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

  “Alright, now I really gotta go. I’m gonna get reamed. See ya later. Love you!”

  I opened my mouth to reply with words of love as he drifted off, but again, it just felt strange. I yelled, “Bye!” as he ran off, somehow feeling like I’d let down his dedication to our friendship, but wasn’t he still too attached?

  He should only be telling Aria he loved her.

  Thinking of Aria brought a smile to my face. Tristan would be canceling his plans with her for me. It made me feel a little better, like at least I was still the most important to him, and after my blowup with Arden, that validation was certainly needed.

  I started up my car and started to back out of the driveway when my phone made a sound that gave me chills. It was a unique sound—one I'd set to only go off if a very specific circumstance occurred. I slammed my foot on the brake and threw my car into park, thankful that most students were already gone. I pulled my phone out to look down at the screen, and my stomach twisted. It confirmed what I already suspected.

  It was my GPS app with Arden’s tracker programmed into it from our younger years. The notification sound was only supposed to go off if Arden was at a certain place, and she appeared to be headed there currently.

  Her go-to location for all kinds of debauchery: the twenty-one plus club, The Undersound.

  5

  Arden

  Early afternoon in downtown was a nightmare to navigate. Ordinarily when I was planning on going to The Undersound, I’d leave my car at home and take a cab, but after the way my parents behaved that morning and with Hannah’s added warning about Aria, I was actually a little nervous to leave it alone with them. Honestly, if I had to try and leave it overnight at The Undersound and come back for it in the morning, that was less risky than trusting my parents not to have it towed or “stolen.” That seemed like the better bet until I realized it meant that I had to actually drive around downtown as all of the city workers were headed home for the day.

  Maybe it was a good thing because it allowed me some time to cool my head. Where I was headed for the rest of the night, the less I had muddling around my brain, the better. The Undersound was a place you went to forget, by whatever means you had at your disposal.

  And I would have a lot at my disposal.

  If I showed up too anguished, Suli would just pour things into me until I couldn’t remember my own name, let alone anything else. I had a poor inability to resist the woman, and she had a particular strength for telling when I was upset. Suli was a good friend in that she never wanted her friends to feel pain, so she kept herself well stocked with things that were known to dull the pain. I’d let Suli drag me to a bad place more than once, so I tried to exercise at least some discernment when I went to party with her. If I seemed relatively happy on my own, then Suli would only give me enough to make me, as she called it, “a little more cartoonish.”

  The problem was, Hannah was really never that far from my brain even on a good day. Even if I managed to distract myself for a while with my friendship with Aria or my inventions, the one thought that still hung with me when I laid down to sleep was how my broken heart was struggling to heal. It was going to be a good thing for me to get far away from my hometown and not have to look at Hannah every day.

  I’d pretty much decided that I wouldn’t see any major advancement to my romantic life until I was far, far away from Hannah Billio-Parsney.

  Enter Suli. I met her by complete accident at a summer softball exhibition where the bar she worked for was responsible for providing the booze. She was working the stand and confused me for one of the customers she was helping and tried to give me a beer. I told her I was only fifteen at the time, and she laughed, telling me I could easily pass for older.

  But in a good way.

  She happened to notice that I seemed really stressed out, and it was right in the midst of me realizing that Hannah thought that the best course of action for us and our relationship was to pretend we weren’t together and date men to appease our parents. She offered to hang out with me, and she was hot and older—I went with it. She got me a fake ID, helped me sneak into the bar where she worked—The Undersound—and once Hannah and I officially stopped seeing one another, she let me goad her into some ill-advised, and not to mention illegal, comfort sex, refusing to touch me again until after I’d turned 18, apart from the occasional makeout after I got her drunk enough.

  That said, Suli wasn’t a bad person. She was only a handful of years older than me, and she really was just an empathetic person that didn’t like seeing people in pain. Unfortunately, in the little bit of overlap between when Hannah and I fell apart and when we stopped speaking altogether, Hannah had both met Suli and encountered The Undersound, developing a severe dislike for both. I didn’t want Suli to get in trouble for just being a good friend, so I stopped spending time with her to keep Hannah from getting Suli into hot water with her job or the police. Once Hannah stopped giving a damn about me, I started hanging around at The Undersound again, and seeing Suli more than ever.

  Finally making my way through the disgusting downtown traffic and to The Undersound’s parking lot, I saw that there was an orange cone already sitting in one of the spaces. It was directly next to Suli’s white Jeep, and I knew she’d saved the space for me. My car was nothing to write home about, an old beater that I saved up for myself, so it was no skin off my back to pull into the parking space, gently pushing the cone out of my way with the tip of my car in order to park. I got out and snagged the cone to bring it inside with me, then I walked up to The Undersound’s side entrance and gave the door a handful of hard raps.

  A loud creak joined the fray of downtown’s noises as the door pushed open, and then Suli poked her head out, smiling when she saw me. “Hey!”

  “What’s going on?” I said. “I assumed you put that cone there for me, so I hit it with my car.”

  She laughed. “I kinda figured.” She yanked it from my hand and then pushed the door a little wider. “Well, get the fuck in here.”

  The transition from the bright outside into the darkened interior of the bar blinded me temporarily, but my vision came back to me slowly, giving me a nice view of Suli. She was tall, standing at about an even six feet, with a gorgeous, bronze skin. She had long black hair held up directly on top of her head in a ponytail and still fell all the way down to her ass. Her brown eyes were flecked with gold, and the way she was smiling at me curved her cheeks into deep dimples. On top of that, she had goddess-like curves, with a large bust and wide hips, which she’d dressed up in a simple pair of tight jeans and a black tank-top with tons of cleavage.

  She was just a distraction from Hannah, sure, but an insane one to be sure.

  Sticking a hand out, she twirled some of my pink hair between her fingers. “How’s it going? I’m glad you came. I feel like you’ve been avoiding me lately.”

  I forced a laugh. “Nah. Just with graduation coming up, my parents are getting particularly insufferable and school requires more focus. I hate both, if you were wondering.”

  She looped an arm around my shoulders. “Nothing a drink can’t fix, come on.”

  I was only half-lying to Suli. School and my parents really were taking more of my energy than they had in the past, and impending graduation was definitely the cause, but there was a new change that had kept me from The Undersound as of late.

  Aria.

  Ever since I met the woman, I’d found myself finding more authentic joy in our friendship. All of the days I’d have normally spent running to The Undersound and Suli in the couple of years prior, I was spending with my new bestie, her boyfriend, and her wonderful mother. Aria’s mom was an angel delivered straight from heaven. Not long after she found out how my parents treated me, she offered for me to move in with her and Aria. I very nearly took her up on it, but I didn’t want to impose. Instead, I spent many nights there, keeping Aria company when her mom worked nights, though I gave her and Tristan plenty of space to take advantage of those nigh
ts too.

  Aria didn’t know anything about The Undersound or Suli. Though I’d been relatively honest with her about everything else in my life, from Hannah to my plans to flee the state the second I got the chance, this was just one aspect of my life I didn’t feel like I should share. Maybe I was embarrassed? Aria was the glowing light in my life, whereas The Undersound and Suli felt much more like the shadows. I didn’t want the two to mix.

  The door that Suli let me in was connected to a long hallway that passed the bathrooms and eventually emptied out into the main room of the bar. Along the left wall was a swinging door that Suli pushed into as we passed it, but I continued forward into the bar itself. It was still empty and all the lights were on, but that didn’t stop it from having that unique, grunge bar feeling. The walls had never been painted and were their original cement color, trashed with graffiti. It lent itself to the theme, which of course was the dank underground. It reminded me of a subway station, stretched out, and none of the passengers would ever be whisked away to a better destination.

  For most of us, The Undersound was the hell we chose.

  Aside from the cement slab bar, there was a sizable dance floor that separated the bar and handful of tables from the aptly named ‘Shadowbox Stage.’ The way the raised stage and section of the wall directly behind it had been painted black made it look like a hanging shadow box when it had live performers.

  “Are you the only one here?” I asked as Suli pushed through the door behind the bar that connected to the kitchen.

  “Yeah.” She grabbed a bottle of tequila and started mixing up a tequila sour, my drink of choice. “Ant was supposed to come in today, but I don’t know. He just sent me a text like an hour ago saying he wouldn’t be in today, so I’m on my own until the kitchen staff get here at five, and then Marie and Sono will be here shortly after that, but whatever. It’s a Monday. I’m not worried.”

  I gestured to the brightly lit bar. “Is that why you’ve set such a mood in here?”

  She snickered, stirring up my drink and setting it down in front of me. “Thanks for the reminder. I’ll be right back.”

  She walked back through the door and I heard the hallway door swing out. A few seconds later, the overhead lights turned off, and the ambient lighting came on. It gave the entire place a deep purple tint, track lighting giving the bar and seating area enough light to navigate. Firefly flights swirled their way around the dance floor in a variety of colors. The Undersound in its true glory.

  Too dark to see much of anything.

  Rather than heading back behind the bar, Suli came over and leaned backwards on the barstool next to the one I’d taken. She propped her elbows up on the bar and looked over at me. She studied me for a second, then stuck out her hand and poked at the bags under my eyes. “You’re stressed.”

  I shook my head. “No, not too bad. My parents flipped their shit this morning, but when do they not?”

  “I keep telling you to just come stay with me. You’re legal now, so there’s no worries about that. You should feel lucky, you’re literally the only person younger than me that I’d tolerate like that.”

  “I do feel lucky,” I said, “but no, thanks. In a way, I feel like my sisters kinda need me anyway. One of ‘em is gay for sure. I don’t know what’s gonna happen when I’m gone, so I’m sticking it out for her.”

  Suli shook her head. “Superhero Arden at it again.”

  I tipped my drink. “It’s a hard job, but somebody’s gotta do it.”

  She leaned in like she wanted to kiss me, and though it wasn’t entirely what I wanted, it felt like a good way to shove my mind as far from Hannah as possible. We were interrupted by the front door opening, however, and Suli scowled before getting up to rush behind the bar as the trickle of people slinking into The Undersound for the night began.

  I kept myself seated at the bar for the next couple of hours as the bar slowly filled with more and more people. Most of the people I recognized as regulars who came to the bar as frequently as I used to, but there were some newbies, a few of whom sized me up. There were always gatekeepers who hated seeing underage people. Typically fresh 21-year-olds who felt like they’d earned the right to party and didn’t want to be bothered by someone just a few years younger than them. They didn’t worry me much, but it would be bad if anyone figured out I was underage, so I flagged Suli down.

  “Ready for another one?” she said when she came over.

  “Yeah,” I answered. “But I’m gonna go to one of the booths. There are some lookers.”

  “Fine,” she said. “I’ll bring it over. I think I saw Darton dip into one. Go find him.”

  “Cool.”

  I hopped down from the barstool and made my way down the few stairs onto the dancefloor. There weren’t many people there, but enough that I had to slip and slide my way through. Along the right side of the dancefloor were the skeezy owner’s attempt at making an extra dime, the “Caves.” They were V.I.P. rooms that were better described as hovels with Ikea furniture. They did have curtains that could be pulled to create some semblance of privacy, and they were advertised with bottle service. That said, the owner tried to charge hundreds of dollars for them, when they were basically closets. No more than four or five people could fit into one, so they weren’t good for big groups, which meant they were hardly ever rented out. For this reason, Suli and my small circle of friends usually camped out in one, in general for privacy, but specifically to keep anyone from seeing that I wasn’t 21.

  One of the booths had the curtain drawn, so I pushed it aside and poked my head inside. The booth had a couple of occupants already, including Darton, Suli’s high school best friend. It was shocking that he wasn’t a wrestler or something with his broad shoulders, tree-trunk arms, and incredible body mass, but he defied the stereotype by being a techie. He reviewed all the newest gadgets so he always had the nicest stuff, one of which he was holding, his attention totally focused on the screen.

  “Another new phone?” I asked.

  The woman next to him, his girlfriend Polly, rolled her green eyes and shook her head of red hair. “I tried to tell him not to, but he wouldn’t listen to me. He said he had to have the new series immediately.”

  I slipped into the booth and climbed up onto the back of the u-shaped couch that lined the wall inside, and scooted over until I could look down over Darton’s shoulder. “What’s so nice about this one?” I asked.

  Without responding, or even acknowledging me verbally, Darton flicked a finger against the side of the screen and it flipped sideways, turning the top half into its own screen and the bottom into a different one. He was able to keep playing the game he was on via the top screen while scrolling through social media on the bottom screen.

  “Ooh,” Polly said. “Okay, that is pretty cool.”

  “I already ordered you a rose gold one,” Darton responded.

  Polly flashed me a wide-grin and I rolled my eyes, hissing, “Brat,” at her, but she knew it was true and didn’t quip back.

  Suli kept the drinks flowing for Darton, Polly, and me, and within the next hour I was carrying a delightful high. It was that “not quite tanked, but already past buzzed” place: perfect. The stress of school, my parents, and Hannah quickly drifted from my mind and made me glad I’d come at Suli’s invitation. The kickback was certainly needed.

  Around eight o’clock, the conversation we were carrying was interrupted by a commotion from outside. Voices lifted as people started murmuring a bit louder, and someone not far from our booth said, “There he is! I told you. He’s easily the most beautiful man in the world!”

  I smiled at the comment, knowing exactly who had arrived to cause such a stir.

  Darton let out a growl. “This is why I hate going out with him.”

  I laughed. “You already have a girlfriend, and he’s not in competition for women anyway.”

  “Bullshit he isn’t. He still flirts with women all the time, dances with ‘em, the whole nine. Then you
think, well I’ll just chill with the bros then, but nah, he’s got all the bros chompin’ too. It pisses me off.”

  “Oh,” Polly said. “I’m sorry your game has been interfered with.”

  Darton put an arm around Polly. “Nah, come on baby. You know you’re the only one for me, but who likes going somewhere being the supporting-actor?”

  The curtain slid aside and a head of purple hair cracked across the barrier. Its owner bolted in, attempting to shut the curtain before anyone could come after him, but he was not successful. A six and a half foot man who looked like he’d just stepped right out of a firefighter’s monthly calendar caught the curtain and pushed it aside.

  “Codie,” he said with a smile. “Come on out here and dance with me.”

  I watched Codie with heightened amusement. He’d come a long way since he was a skinny, scrawny guy keeping me from jumping off the deep end at that conversion camp we’d been forced into. He kept a slim figure always, but had been blessed with a better backside than most women, and puberty took its time, late blooming to give him a modelesque face with a carved jaw and perfectly wide and round eyes.

  “I just got here,” Codie whined back. “I wanna hang out with my friends for a bit.”

  The man reached forward and ran his hand through Codie’s shoulder length hair, a mix between its natural light-brown color, and the purple tint he’d dyed it. “I had fun last week. I’m hoping for a repeat. If you don’t like it here, we can take my private jet somewhere warm?”

  Polly grunted behind me. “This is unfair.”

  I set my drink to my lips and knocked what was left of it back as Codie carefully navigated the conversation with the gorgeous, and apparently rich, man. Finally, he walked off, and though there was a literal line of people hanging out past the booth waiting to talk to Codie, he slammed the curtain shut and then threw himself onto the couch between my legs, dropping his head backwards into my lap.

  I combed my fingers through his hair. “Hey there, buddy.”