Loving Him ✔️(#2 Loving Series)

Prologue

Tristan's POV

Endless. That's how the empty roads seem at night when you are driving through them aimlessly. I wasn't an insomniac but being woken up by her cries made it difficult for me to sleep.

My mother had been diagnosed with depression when I was 5 years old, I didn't know about it until I was 11 when I overheard a conversation between my father and one of my uncles. Too young to understand what it was, I had obviously turned to Google to help and let's say I had been educated on it extra too much. I don't know when they realised, but soon they too knew I knew about it and stopped hiding her episodes and medical treatment from me. I tried to help as much as I could but it got really difficult.

It wasn't that I was ashamed of her diagnosis or taking care of her, but it hurt too much. Outside of her episodes, she was the perfect mom. She, Dad and I are a happy family. She loves cooking and the happiness on her face just lights up the house. But nowadays she is slowly losing interest in that too and her episodes are getting more frequent than ever. To see her bright eyes losing the light and getting dimmer hurts too much to look at. As her episodes get frequent, my late night drives get frequent too.

I slowly turn into the driveway of the house that has been my home away from home, residence of my best friend - Austen Marks. I had already messaged him about my arrival, even though he always said that his home was mine too.

There had been nothing unusual about my friendship with Austen. Belonging to the same social class, our friendship had started in the playroom of parties and had been going strong since then. We met Ryan, Hunter and Hayden in kindergarten and Violet joined in middle school when she started dating Ryan. We were thick as thieves. Hope being Austen's younger sister got an automatic entry into the group but she was more like a younger sister to me too.

As I get out of the car near the main entrance, I see Austen already standing there with the door open.

"How bad?" he solemnly asks as I enter in.

"Getting worse" I reply as the words feel heavier on my tongue. Austen doesn't say anything after that but puts in hand on my shoulder and gives it a firm squeeze. Letting me know he was there for me as we wordlessly went towards his bedroom. The guest room next to it was my room now since I so frequently spent the night here.

Austen always understood my need for space and never badgered me for anything, although the other way around wasn't that much true as since the past 1 year something had changed. He had become harder to read than a mathematics book. I knew there was something bothering him but it almost seemed difficult to reach him.

So that night as I lay in the bed, all I could do is, pray to whatever higher power was listening, my mom may not have the best of chances but please make it better for my best friend here.

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Disclaimer - The story takes place in a fictional town. All the characters and plot belong to me & are purely fictional. And resemblance with reality or works of other author is purely co-incidental. Any movie dialogue/music lyrics used belong to the respective artist, I am only using it for entertainment purposes without any monetary benefits. Any help received in form of editing, cover picture or even plot ideas will be given due credits.

Author's Note - Welcome to the Prologue of the Loving Him book. It's the Book 2 in the Loving Series. There will be multiple point of views (POV) in this book which will mentioned at the start of each chapter. So stay tuned and enjoy!

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