Bear With Me (BBW Paranormal Shifter Romance) by Jasmine White Page B

of my two pronged stick – far beyond edible at that point – trying and failing to not feel my mother’s eyes boring into me, desperate for me to break the unbearably awkward silence which was growing thicker and thicker with every wasted moment. Already, even this early, I could not summon the energy to force the conversation. Already, I could not bring myself to be bothered. Instead I tortured my marshmallow and bottled up my boiling guilt, seething silently until every muscle in my body felt like it had been sculpted out of cement.
    “Anything bothering you, Nellie?” my mother asked me in her soft, mousy voice.
    “ I told you already,” I snapped back, rounding on her. “ Don’t call me that! My name is Helen , remember? You’re the one who called me that; you could at least bother to use it!” I was being unnecessarily cruel, I knew it – I was painfully aware of it with every barbed word that sprung from my lips – and when she flinched and ducked her head, cowed, there was nothing else I could do but apologize. “Sorry,” I muttered, looking back into flames and letting the heat burn my eyes in some sort of self-punishment. “Sorry… I don’t mean to snap.”
    “ It’s okay-“
    “ No.” I shook my head vehemently. “No it really isn’t. I don’t know why I’m like this. I really don’t want to be. Especially not to you.”
    And it was true. Of anyone I had ever come across in all the twenty-two years of my life, she was the one who deserved the most and received the least. She had never spoken a single angry word to me – even though I’m certain I deserved a thousand of them – she had never been bitchy with any one of the countless people who had screwed her over. She possessed the kind of unlimited patience that I had always been crazy jealous of but could never ever hope to achieve. She was amazing. She deserved so much more than me.
    Shaking my head, I tossed my gooey stick into the middle of bonfire and shoved my hands deep into my pockets. “I think I’m going to turn in,” I muttered, addressing the worn toes of my boots. “It’s been a pretty long day…” It was the lamest excuse but, of course, she didn’t call me out on it.
    “Okay,” she said placidly. “I’m going to pop back to the car. Don’t want to forget my meds. That would certainly ruin the mood…” Her voice trailed away in an awkward titter.
    I shrugged. “Sure. Do what you like. I’ll probably be asleep by the time you get back.”
    “I’ll be as quiet as a mouse.”
    I’m sure you will , I thought to myself with clenched teeth. “Good night then.”
    “ Good night, Nellie.”
     
    Despite my certainty that I would fall asleep the moment my head hit the pillow, as soon as I had managed to find a reasonably comfortable place on the ground and had wriggled down into my sleeping bag all the tiredness I had felt deserted me and I was left wide awake and staring up at the crooked seam in the room of the tent, listening to the wind humming through the trees outside. I heard Mom throw sand on the embers of the fire and then felt the crackle of dead leaves and twigs next to my head as she passed by me on the way to the car.
    I closed my eyes and counted backwards from a thousand, not wanting to be awake when she got back – I knew that I’d never be able to relax myself enough with her snuffling one foot away.
    I was asleep before I reached seven hundred and fifty.
     

Chapter2
     
    The early morning sun had was bathing the tent in a balmy orange glow, fending off the chill, as my eyes opened. I yawned and twisted around, not quite orientated yet. My sleeping bag was soft and warm and as comfortable as any real bed I had slept in, and I had absolutely no desire to leave it. Blinking several times to bring my eyes into some sort of focus that could see further than hazy orange shapes, I glanced over at Mom’s side. Or, at least, the space that was supposed to be Mom’s side. It looked as though it