Barbie Btch (Rejects Paradise #3) - Sheridan Anne Page 0,60

“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.