Page 1 of Bears Not Included

Chapter One

Livia

“Livia Daniels, I love you, but honestly, you need to less nerd and more hot girl, or you’re never going to find a boyfriend, let alone get laid. Seriously, if your virginity screams ‘take me’ any louder, the furniture is going to start humping you out of pity.”

I pause for a moment, and in that minuscule amount of time, my entire body goes ice cold, and my insides lodge in my throat, making me want to throw up at the thought of what my future holds. I quickly swallow down the rising anxiousness inside me and cover up the deathly white sheet that remains engulfed over my face before my cousin, Faith Marsh, sees it.

Too late.

“Okay, what’s up?” Faith asks, climbing off the edge of my bed where she’d been sitting like a princess, her pretty brows tightly knotted as she scans my face.

“Nothing,” I say, perking up as I resume bundling way too many wads of underwear into a backpack.

“Something is up because you usually say, oh, boyfriends are overrated, and sex is—”

“The funniest thing humans do,” I add, sticking out my tongue at her. “Well, it’s true. I stand by my opinion.”

“Again, sex is so not funny, Livia. It’s hot and dirty, and it’s supposed to make you feel all hot and gooey, and I swear to god if you mention cupcakes—”

“Well, it’s true. A decadent double chocolate cupcake with peanut butter filling and a side of especially creamy vanilla ice cream gives me all the hot and gooey feelings I need without having someone bump my private parts as if they’re having a conniption.”

“The word is hump. Hump. And that’s why you’re never going to get laid. Because you use words like conniption. Girl, who hurt you?” Faith asks with an exaggerated, serious expression on her face.

Faith doesn’t know who hurt me. She knows only what I tell her, which is more than I tell anyone else. We didn’t grow up together. In fact, I didn’t know she existed until about three years ago when we were both around twenty years old, and she introduced herself as my cousin—my father’s sister’s daughter.

It made perfect sense that my father was severely estranged from the only other family he had—his sister—and hadn’t spoken to her in over twenty-five years. I don’t think even my mom knew he had family. He’s just that type of man.

After the death of Faith’s mother in a senseless car accident, Faith showed up on our doorstep determined to have a relationship with me since I was all she had left now. My father forbade it. But Faith had no plans to leave, and I had no plans to listen to my father this time around.

“How could you not laugh? I mean, sex is the most hilarious thing people do. It’s basically just a man shoving his odd-shaped appendage in and out of your private part, grunting like some bear or something. I don’t think I would be able to keep a straight face if I tried.”

“Trust me, you’ll be too busy moaning out in pleasure to laugh if you ever allow yourself to get some good-grade dick. But no. And how can you not hear it? I’m over here, and I can hear your virginity screaming, take me, take me, take me. Sigh,” Faith says then sighs theatrically to get her point home.

“There’s no hope for you, Livia Kate Daniels,” she continues. “None whatsoever. Go be with your nerd friends trying to prove fairytales exist.” She sticks a grumpy expression on her face as she goes to my sock drawer, piles her arms with as many pairs of socks as she can, and tosses them into my bag.

This is probably how it would have been for us if we had grown up together. She’d be trying to talk me out of something while helping me prepare to do the very thing she was talking me out of doing.

“But if it’s real, Faith? What if the stories we know as fairytales really truly happened in real life? Wouldn’t you want to know?”

“No,” Faith says without hesitation, shaking her head and making her thick curls bounce in the winter sunlight streaming in from my bedroom window. “First, because I’m a grown-up. And second, because it’s literally a fairytale, as in, it was made up. As in, it never happened. Like ever.”

“Fine, be a pessimist all you want, but I want to believe, and I want to know, and now I may have proof of its existence. Actual proof. This is huge, Faith.”

Finding the secret online group Fairytale Femme Fatales, or FFF, changed my life. Not only did those girls validate both my and my mom’s aspirations, but suddenly, I was no longer alone in my quest.

Meeting Skyler McNeil, Demi Carlson, and Kyla Webb, the other three girls in the club, gave me hope. Skyler’s dad is a billionaire. Demi has some rather interesting family connections, possibly on the wrong side of the law. And Kyla has family in law enforcement. We’re educated, smart, logical, and determined, and each of us believes the same thing. Fairytales were real. They happened.

We bonded instantly over a shared fascination and an obsession to be proven right. Scattered across the States, we meet up in the dead of night online, pouring together over new information we found and sifting through to find the facts.

Now a thrilling beam of excitement follows my every breath instead of the constant heaviness I carry in my heart. They share the exact same excitement I do, something I can’t expect Faith to feel as well.

I’ve gotten to the point where I can’t wait for the next day because I get to unearth more things and piece together more clues, and I do it around people who don’t think I’m crazy, like how my father thought about my mom.

Faith has no clue about the extent to which I’m hanging on to the one thing that my mom and I used to do together before she died—I was thirteen years old then.

It was our secret, my mom’s and mine. She believed that fairytales were true-life accounts of things that happened. And I do, too. So if I can prove that fairytales existed I can lay her to rest.

Now ten years after her death, I may be able to finally say goodbye to her when I show her she was right all along. I hope she’s watching from wherever she is.

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