Grin and Bear It (Ursa Shifters Book 3), page 1
GRIN AND BEAR IT
SAM HALL
Contents
Stalk me!
Author Note
Trigger Warning
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Chapter 65
Chapter 66
Chapter 67
Chapter 68
Chapter 69
Chapter 70
Chapter 71
Chapter 72
What’s next?
Acknowledgments
Grin and Bear It
Grin and Bear It © Sam Hall 2023
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except for in the case of brief quotations for the use in critical articles or reviews.
Edited by Steph Tashkoff
Cover art and design by Design by Definition
The characters and events depicted in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.
Stalk me!
Stalk me!
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Author Note
This book is written in Australian English, which is a weird lovechild of British and American English. We tend to spell things the way the Brits do (expect a lot more u’s), yet also use American slang and swear more than both combined.
While many people have gone over this book, trying to find all the typos and other mistakes, they just keep on popping up like bloody rabbits. If you spot one, don’t report it to Amazon, drop me an email at the below address so I can fix the issue.
samhall.author@gmail.com
Trigger Warning
Trigger and Content Warning
Please, PLEASE read this.
Some people will get a little confused by Ellie. Those nearest and dearest to me have both ADHD and ASD, so neuro-spiciness is a big thing in my household. I created Ellie from some aspects of me (I’m hyperfocus girl for the win!) and aspects of friends and family who are diagnosed with ADHD. Having said that, if you also have the condition, you might not recognise yourself in her.
Potential triggers:
Two of the young people in the book have experienced parental loss and are processing the trauma of this
While I have tried to make this a much more upbeat representation of being plus size, there is some potentially triggering stuff in the attitudes of some of the people in the FMCs life (preoccupation with diet culture, disrespectful attitudes towards dating a plus size woman from the antagonist).
Depression, anxiety and family trauma are mentioned
Chapter 1
When I was a kid, adults seemed like gods. Angry, sad or happy ones maybe, but always authoritative, always in control. Back then, I felt like my whole childhood I couldn’t wait to turn eighteen so I could ascend to those same heady heights.
Problem is, it’s now ten years after I hit that magic number, and I’m still waiting.
I might be twenty-eight, but I don’t remember either of my parents starting the day like this.
“Fuck… fuck… fuck…” I panted, yanking on my dressing gown as I stumbled out of my bedroom.
“Morning.” Colleen, my flatmate, was standing at the breakfast bar, sipping a coffee. “Mary-Kate.” She pointed to one of my breasts as I closed the dressing gown, “Ashley. Lovely to see you again this morning.”
“Fuck…” I paused. “Did you name my tits after the Olsen twins?”
“I needed to come up with something.” Coll shot me a cat-like smile. “I see them that fucking often. Seems rude not to give them a name.”
“But the Olsen twins?” I looked down at my capacious bosom. “Not something like Ashley and Graham?” But before either of us could answer that, my alarm went off.
Again.
“Fuck!” I yelped, looking down at the time and leaping forward again, storming straight to the bathroom and slamming the door behind me.
“Hey, Elle—” Coll’s voice was muffled behind the door.
“Can’t talk!” I shot back over my shoulder as I reached into the shower stall to slap on the shower taps. I started to wrestle my dressing gown off again, the process somehow so much harder than putting it on. “I’m teaching first lesson and I’m late!”
Anything she might have had to say was drowned out by explosive sprays of water coming out of the shower head, the pipes rumbling threateningly, sounding just like my assistant principal each time I screamed into the teacher’s car park a bee’s dick before the bell went.
Something I could look forward to if I didn’t get a fucking move on.
I had several alarms set on my phone for the morning, reasoning that somehow this would be enough to get me up in time for work.
But it rarely worked.
Sleep was the only place where I could feel calm, warm, comfortable. I clung to sleep like Jack to that door in Titanic, desperately wanting to sleep my damn life away.
Even if my bank balance said I couldn’t.
This morning, I’d slept through one alarm, then I’d hit snooze on the next which had left me standing in the bathroom, panicking. I finally got the dressing gown off and dumped it on the floor. Stepping into the shower cubicle, I discovered that the Gods of Plumbing had decided to make their displeasure known. Although water came out of the shower head, it did so in fits and starts, just enough to wet me so I figured I’d at least be able to get a quick wash in before the water ran out totally. As this kept going, I grabbed my new bar of sweet-smelling organic soap from Lush, smoothing the bright yellow bar all over me. Trying to de-stress a little, I took in a deep breath, feeling refreshed by the bright lemon scent rather than just panicked. I grabbed my face washer and started scrubbing, still chasing the spray of water and trying to build up a lather.
Just as I was ready to rinse off, the shower head shook on its pipe, the rattling getting louder and louder, worse than I’d ever heard it. I looked up in horror, right as I finally realised what Coll had been trying to tell me.
“The shower head is busted!” she shouted.
I realised that as I watched the bloody thing pop off like a cork and went sailing through the air. My mouth fell open, right in time for water to come pouring out of the pipe unimpeded now, with the speed and vigour of an elephant dick facial. And to top it all off? The shower head bounced off my forehead, rewarding me with a blinding rush of pain to go with all that water. I spluttered, blinking from the rush of water in my eyes as much as in reaction to the pain. As my wits came back to me, I stepped away from the gushing pipe and turned the taps off, then turned around to survey the mess.
Now that I wasn’t blindly focused on getting to the shower, I noticed the towels strewn across the floor, obviously there to clean up the previous deluge. I’d added to the flood with my antics. I looked down at the puddle of water at my feet and saw that it was slowly turning pink. I realised why as a drop of blood slowly fell from the upper periphery of my vision to the water below. I slapped my hand on my forehead, then winced, as the pain flared in intensity.
“Shit!” Still holding my head, I stumbled over to the bathroom mirror, then gingerly moved my hand away. The cut wasn’t big but it was going to need a dressing or I wouldn’t be able to see to drive. Just what I needed. But then, before I could perform some hasty first aid, my phone blared out the alarm that was guaranteed to make me stop whatever shit I was doing and hightail it to the car. If it played while I was still in the house, I was going to have to floor it all the way to work. I’d used the Imperial Death March for this one to let me know that the time for procrastination was well and truly
“I tried to tell you—” Coll started to say and I just nodded.
“Got it. I’ll get a plumber over tonight.”
How and with what money? I thought, but mentally I couldn’t spare the energy for that right now. I didn’t even bother shutting my bedroom door as I wrenched my wardrobe doors open and then started tossing clothes on the bed willy-nilly.
No clean jeans. None of my favourite tops were washed. There was a reason why I’d woken up extra late this morning: I’d stayed up last night, marking students’ essays until I’d passed out. “Fuck,” I hissed. “The kids’ essays.”
“I’ll get them; you get dressed,” Coll ordered. I had to bite my tongue as she swept all of my carefully sorted piles from my desk into a box, not bothering to order them by class. I wrenched my eyes away, picking up the pace again and grabbing a bra and undies. Then I had to face the next challenge of trying to work out what clothes were clean. The choice was between really bad and awful. But I was out of time to worry about what I looked like today.
My mother’s figure had been slim and svelte since she was young. She’d told me that many times ever since I was a little girl. She’d also shown me plenty of pictures of herself that generally made clear the differences between her body and mine. She didn’t know what the hell to do with a plus size daughter, but that hadn’t stopped her from trying her best to ‘fix’ things for me. With a deep sigh, I pushed my arm past the hangers, right to the back of my wardrobe and pulled out one of the many floral monstrosities she’d bought for me.
“Oh no…” Colleen said, shaking her head. “No, Ellie, you can’t.”
“Dress, tights, ballet flats,” I told myself with a sharp nod. “And a fucking cardie.”
“Librarian chic is a thing, but not that,” my flatmate argued.
I couldn’t engage, not when I was dressing myself in ten seconds flat, smoothing the folds of the too stiff printed cotton down over my hips.
“Fuck, you look like a floral pinata,” Colleen said.
“Thanks.” I yanked a cardigan off its hanger and pulled it on over the bloody dress. A floral frock could be really quite lovely, but Mum could never seem to find them. She seemed to think that lurid colours and hectic patterns would somehow disguise my shape and size.
Instead, no one would be able to look away from the horror that was this dress.
I got my tights on and then my shoes, snatching the box of marking from Coll’s hands with an apologetic smile, right before I made for the door.
“I’ll have the shower sorted this afternoon… Fuck!”
“What now?” Coll asked, settling against my bedroom doorframe.
“I’ve got a staff meeting after school.”
I’m not sure if other professions’ staff meetings were a combination of death by PowerPoint and courtroom drama, but ours were. Our executive staff came and pummelled us with all of the agendas that were being pushed by the department, and then all the bolshy teachers would start pushing back, citing union rules and regulations at the drop of a hat.
And I’d just be begging to have that time to mark my students’ work, so I could get my reports written.
“After that,” I promised. “Oh, fuck! I can’t.”
“What now?” Coll’s voice was dry.
“I’m supposed to be seeing Derek.”
“Oh, god, not that dickhead—”
The theme from Jaws played on my phone, silencing any further discussion. I should have been hearing that when I was halfway to work, not when I was still at home.
“Gotta go.”
I sprinted for the front door, then leapt into my car, turning the ignition and praying to the car gods for a good day when the engine turned over the first time. “Thank you, thank you, thank you…” I chanted, then pulled out of the driveway at speed, taking off down the road. And all was well until I hit peak hour traffic.
“Fuuuuuck…” I groaned, looking at the banks of cars lined up on the main road. Then I flicked my indicator on and smiled hopefully at the drivers next to me, hoping they’d let me in.
Chapter 2
“Late again, Ellie?”
I was speed-walking down the hallway to my faculty office when a familiar arch voice stopped me in my tracks. I closed my eyes in frustration, then turned slowly, plastering a sheepish smile on my face as I did so.
“June,” I said, looking at my assistant principal. “We had a little plumbing emergency this morning.” I touched the cut on my forehead, then winced again.
“Another emergency?” June’s nickname amongst the students was Dragon Lady and it was easy to see why. She had a wiry mane of bright red hair that formed a heavily lacquered halo around her head. Her eyeshadow was poison green, applied perfectly, of course, and her thin lips were frequently pursed as they were now as she looked me over, taking in the damn dress. Her perfectly lacquered nails clicked as she folded her arms. “One is unfortunate, two is terrible luck: but three in one week? I’m beginning to wonder if there’s something else going on here.”
I could’ve answered that easily, but I wasn’t about to. I’d been a terrible dreamer when I was a kid. I only got through university with Coll’s help. I was smart, really smart. I knew that because I had been tested several times at school to try and work out what the hell was wrong with me. The issue was that when I was functioning, I was amazing. My teachers would be ecstatic about my essays and test results, and they’d rave excitedly to my parents.
But when I wasn’t…?
I would end up in ‘discussions’ about my lack of consistency, my inability to do as expected. Just like this, standing before an important authority figure, seeing that same look of disappointment and irritation as I’d seen so many times on Mum’s face and so many others, too. Except the look on June’s face usually veered towards disdain rather than simple disappointment.
“You don’t need to apologise for existing,” my psych had said, so I didn’t. Instead, I looked at my watch and then nodded to June.
“I feel the same way,” I replied, “but the bell is about to go and I’m teaching first lesson. I’ve got to get some stuff photocopied before—”
“Of course.” The muscles around June’s mouth tightened. “We’ll talk about this in your performance review meeting next week.”
Fuck…
As I watched June stalk off on her perilously high heels, I cursed the Australian education system, and not for the first time. There were still a few old timers at the school. Teachers who had permanent positions, who drove up outside their classrooms as all the kids were waiting to go in, then strolled in poorly prepared, delivering some bullshit off-the-cuff lesson about nothing, using the curriculum as a guide on what not to teach. But because they had permanence, they faced no repercussions.
