It was probably one of my all time favorite things to do. Read.

I was just settling into my window seat, cracking open the spine for the first time, running my fingers over the slightly raised and glossy words dripped across the cover.

Shiver was the title. It was about werewolves.

This certainly wasn't the first book I'd picked up about wolves since learning that my best friend/boyfriend could change into one, but this one felt different. For one thing it was a romance.

I smiled a little at the thought, looking out over the new snow in my yard. I loved the cold, the snow. Quil used to take me and play in it till I was exhausted or got a fever or both. And I loved reading with the snow coming down beside me.

I flipped open to the first page, my excitement getting the best of me. A werewolf romance, just like mine. My eyes focused on the page, and I began to read, the words slowly leaking into my brain, replacing space and time.

Three hours and three-hundred-forty pages later, my heart was beating at my chest, grief spiking through my lungs, making it hard to breath. My face was screwed up in denial as I hurled the book as hard as possible at the opposite wall, not caring when it knocked against the picture board Mandy had made me for my birthday last year.

I turned my face towards the window, letting my hair fall in between me and the book. Suddenly the snow was threatening, so cold and harsh. My mind was yelling at me that it wasn't true. It wasn't my werewolf that…

I jumped and squealed as a felt a hand on my neck, lifting my hair away from my face. Quil.

I laughed, trying to force myself out of the book. Taking him in. Seeing him helped, recognizing that he was not actually the character in the book, that it was fake, calmed my fluttering heart a little.

"You scared me." I laughed nervously, still trying to pry the sticky, sad feeling off of my chest. I wiped my eyes, hoping he didn't notice but knowing he did. I curled my legs into my chest so he could sit, and hoping he would hold me. Smiling when he did.

Sitting over him like this, I could get close enough to forget about the words running though my head, the feelings of Grace and the knowledge that he was gone…

I pressed my forehead against his, letting my hair curtain us from the rest of my room, maybe the rest of the world.

"What's wrong?" I ignored him. What he didn't know and all that, and really, it was just a book. Just fiction.

I kissed him instead, feeling his warmth. Hot, not cold, I reminded myself, flicking my tongue out to try and get closer to him, opening my mouth to breath him in. My Quil, my werewolf.

"Claire?" I knew he was going to push it, but I put up one last fight, biting his bottom lip lightly, scraping over it, trying to pull him into the moment. Instead he pushed me out of it.

I groaned as he slid me onto his knees, away from his body. I gave him a look, playing with him.

"You totally just ruined that. We had a really nice moment-" he started laughing.

"Really nice? Maybe for you, who doesn't have to go phase in like an hour and share that 'nice moment' with Sam. He'll be delighted to know you're so enthusiastic with your tongue. Woa. What?"

Sam. My uncle. Not the werewolf from the book. What was wrong with me?! Why couldn't I shake this? Besides that, for some reason, I'd tricked myself into believing the book more than real life. I didn't like Quil out in the cold. Didn't he know that he could stop…and that then we…

I wasn't even thinking in full sentences. And I was scaring him, but I convinced him to stay in with me. Being with him that night, distracting myself, drawing my mind into the real world out of the book one, I was normal by the time he took me home. I went to sleep, knowing that I would never, ever finish that book.

I didn't need the bad juju or whatever, and real life was so much better. I fell asleep in one of Quil's old shirts, holding his scent to me.