Read Can't Bear To Run (Kendal Creek Bears, #1) for Free Online

in stone, I pulled over to the shoulder of the highway and turned the aging truck around with a significant amount of creaking and groaning. Assuming everything went right, I would be at the bar in a little under a half hour.
    And I mean, there I was, brain completely isolated from the very real danger I was in, making intricate plans about the removal of a goddamn body .
    The road was only sparsely populated with traffic, and what little there was, happened to be on the side heading into town rather than going out into the woods. Good thing, too. In a haze, I took the exit to Dan’s favorite little alone-time spot, and wound along the narrow, unpaved, pothole-ridden road until Crane Landing spread out in front of me.
    That’s a very grandiose name for what it actually is. Really, Crane Landing is little more than an earthen peninsula jutting out over a river. The only settlement for ten miles in any direction were a series of rental cabins to the east, and a trailer park to the west.
    With the sour taste of bile building up in the back of my throat, I took a deep breath and climbed out of the truck.
    I couldn’t just dump him and take the truck back. Assuming anyone believed me that my husband just went off one weekend and never returned, I think having his truck sitting in the driveway would make that story seem slightly implausible.
    At the same time, I couldn’t take it to a chop shop or a junkyard or something because... well, paper trail.
    “Here I am,” I announced to the empty woods. “I am going to leave a truck in the forest and walk ten miles back to town because... I don’t have any choice.”
    The next several minutes of my life seemed like distant memories even as I was living them. Dan’s weight, the sound of him falling into the water, the groan of his ancient truck as I nudged it close enough to the drop off to be convincing, but not to have it fall off on him – I think in the back of my mind I sorta hoped he’d come-to when he hit the water – felt distant.
    Looking back, it felt like those weird moments I had all the time in high school when I’d be walking down a hall to the next class, thinking about something else, and suddenly I was ten feet behind myself, watching my body walk down the corridor. It sounds weird, and I admit a little crazy, but there it is.
    It all seemed so un real; a movie playing out in front of my eyes where I was the protagonist pushed a step too far and had no choice but to explode. I guess, when it comes down to the line, I did have a choice about what to do, and I picked the one I thought most useful.
    I swallowed. Hard. Walking back from the drop off, I decided to take a fairly ragged, unkempt hiking trail rather than risk running into someone on the road and having them realize shortly after what had happened. I might’ve been in a weird haze, but if anything, I’m not stupid.
    I was already thirty minutes late for karaoke, and the twenty it took me to hike back to the road felt like eternity. Once I got back and saw that open road stretching out in front of me, I was struck like the cat on an inspirational poster. I was alone, standing on the shoulder of an interstate, and completely helpless. But... what the hell, I was free.
    And that was something I hadn’t felt in a long, long time. Freedom.
    I was actually smiling, and looking up at the stars as I trod the first few lonely steps on the asphalt. I let my thoughts drift to the past, to the future. Would I ever find someone who treated me like I should be treated? Hell, I’d settle for someone that treated me like a human, screw being a princess.
    I was tapping a gentle, slow rhythm on the back of my phone, which was nestled in my front pocket.
    “Oh right,” I said out loud, announcing reality to no one except myself. “Taxis exist.”
    Coming up with a plan for what to tell the driver why I needed a pickup at mile marker 8, highway 174 was a secondary worry to what would happen to my feet if I actually