I closed my eyes as I was consumed with a mixture of emotions that rivaled those I’d seen in Noah’s eyes. I hadn’t wanted to tell Noah about what was going on at home because I knew he would worry and stir up trouble, not just for me but also for himself. I didn’t want to drag him into the middle of it when his relationship with our mother was tedious at best. As for his relationship with Jacob, well, let’s just say there were plenty of reasons why Noah had moved out the day after graduation. Our stepfather had been at the very top of that list.
After Mom had married Jacob, he’d thought he could jump in and take over the running of the garage. There had been dollar signs in Jacob’s eyes, but Noah had made it clear real fast that the douchebag wouldn’t touch our father’s legacy. The garage had been left to Noah and me, period. There had been no stipulation on age or even a small share of it for our mother. Two days after our father’s funeral, a lawyer had shown up with a will our dad had made.
The terms had been simple. We would inherit as long as we continued to run the garage and kept Wade on as a full-time mechanic for as long as the older man wanted the job. Having been raised to take care of the office practically from birth, both Noah and I hadn’t been concerned about keeping the garage open. Even at fourteen and sixteen, we’d been able to run the place smoothly with Wade as our mechanic. Mom had tried to contest the will, but she hadn’t made it far before a lawyer had ordered her to back off.
When Jacob had realized that he wasn’t going to be cashing in on our profits, or sell the garage—which was what I really think he’d wanted to do—he’d gone ballistic. I was sure that Jacob and Noah would have started throwing punches if Wade hadn’t stepped in. Their relationship had been tense ever since, and Noah had been counting down the days until he could get out of the house we’d both grown up in.
Noah was looking for a reason to beat the hell out of our stepdad. So, yeah, I hadn’t wanted him to know what was going on at home.
My heart clenched as I fought back tears. Don’t you dare cry, Annabelle. Not now. Not yet. If Noah knew about what was going on, and from the look on my brother’s face he probably knew it all, then there was only one person who could have told him. Pain sliced through me and I jerked my hands out of Noah’s grip and crossed to the windows.
Zander must have told him. After promising me over and over he wouldn’t, he’d gone to Noah with it. I thought I could trust him with anything, but obviously that wasn’t true. He’d shattered my trust in him, but of course he must have known that he would.
Don’t cry. Don’t cry. Don’t. Fucking. Cry.
My mind couldn’t comprehend why he’d done it. Was he tired of me sleeping in his bed? Was my coming to him for help so often messing with his life? My heart suddenly felt like it was broken and I fell into one of the chairs by the window as I put my head in my hands, fighting the tears with a desperation that nearly stole my breath. That must have been it. Zander was tired of having to play the white knight for me. Especially when he could have been out fucking any other girl.
“Annabelle.” Noah pulled my hands from my face and I looked at him through tear-blinded eyes, but still I refused to let them fall. I was not going to cry in front of my brother over a guy I’d been stupid enough to put all my trust in. “Honey, you should have told me things were bad at home. It isn’t safe. We have to get you out of there.”
The fear of sleeping at home was nothing compared to the pain I was feeling right then. It drove home just how differently Zander felt for me than how I felt for him. To him, I was just his friend’s bothersome little sister that he had to take care of—and he no longer wanted to do that. While I…
I loved him.
“It’s fine,” I muttered. My voice was choked with the tears that I was holding back. “I’m fine. There’s nothing to worry about.”
Noah released my hands only to grasp my elbows. He made an angry sound in the back of his throat as he shook me, just enough to make me lift my eyes to meet his. “Stop it, Annabelle. Just stop it. Everything is not fine. Jacob could hurt you bad and then I’d kill the sonofabitch. For your safety and my sanity, you aren’t going home ever again. I’ll figure out something, but until I do you have to stay with me upstairs.”
“No. There’s no room.” I couldn’t let him move me in with him. I couldn’t burden him with me and my problems. I still had two weeks before I turned seventeen. Noah was nineteen and needed his own space, to live his own life. I wasn’t going to rob him of that.
“I’ll take the couch and you can have the bedroom,” he told me, determination overshadowing his blue eyes instead of the emotional cocktail I’d seen just a few minutes before. “The bus drives right by here on the way to the house, so getting to school won’t be an issue.” As he spoke, I saw his shoulders actually become less tense, as if he’d finally found the good in the situation after all.
“Noah, no.” I tried to reason with him. I couldn’t let him do this. “Mom won’t like it. She’ll be pissed and she isn’t going to let me live with you.”
“What the fuck is she gonna do, Annabelle?” he demanded. “She has no job, no income except for what we give her. Jacob’s measly little paycheck every week won’t keep her in the wine and vodka she’s so accustomed to getting every night. If she so much as opens her mouth about this, I’ll cut all that off.”
I shook off his hold on my arms. “Noah, you aren’t listening to me. Please, don’t do this. It’s only going to start trouble. You have your life to live. I can’t move in with you.”
His eyes suddenly went darker than I’d ever seen them. Big hands cupped my face tenderly, showing me loud and clear the difference between him and Jacob. My brother would never touch me with violence. Never. “You listen to me, Annabelle Marie, and you listen good. I don’t want to have to repeat myself.” I started to speak, but he quickly shushed me. “No, honey. Just listen. You are the most important person in the world to me. I would do anything for you. Anything. Keeping you safe is the only thing I care about. Don’t you ever fucking argue with me about that.”
The battle to keep my tears at bay was suddenly lost, but my tears had nothing to do with Zander right then, and everything to do with how much love I felt for my brother in that moment. I realized in that moment that our father had done an amazing job raising his son. Noah reminded me so much of Dad, not just because he and I both looked so much like him, but with his amazing heart and determination to take care of me. My brother was a man that any father would have been proud to call his own.
Seeing my tears, Noah groaned like he was in physical pain and pulled me against his chest. “Don’t cry, Annabelle. Please, honey. I swear it’s going to be okay. I’ll make sure you’re safe. I’ll take care of you.”
I wrapped my arms around his lean waist and buried my face in his chest as his arms contracted around me. “I-I love you,” I whispered brokenly.
I felt his lips on my forehead. “Love you, too, Annabelle.”
I felt drained the rest of the day.
Noah went out into the garage bay to help Wade when a few customers came in, and I sat down behind the desk to finish up the paperwork I hadn’t finished the night before. People came in to set up appointments for tire rotations, oil changes, and sticker inspections or to order parts for vehicles so they could do it themselves. I handled it all on autopilot.
I had a smile planted firmly on my lips all morning and well into the afternoon. It was only after my jaw began to ache that I realized what I was doing and wondered if I looked as much like a puppet as I felt. Rubbing at the ache in my cheeks and temples, I handed Mr. Niall the keys to his older-model pickup truck once he’d signed the invoice slip for his brake replacement.
“Thank you for your business, Mr. Niall. It’s always a pleasure to see you.” My smile was a little less forced for the still handsome man who looked so much like his only son. The two Niall men were drop-dead gorgeous in a masculine kind of way, but Mr. Niall was so much less intimidating than his so
n. Maybe it was the eyes. The things his son had seen while on deployment to war-torn countries didn’t haunt James Niall’s eyes like they did Wroth’s.
Mr. Niall winked down at me from his magnificent height, something else he had in common with his son. “Thanks, Annabelle. Appreciate the quality service, sweetheart. You and that brother of yours should come out to the farm and have dinner with us one night. You look as if you could use one of Mary Beth’s home-cooked meals.”
A small laugh escaped me, relieving the tightness in my chest ever so slightly. “Thanks, Mr. Niall. I would love to have some of Mrs. Niall’s homemade yeast rolls.”
His face brightened. “Good. Good. I’ll let her know. Be expecting Wroth to tell you what night.”
“Sounds like a plan.” I stood and walked around the desk so I could walk with him to the front door. “Drive carefully, Mr. Niall. Tell Mrs. Niall I said hi.”
“You’re a good girl, Annabelle. Don’t you ever change, honey.” He waved as he walked through the door and I watched long enough for the older man to pull out of the parking lot before turning back to my desk.
The pickup truck was the last scheduled appointment we’d had for the day. It was already two in the afternoon and we only stayed open until three on most Saturdays unless someone had scheduled a later appointment. Since I doubted we would have anything that would need my attention—especially since Noah was more than capable of dealing with any last-minute arrivals, I grabbed my backpack and went up to the apartment above the garage.
My dad, George Cassidy, had built the garage with his own hands when he was twenty-one years old. His grandparents had left him a nice little nest egg when they had passed away and he’d taken that money and invested it in the two-story garage, using the upper floor as his residence.
Even back then the county hadn’t had its own garage, forcing people to drive into Nashville to get any repairs done. Dad had known what he was doing when he’d provided a service that everyone had needed so desperately. He’d started out on his own, and then when Wade Cutter had moved to West Bridge, he’d taken him on, paying him with commissions instead of hourly. The two had made a great team.
When Dad had married my mother, she’d rushed to spit out a child for her husband so that he would buy her a house. She’d hated living in the apartment above the garage.
Even back then I was sure my mom had only married him because he’d been on the rise to making a good living. Not many people in West Bridge could afford my mother’s expensive tastes in alcohol, at least not in our part of town. And I was sure that the ones who had memberships at the local country club just outside of town didn’t think Mom was worthy of their time, let alone good enough to marry.
It might sound harsh, but I wasn’t blind. I knew that my mother liked to think she was a queen, but the truth was she was just white trash. She hadn’t helped dispute that label by marrying Jacob, either. The creep was racist and was the kind of guy who gave good ol’ country boys a bad name. I was pretty sure that Jacob was a member of a local hate group. Most of the folks in West Bridge hated him, and I was high at the top of the list of people who wanted to see the bastard swimming with an anchor tied to his feet.
The apartment was actually a nice place to live, in my opinion. It had a small kitchen with a small laundry room off to the side, a living room big enough to hold a large couch and loveseat plus the big-screen television that Noah had bought for it. The bedroom was a decent size, with a queen bed and dresser. The only bathroom was in the hall between the living room and bedroom, but it had a large tub/shower combo, not to mention the toilet was separated by a door that offered privacy to those needing to use the bathroom while someone else showered.
I tossed my backpack on the couch and dropped down on the edge of one of the cushions. I glanced around carefully, trying to imagine Noah and I sharing the apartment like he wanted us to do. The couch was long, but it doubled as a bed since it had a pull-out mattress folded inside. It should be long enough so that his long legs didn’t hang over the ends. Maybe we could make it work after all.
If our mother didn’t cause trouble, that is. Noah didn’t think she would because he gave her a monthly allowance from the profits we made from the garage. He’d threatened to make that disappear if Mom wanted to stick her nose in it. However, I wasn’t so sure she wouldn’t. She was a drama queen and was liable to stir shit up just for the hell of it. I was still sixteen for two more weeks, and even when I turned seventeen I wasn’t sure if she couldn’t get the cops involved because I would still technically be a minor.
Anxiety clenched in my gut at the thought of Noah being hauled away in cuffs because he’d wanted to take care of me. Jacob and Mom would probably have a good laugh watching Noah go to jail.
Oh, Christ. I couldn’t let my brother get in trouble. No way. He had a bright future ahead of him with not only the garage but with his music. Noah had an amazing voice. He could go far in the music world if he was able to stick with it.
Damn it.
I couldn’t let him risk going to jail over this. I couldn’t let him throw away his chances of doing something amazing with his life and his career. I couldn’t….
“You going to study?”
My head snapped up at the sound of Noah’s voice. He was standing in the doorway with grease smeared over his cheek and forehead. He looked tired, but I didn’t see so much as a sign of worry on his handsome face. Did he not understand what he could be losing if I stayed there?
“Noah, I have to go home.”
His lips tightened and he moved away from the door, slamming it shut behind him as he crossed to the couch and glared down at me. “Don’t start this again, Annabelle. Everything is going to be okay. You have absolutely nothing to worry about. I’ve already taken care of it, actually. Devlin, Wroth, and Z are going to pick up Chelsea and stop by Mom’s house. They are going to pack up everything you need and bring it over. I’ve told Mom what’s going to happen and what won’t happen if she doesn’t let you stay here with me.”
He dropped down on the edge of the couch beside me, a smug-ass grin on his face. “She tried to run her fucking mouth, but I shut her bitching up real quick when I told her she wasn’t going to get two dimes out of me if she tried to make a scene over this. I told her plain and simple that she had two options. One, you get to live with me and I still pay her the money she lives off of. Or, two, I call CPS, tell them what she’s been doing and allowing Jacob to do, and the money stops and she goes to jail for child neglect and endangerment. Either way I would still get to keep you since I have a stable job, my own place to live, and a bunch of other crap that would qualify me as a capable family member to look after you.”
“So she’s really going to let me stay here?” I asked, biting the inside of my cheek to contain my hope.
Noah’s lips lifted in a sad kind of smile. “Yes, Annabelle. She doesn’t have a leg to stand on. She can’t do shit to make you go back.” He leaned his head back and closed his eyes, what sounded like a tortured breath leaving his chest. “I still can’t believe you were going through hell and I didn’t know.” He opened his eyes and met my gaze. “Don’t you know that you are all I have left, Annabelle? I’d be lost without you, sweetheart.”
I threw myself into my brother’s arms, not caring that he was covered in grease and grime and going to get me filthy. A broken sound somewhere between a sob and a laugh choked me as it bubbled out of my throat.
I was going to be safe, and Noah’s future wasn’t going to get thrown in the trash because of me.
Everything was going to be okay. We were going to be just fine.
CHAPTER SIX
Zander
The ride back to my house was a quiet one. Devlin and I both had our jaws clenched, our faces tight with determination. Noah had called Wroth’s house and we’d all decided we would be there with Chelsea when she went in to pick up Annabelle’s things. Honestly, with just Wroth there we knew Chelsea would have no problems getting the
things that Annabelle needed, but I wanted to be there.
I fucking needed to be there.
Since Wroth was the one who had spoken to Noah, I had no idea how Annabelle was handling all of this. Wroth had simply told us that Noah wanted him to pick up Chelsea and grab Annabelle’s things. I was lucky to have gotten that much of an explanation out of the dude. Wroth wasn’t much of a talker; he said as little as possible most of the time.
I pulled into my driveway but didn’t move to get out of the truck. Devlin and I remind quiet, both of us lost in our own thoughts as we waited for Wroth’s mother’s old Jeep Cherokee to pull into the driveway that separated mine from Dev’s. When it did, a normally perky Chelsea jumped out of the front passenger seat with a look on her face that seriously made me glad I wasn’t the one on the receiving end of her temper.
Devlin opened his door and I followed behind quickly. Glancing at my house, I saw my grandmother standing in the front window watching, and I shook my head at her. The look on her face told me she knew that whatever was going on in my fucked-up head wasn’t good. She put her fingers to her lips, concern on her wrinkled but still beautiful face. I waved once and jogged to catch up to Devlin and Wroth who were standing on the front steps of Annabelle’s front porch.
Chelsea stood by the door, her finger holding down the doorbell without letting up on it. From inside the house I heard Wendy Cassidy-Malcolm cursing as she stomped to the front door. “I’m coming. I’m coming,” she yelled.
Chelsea didn’t release the doorbell until the door opened to a fuming Mrs. Cassidy-Malcolm. “What the fuck do you four want?” she snarled before lifting a Dixie cup of what smelled like fruit punch to her lips.
We all knew that it wasn’t just fruit punch in that cup. She was notorious for loving her vodka and wine, and from the way her eyes were bloodshot, and with the way she seemed unsteady on her feet, we all knew she was more than three sheets to the wind. My guess was vodka was her drink of choice that night. Annabelle had told me that her mother loved to mix her alcohol with fruity juices, normally adding a third of the bottle to her concoctions.