“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 son. 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.