Bear in the Rough: Bear Shifter Romance (Broken Hill Bears Book 1) Read Online Free PDF

was involved: walking up to 20 miles per day; carrying your food with you; not washing for days at at time. Freya couldn’t have been more shocked when Eloise called her two days later, saying she wanted to join.
    “I’ve put on 40 pounds since you saw me last,” she said. “I’ve been married and divorced. I own half of a house that I don’t give a crap about. I never finish anything I start. I need to do something different. I need a new beginning.”
    Freya’s spirits had lifted. She’d been terrified of doing the hike by herself. Having two friends accompany her suddenly seemed to make the prospect of the long hike about one third as scary.
    But then Eloise had turned up yesterday not having lost any of the weight she’d promised to, admitting that she’d been kinda too busy to do any of the preparation hikes that Freya had suggested. She’d also brought way, way too much stuff with her. Marin also had too much stuff. And while she looked like she’d been working out a little, she was acting like everything was a joke. Her boots were old and she’d made some weird food choices.
    Freya couldn’t fail to complete the trail. Ever since she’d heard about its existence while surfing the internet one day, she’d been convinced that it was what she needed to do. The idea had been burning bright in her mind, as something that would bring her the salvation and inner peace that she’d lacked so far in her life. The Pacific Crest Trail formed a curious parallel to her own life. She was born in Washington state. When she was eight years old, her father disappeared. Just like that. He was supposed to be taking her to the zoo one day. But before they left the house, he went out, saying he had to run a quick errand. And he never came back. Six months later, Freya’s mom moved the two of them to Southern California, “to put as much distance between us and that son of a bitch as possible,” as she was fond of explaining. Freya had been distraught, convinced that he was going to come back, and that he’d have no idea they’d moved to the other end of the country. Even in San Diego, she’d spent her childhood waiting for him, convinced that there’d be a knock on the door one day and it’d be him, with his arms wide open and an explanation for why he’d gone away.
    “What kind of excuse would make up for what he did to us, child?” her mom had said. “He was abducted by aliens? The FBI snatched him off the streets after he was framed for a crime he didn’t commit? Please .”
    Despite her intentions, the Californian weather didn’t do anything for her mom’s mood, and she turned into a bitter, lonely woman, intent on pickling her liver with alcohol. She’d died two years earlier, which Freya had to admit had almost been a mercy. But now Freya was alone, and had grown up prickly and distrustful of people. Her friends called her ‘prickles’ and guys never hung around long, after they’d gotten a closed door in their faces enough times. On the whole, she preferred her own company, and had to force herself to work with others.
    But she knew there was a hole in her life that she needed to fix. And she suspected that hole was located somewhere in Washington. Losing her father and her home town in a short space of time had been traumatic. She’d never even been back there. In her early teens, she’d longed to return, and had begged her mom to take them back, so they at least go see all the old places that she’d stored in her memory, but her mom had refused. And then, something had shifted in her mind, and she’d begun to see the north of the country as somewhere dark and foreboding. The place where her open, trusting nature had been completely flipped on its head, and where, in a real sense, she’d lost her mom as well as her dad. It had been a shock to discover that this narrow little trail, which led all the way back home, had existed alongside her, all her life. And she decided it was time to go