I'm Not Afraid of Wolves (The Cotton Candy Quintet Book 4) Read Online Free PDF Page B

out of that hole. How scary everything was.
    I met Shane during my freshman year at the University of Jacksonville. I studied ballet and he was in school after he spent four years in the Army. We shared a huge lecture class together and I kept noticing the “hot guy” in his uniform all the time. I went and stalked Facebook until I finally found him, and even then, it took another friend messaging him to get us to start talking.
    And talk we did. At first through instant messaging and then with a cup of coffee.
    That first cup of coffee with him lasted three hours, and we would have kept talking if we hadn’t gotten kicked out at closing.
    I fell for him. And hard.
    I started spending every waking moment with him. We were inseparable; you’d never see one of us without the other. My dancing suffered because of it, but hey, I was a stupid kid in love. There are worse crimes in life, but I still paid for it.
    When Shane was shipped off to Iraq, I fell despondent. For two years, my identity had been with him and when he wasn’t there, I no longer had any idea who I was. I stopped going to class. I stopped caring.
    I dropped out of college waiting for him. I took a job at a restaurant to pay for my living wages. And when he came back, I still waited for him. Because the man who came back wasn’t the same Shane that left. This was a battle-hardened man that I barely knew. Sure, I said yes when he asked me to marry him. We got married too early. We moved in together too early.
    At first, I’d convinced myself that this was all right. That this was how love should be and love had rough patches. I worked at the restaurant while he took a job at the bar in a seedy part of Jacksonville. We were getting by, albeit, we weren’t together most of the time.
    I think that was when we started drifting apart.
    And that was when the hitting started. The screaming. The accusing glares.
    I hid the bruises under my heavy waterproof makeup. I blamed myself for what my fledgling marriage had become. The man who was now Shane was a different kind of beast from the one I originally fell in love with.
    And I would do anything I could to repair it. Unfortunately, he took me up on my offer to do that.
    A howl rent through the night, making me snap my head up, crashing through my memories of the past.
    Was that a wolf? It sounded a bit too close for my liking, but then again, we were out in the wilderness of Georgia, and Officer Donnelly had said to look out for wolves. I guess they were close by no matter where we were out here.
    That solidified my decision that I was not going to go out in the Jeep and find cell reception, especially in unfamiliar woods.
    I thought about what Sara had said about werewolves, and I wondered for a brief second if that was a werewolf indeed. There was a full moon, after all.
    Did I believe her story about werewolves? Sure. But that’s because I’ve seen a lot of things in my lifetime, from a baby dolphin jumping an impossible distance to things like—
    Another howl. This one much closer, followed by an answer.
    I shivered and pulled my cardigan closer around me, even though the summer air was hot and humid. I forgot how true fear can make your insides turn to ice.
    Maybe it was time to go inside.
    I opened the sliding door and stepped into the darkened great room. I locked it, and pulled the curtain shut, blocking out the full moon. What was out there could stay out there, and I was going to sleep in here, safe and sound.
    Scrrraaaaa—tch.
    The sound echoed throughout the cabin, and I froze in place, hearing the pounding of my heartbeat in my ears.
    It’s just the wind, Christine. A tree branch or something scratching on the window.
    I wished I could convince my nerves of that. There weren’t any trees close enough to do that.
    I jumped as I heard something big hit the roof with a thud, and then scuttle along one side of it.
    I couldn’t convince myself that it was the wind this time.
    And then I heard the