C HAPTER F IVE

Annabelle

The garage was empty when I walked into work that morning. The old Buick was gone, letting me know that Mrs. Farris had already picked up her car. I grinned to myself as I opened the door to the office.

“Thanks for handling the Buick for me,” I told Noah as I walked past the desk and into the break room to grab one of the donuts Wade always brought in on Saturday mornings.

After pouring myself a cup of the strong black coffee Noah favored, I went back into the office and sat down on the edge of the desk. I was stuffing my face with the blueberry-filled powdered donut when I glanced at my brother. He hadn’t spoken so much as a word since I’d walked through the door and that just wasn’t like my brother.

“What’s up?” I asked, causing powdered sugar to come out of my mouth in a cloud.

Noah wasn’t normally a brooding kind of person. Even when he was sick he always had a smile for me. That wasn’t the case right then. His face was so grim it looked like he’d never smiled a day in his life. His blue eyes were darker than I’d ever seen them and his jaw was clenched so hard that I worried he was going to break the crown on his back tooth he’d gotten in the fifth grade.

He just sat there, his eyes full of a mixture of emotions that confused me as he watched me. I knew instinctively that whatever was bothering him, it wasn’t good. My brother was the kind of guy who could find the good in any situation. Mostly. The look on his face right then told me that he’d come across a situation that held very little good, however.

I licked the powdered sugar and blueberry filling from the corner of my lips before wiping my mouth with the napkin I’d snatched in the break room. “You’re starting to worry me here, Noah.” I laughed, trying to break the tension that was filling up the office.

He moved so fast I nearly yelped in surprise when he grabbed hold of both my hands and held them tightly in his much bigger ones. “Why didn’t you tell me, Annabelle?” he asked in a voice rough with the same emotions that were swirling in his eyes.

Everything inside of me went still with dread. I forced a smile for him and shook my head. “Tell you what? I’m not following here, Noah.”

His hands tightened around my fingers, but what shocked me was the desperate look on his face all of a sudden. “I know, honey. I know what’s been going on at home. About Mom and Jacob. About the beatings. I know that you’ve been sleeping in Z’s bed the last few weeks. Why didn’t you tell me? Why, Annabelle?”

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.”