Free How to Run with a Naked Werewolf by Molly Harper

keys a few times so I couldn’t leave, all the while claiming it was just a “joke” he was forced to play because he loved me so much.
    Of course, I couldn’t tell my friends, “Glenn doesn’t want me to spend time with you,” because that made it sound so unseemly and controlling. So when I retreated from those relationships, my friends thought it was my choice. I was one of those women who can’t maintain friendships after they get into a relationship. I was a Cosmo cautionary tale, in more ways than one.
    As time went on, a lot of Glenn’s problems became my problems. We’d committed to each other, moved in together. It seemed petty and shortsighted to leave my fiancé because he was a little needy. His demands grew so incrementally that I didn’t see how unreasonable they were becoming. If I loved him, I’d dress a bit more feminine, keep my hair long, cook the things he liked, enjoy staying home on the weekends the way he did. If I loved him, I would keep my personal cell phone on me at all times, even though it was against hospital policy. I would ignore the “accidents” I seemed to have whenever Glenn was angry with me, like tripping over his feet after an argument about rent and smacking my head against the coffee table. I would pass up the big white wedding debacle and get married on a beach in the Caribbean, which is what we did, one not-so-special weekend when I came home to find Glenn holding the plane tickets. I was the proverbial frog in the pot of slowly boiling water, dying by degrees.
    And then, there were the family “issues.” I was an only child, a late-in-life miracle for my lovely, rational parents. We’d shared a close, slightly unorthodox relationship, as my parents tended to treat me more like a small adult colleague than a child. I’d been disappointed that Glenn wasn’t interested in spending time with them. My parents didn’t like him, he claimed. My father made him feel as if he was being interrogated for the entire visit, and my mother was too clingy with me. He caused huge fights right before we were supposed to go to family events, so that either we would skip them, or I would end up fighting off tears for most of the night, sparking tension and uncomfortable questions from my parents. It ended up being easier to tell my mother that we had other plans or that I was working. While he was mollified by my efforts to “focus on us,” he grumbled that he didn’t understand why I wanted to go see my parents so often anyway.
    I tried to tell myself it would take time for Glenn to warm to my parents. But then Mom was diagnosed with advanced pancreatic cancer about two years after our wedding and passed away within six months. Dad never quite recovered from the shock, passing in his sleep a year later. I would always regret missing those last Christmases and birthdays with them. And while I couldn’t blame Glenn for my failure to protect my time with my parents, I could blame him for expecting me to bounce back from their deaths as if they were just an inconvenience.
    At first, I stayed because I was afraid to admit, even to myself, that my marriage was such a mistake. I didn’tlove Glenn. He’d strangled any love I’d felt for him with his insecurities and his manipulations. But I was a successful doctor, on my way up the ladder at a major Nashville medical center. Marriages that lasted less than one presidential term were not supposed to happen to women like me. I was ashamed and embarrassed and every other word that expressed world-shaking regret. When Glenn started talking about having children of our own, instead of going all warm and tender at the idea of starting a family, I panicked. I knew I couldn’t be tied to him in that way for the rest of my life. So I made a clean break.
    With my parents gone and my friendships damaged, nothing prevented me from moving across the country. I didn’t have enough evidence for a restraining order, so I elected just to disappear.