I Knew You Were Trouble - Cassie Mae Page 0,52

like I need that approval like a dog needs a bone.

She’s quiet long enough for me to think she’s gone to sleep. Then a small sigh slips through her lips. “You should marry her.”

I bark out a laugh, and my sister is so used to the volume of my laughter that she doesn’t jerk at all. “Is that so?”

“Mmmhmm. Then she’ll be my sister.”

“You just want more presents,” I accuse. A sense of relief wraps around my shoulders, and I quickly check the door to make sure no one witnesses the magnitude of my grin.

“And cookies.”

I shake my head and press a kiss to her forehead that she quickly swipes away. “’Night, Dem.”

I swear she’s asleep before I hit the door. Mad meets me in the hallway and doesn’t give me two seconds before she shoves me to my room. “I have presents you can’t see.” Damn, she’s tough. “So you stay until I give the all clear.”

My feet trip over themselves into my room, where Candace is already set up on the floor with the wrapping paper I bought. Mad shuts us in, and the air snaps, suddenly infested by electric eels.

She levels me with her gaze, her shoulders all-business. Her nerves from earlier have seeped out slowly throughout the night. Looks like they’re completely gone now.

“Pay attention,” she says, grabbing a tube of wrapping and slapping it against her open palm. “I’m only going to show you once.”

“Yes, ma’am.” I salute her and open my closet door, the unwrapped gifts jumbled in a box I stuffed in here earlier. I didn’t have much time to clean up before work, but lucky for me, I don’t have a ton of stuff to my name.

I sit opposite her, sliding the box between us. Mad’s got Candace’s gift from me; I wrapped it as best I could, but I can already hear the jabs I’ll get from her tomorrow before she rips it open.

Candace smooths the paper out in front of her, the neckline of her button-up plaid pajamas dipping low enough for me to see the shadows between her breasts. I blink a few times and try to put my head on straight. I’ve only got one shot at listening, after all.

“Try to get as many cube shapes as possible,” she instructs, pushing up off the floor to peer into the box. She digs around, finding an oddly shaped stuffed koala bear—Dem’s favorite animal. She nibbles on the inside of her lip as she sits back down, looking around my mostly vacant room. “So with this, I’d put it in a small box. Where do you keep your box of boxes?”

“In the recycling bin outside.” I jut my thumb over my shoulder with a smirk. A box of boxes? We barely have enough room for the required furniture.

“Do you have a bag full of gift bags— never mind.” She retracts the question at the look of utter confusion on my face.

“You have a bag of gift bags.”

“It’s not that unusual, Pete.” She sets the stuffed animal in the center of the paper, twisting it in different directions before settling on a position. “Saving gift bags is just good sense. Another way of recycling, so to speak.”

“I suppose one would have to get gift bags to understand that.” I’m teasing, but she eyes me with a frown, and slices through the wrapping in one swoop. I hope I wasn’t supposed to be paying attention to that.

She’s quiet for a beat as she folds the wrapping around the toy, grabbing tape off the roll at the same time. She presses the tape against the paper, not making a single crinkle.

“I’m about to pry…” she blurts, and I lift a brow.

“Go for it.” I lean back on my hands, enjoying how meticulously she works, how comfortable she sits in her flannel pajamas on my bedroom floor.

“Well…” She pauses, probably rethinking what she wants to say. I wait it out, letting her grab another gift and start wrapping without much thought to what she’s doing. I have a guess as to what she wants to talk about, given the pity I’ve seen cross her expression more than once tonight.

She folds the corners against Maddie’s pack of board stickers I got her. “It… um… doesn’t take a genius to see how different we grew up.”

I laugh at the apologetic wrinkles in her brow as she refuses to meet my eyes. “Uh huh.”

“I was just… curious I guess.” Her gaze flutters and drops back to the