asked around, no one has held out for that long.”

  “Eighteen days?” I responded breathlessly. “It felt…”

  He nodded. “Longer and shorter?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Yeah. Time gets really warpy in there. It’s because you’re not doing anything else or seeing anything else. I heard they even bring you food at crazy times so that you don’t get any semblance of a schedule or consistency.”

  “That’s monstrous.”

  “Yeah, well, the world is monstrous to people like us.” He set a hand on my forehead. “Get some rest. I’ll be back around dinner. If you’re asleep, I’ll just leave your food next to your bed.”

  “Thank you,” I whimpered.

  Codie gave me one last smile then walked away, leaving me alone. It was weird, the feeling of not wanting to be alone and at the same time not wanting to be near any other living soul. It was knowing that the one person I wanted to see was miles away, likely with no idea where I was or why I wasn’t communicating with her. I closed my eyes and tried to think backwards, if I was in the isolation chamber for nearly three weeks, there was much less time left than I thought. It was close to the beginning of August, I imagined. Another month there sounded like torture, but much more doable than a month and a half or two months.

  My eyes snapped open at the sound of a tapping nearby. When I first blinked, I could have sworn I was back down in the isolation chamber, but a better look around revealed I was still in my bunk in my room. The room itself was totally dark, and all the beds were filled with people. Looking to my left, I saw a tray of food sitting on top of the table—a sad burger and some limp fries.

  Outside, I could hear rain pouring down, pounding against the window, and at first I thought that was what I heard and tried to close my eyes again. Then I heard the rhythmic tapping again. I stood up out of bed and traced the sound to the window behind my bedside table. Some of the strength had returned to my legs, so I walked up to it and opened it, filling the room with a rush of chilled air.

  I looked out and saw nothing and assumed I was still exhausted, when I heard a quiet, “Hey.”

  My head was getting drenched in rain, but it didn’t matter, because when I looked down, my eyes locked into a pair I knew well and had been all that was getting me through the past two months.

  “H-Hannah?” I whined.

  I’d been through a lot, so much that I even hallucinated down in the isolation chamber, so when I saw the beautiful blonde standing beneath the window, looking straight up at me with a smile, equally drenched in rain, I assumed I was just dreaming. I reached hand forward, and because of the foundation the camp was up on, my window was still several feet off the ground. I was able to reach down about half the distance, and Hannah reached up, craning on her tiptoes, until her fingertips brushed mine.

  “Hey,” she whispered.

  Tears filled my eyes and I was so happy I thought I was going to be sick. “Hi.”

  Hannah was my very best friend. We’d been friends since we were born, because our mothers had been best friends, as had their mothers. The only difference, though a significant one, was that I’d made short work of falling in love with Hannah. It was pretty clear she felt the same way, though we’d never put words to it. It never felt like we had to. Whatever the case, I was so happy to see her.

  “Why are you here?” I asked.

  “Can we talk about that later?” she whispered bac
k. “Come on. Let’s get out of here.”

  I shook my head. “We’re out in the middle of nowhere. How will we get out of here?”

  “The same way I got here, hitchhiking.” She reached up even further to grab my hand. “Come on. Let’s go.”

  “Okay. Wait just a second. I’ll be right back.”

  Her eyes widened. “What? No. We have to go.”

  “I can’t leave Codie,” I said.

  Hannah’s expression darkened a bit. “Who?”

  It filled me with hope and I actually cried a little. “A very gay guy friend I made here.”

  She let out a sigh of relief. “Oh.”

  “I’ll be back.”

  “Hurry,” she huffed.

  Turning around, I noticed that several of my roommates were staring at me. The girls all slept in one room of several bunks while all of the boys slept in another—as little sense as that made given the nature of the reason we’d all been gathered there. I became instantly afraid that someone was going to tell on me, but then one of the girls climbed out of her bed.

  “You’re going to get Codie?” she asked quietly.

  I nodded. “Yeah.”

  She smiled. “I’ll watch the halls for you.”

  I should have known. Every single person in there understood the struggle. Of course they wouldn’t tell on me. They were glad someone was getting out. “Thank you.”

  She led the way out of the room, glancing in both directions down the hallway and then waved me forward. She stood watch down the hallway that led back towards the staff rooms while I shuffled forward, past the landing of the stairs leading down, and slipped as quietly as I could into the boys dorms. There was a quiet moaning in one corner that I just ignored, praying that those guys didn’t get caught, and made my way down to Codie’s bed. He was tossing and turning in his bed, something many of us were plagued with, and when I reached out to shake him to wake him up, he jumped.