Mom disappears and I’m left to make my way up to the library. I find the elevator and within moments, I’m stepping through to my favorite room in the house. I’m still baffled by how amazing this is. What normal people have a fully stocked library in their home? It’s insane.
I quickly begin my search, desperately trying to ignore the memories of Colton devouring my pussy like a fucking king on these very shelves. It doesn’t take long before I’m getting lost in the titles and covers, scanning over the blurbs and picking out a whole freaking pile that I wish I could somehow read in one night.
I narrow down my search and am just about to settle on Jaymin Eve’s latest release when the elevator pings and the doors slide open. I freeze on the spot as Casey steps through to the library and the second she lifts her eyes from the ground, she stops and we stare at each other like deer caught in headlights.
“Umm …” I say awkwardly. “I was uhh, just leaving.”
“Oh, umm … you don’t have to leave on my account. I’m just going to grab a book and go read in my room.”
“Okay, sure,” I say, still unable to move from my spot. “You don’t mind that I’m reading your books?”
Her eyes flitter across the room as though she’s trying to look busy as she searches for her book but it’s pretty damn clear that she’s just trying to avoid making awkward eye contact with me. “I mean, are you going to bend the pages or write notes in the margins?”
I suck in a horrified breath. “No.”
“So, how do you mark your page?”
“What are you talking about?”
“If you had to put the book down to go and pee or something like that, what do you do?”
My brows furrow, trying to figure out where the hell she’s going with this. “I put a bookmark in and then go pee.”
Casey shrugs her shoulders. “Then I don’t mind, as long as you put it back exactly where you got it from, I don’t care. It took me forever to organize all of these books.”
“I can imagine,” I say, noting how not only are they arranged by genre, but each of those genres is also organized into alphabetical order. “You’ve got a pretty good system. It was really easy to find what I was looking for.”
“Oh, yeah?” she questions, spying the book in my hand. “Who are you reading?”
I hold up the book to show her the cover. “Jaymin Eve,” I say. “She’s freaking amazing. Have you read her?”
Casey’s face lights up like Christmas morning. “Hell yeah! Of course, I have. Jaymin is incredible. I love her work. I fell in love with her back in the ‘Hive Trilogy’ days. That series rocked my world. Have you read Amo Jones or J Bree? I was going to start ‘Hannaford Prep’ today.”
“No way. I finished that series just before I came to Bellevue springs. It’s so fucking dark and twisted.”
“That’s what I’ve heard,” she says as her eyes widen. “Come and check this out. If you love that shit, you’ll love this.”
I find myself following her deeper into the library and somehow we spend the next hour going over all the books that we’ve fallen in love with and with each new title I list, she instantly adds it to her Amazon cart and hits buy. I gape at her, wishing I had that power with my credit card … oh, wait. I don’t even have a fucking credit card.
We sit down on the egg chairs and get comfortable while going over everything and working out the best reading orders for all the new stuff coming in. I mean, did Casey and I just become friends? I have no idea but I think I like it.
“Can I ask you something?” I question, leaning back into the egg chair and looking over at her.
“Yeah, what’s up?”
“What’s the deal with you guys and Colton?”
“What do you mean?”
“I don’t know … there’s just this huge divide between you all and it’s kinda sad. I know if you guys gave him the chance, he’d be more than happy to start building the relationship between you. I mean, I don’t have sisters but I have more than enough family in the Widows and I don’t know if I could survive with that kind of break between us.”
Casey shrugs her shoulders and seems to wander off inside her mind before finally letting out a sigh. “I don’t know. We moved away, or at least, Mom took us away when we were fourteen. Colton came with us originally but Dad came and forced him back here, and that was just it. We never saw each other and just kept growing apart. Mom never even attempted to reach out to him after that. She took it as some kind of personal attack, but he was just a kid. It wasn’t his responsibility to be the parent. Mom failed there, but don’t tell her I said that. She’d tear me a new asshole.”
I scoff and try to smother a laugh.
Casey continues. “Colton’s done a lot of growing in the last few years. I guess ... I don’t know … things just got worse from there. Everyone grew hostile and the disconnect between us just got bigger. Cora and I would speak to Colton every now and then but it wasn’t anything deep just, ‘Hey, how are you?’ You know, that kind of stuff.”
I nod and feel a heaviness come over me. “I think he’d actually like to get to know you both as adults now. I mean, I can't exactly speak for him. We haven’t actually discussed it or anything, but what big brother wouldn’t want his baby sisters in his life?”
She shrugs her shoulders. “I mean, I know that I miss having that same relationship that we used to have. Cora has a slightly different view on it, but I feel like she could come around. She’s so bitter. She’s a lot like Mom.”
“No shit,” I laugh. “The apple didn’t fall far from that tree.”
“Yeah … about that,” she says with a cringe. “I’m kinda over the fighting. I'm not exactly a grudge holder like that, so if you’re down with being cool, then I am too.”
I raise a brow. “Yeah?” I question. “I don’t think your sister feels the same.”
“No, she doesn’t and she’d kill me and instantly accuse me of jumping ship, but I can see how much you mean to Colton and if I’m going to have any chance of having him in my life, then I need to get on board the Ocean train. Though, turns out it's not actually that bad. I didn’t realize we would have so much in common.”
“To be honest, I really thought that there wouldn’t be anything under the sun that we would have in common but it’s nice to know that we do.”
“Exactly,” she says with a beaming smile before glancing down at her book and pulling her feet up under herself. “Now shut up, I’ve been dying to read this series.”
“Right back at ya,” I grin, resting back into my egg chair with an odd smile. I can’t exactly say that becoming friends with Casey Carrington was on my agenda today, but a part of me is actually kind of happy about it, unless it’s a trap, of course, but something tells me it was real, and for some reason, I’m inclined to give her the benefit of the doubt.
With that in mind, I open the book to page one and lose myself in one of the best stories ever told.