Kris shifted the phone from her right ear to her left as her Grams nagged her. She moved deeper under the hood of the old Chevy and nodded along with whatever the old woman said, though she wasn’t really listening.

“Just do it for me, will you?” Grams said with a sigh.

“Grams, I don’t think lunch with Dennis is going to do anything except piss me off,” she said and grunted as she worked on a bolt. “Damn it! Come on, you bastard.”

“Young lady, are you working while you’re talking to me?”

Kris immediately dropped the wrench and sprang up out of the truck, glancing around as if Grams would fall out of the sky and into her shop. “What? No, never. I’m all ears.”

“And you’re full of shit,” Grams snapped. “Did you hear anything I’ve been telling you?”

“Course, I heard it all—lunch with Dennis, he’s my brother, and on and on,” Kris said as she wiped her oily hands on a rag hanging from her jumper pocket. “We don’t exactly get along anymore, and I’m not sure I want to give him a—God, what are we on now? Sixth chance? Seventh?”

Grams didn’t respond, and Kris pulled her cell from her ear to check the call hadn’t dropped. “Grams, you there?” she asked and worry clenched her chest. Grams was in her sixties and still kicking, but that didn’t mean she was immune to a sudden heart attack. “Grams, if you don’t answer me, I’m calling the Jameson twins.”

“Don’t you dare bother those boys,” Grams said loudly, and Kris jumped as she whipped around.

Glaring at her Grams, she ended the call and shoved her cell back in her pocket. “I knew you were watching me.”

The short woman with long, white hair braided over her shoulder shrugged as she shoved her cell in her large tote of a purse. “I know you, Kristen, and I knew you wouldn’t say yes to me over the phone.”

“So you came to harass me in person? Great, that’s great. The answer is still no,” she said, dug around for her wrench, and ducked back under the hood. “I don’t know why this matters so much to you, anyway. He’s doing fine in town. He has a job, he’s living with me in our tiny little house, and he hasn’t touched a drug in months.”

“And how many words have you said to him in the six months since he’s been back?”

Kris’s head hung low as she worked at the stubborn bolt, her biceps flexing as she tugged and heaved before the damn thing finally sprang loose so fast she nearly toppled into the truck’s engine. Wiping sweat from her forehead with her arm, she slung the bolt onto her worktable close by and swung the wrench onto her shoulder. Dennis was her older brother, and since they were teenagers, he had been in trouble with the law. This last time had been the worst, and he’d spent four years in jail. He was out now, living with Kris in the tiny two-bedroom-one-bath house she managed to scrape up enough money to buy so she could get out from under Grams’s thumb. As far as she could in this tiny ass town. Though it was true Dennis had behaved himself, Kris hated the idea of getting close to her brother again only to have him let her down hard.

“I don’t know, Grams,” she whined. “Do I really have to?”

Grams set her heavy tote on a nearby chair and clasped her hands in front of her. “Kris, I know your family hasn’t been the easiest to deal with. I never thought I’d have a daughter that cared more for drugs than her children,” she said bitterly. “But he is your brother and the only one besides you who might turn out alright. If he doesn’t know he has at least one person on his side, he might not stay on the straight and narrow.”

Kris gripped the wrench tighter as she stared Grams down, the woman who had raised her and her brother when their parents couldn’t be bothered to be actual parents. She was tough and never a pushover, but damn, when she gave Kris those puppy-dog eyes, game over. She puffed out her cheeks and tossed the wrench onto the table.

“Fine,” she conceded and held her hands up to ward off her Grams. “Fine, I’ll have lunch with him.”

“Good, he’s already at the diner.” Kris’s mouth dropped open, and she growled curses under her breath. “What was that, dear?” Grams said lightly as she picked up her tote and slung it over her shoulder.

“Nothing, not a damn word. Let me close up the shop, and I’ll be there.”

“Thank you, Kris, really,” she said and with a satisfied glint in her eyes, left Kris’s shop.

Kris rolled her eyes, cleaned her hands, and locked up her tools and keys to the cars in her garage. On a Sunday, she was the only one there, but she had two other guys who worked with her. Charlie, a good friend and ex-boyfriend, and Frank, when he wasn’t too drunk to work, but that was the best she could get when living in a Podunk town like this. Grabbing her work cell and keys to the tow truck, she rolled down the garage doors, padlocked them, and walked across the hot pavement to the diner. Its silver sign glistened in the afternoon sun, and Kris held her hand over her eyes as she ran across the two-lane road, ignoring the horn blast.

“Watch it, Kris,” a man yelled out his window.

“Sorry, Mr. Fitz,” she called back. “That part came in for your tractor, by the way.”

“When can you fix it?” Mr. Fitz asked, coming to a dead stop in the street, but he blocked no one.

Kris mentally ticked off the other cars in her shop and shrugged. “Maybe by Thursday?”

“I’ll tell the wife to make up some bourbon balls for ya,” he said and waved his ratty hat at her before he drove off.

Kris waved and walked into the diner. The wash of cold air sent a shiver down her back, and she wiped the sweat from her face with her hand, searching for Dennis. His hunched frame took up one whole side of the small booth table towards the back, and she sucked in a deep breath, her hands clenching at her sides before she forced them to relax. He was her brother, her blood. She couldn't ignore him forever.

“Hey,” he said when he spotted her coming towards the table. He stood and opened his arms as if to hug her, but stopped halfway. “I… uh, I was hoping you’d make it.”

“I needed a break,” she said and sat down quickly, hoping he’d do the same. “Order yet?”

“Nah, just a pop,” he answered, motioning to the drink. “I was trying to wait for you.”

She nodded as she picked up the sticky menu and glanced over it, not that she needed to look. She’d grown up in this damn place and the menu hadn’t changed in nearly twenty-six years, but she couldn’t bring herself to stare at her brother.

“Kris,” he said and tugged down the menu so she had to look at him. “Grams put you up to this, didn’t she?”

Giving in, she set the menu down. “No, of course not,” she lied, but Dennis’s lips twitched in a grin, and she leaned back against the booth. “Maybe… Look, it’s not like I don’t want to have lunch with you. I do, I just… I’m not sure…”

Dennis reached over and held her hand gently in his big one. She stared at the black tattoos covering his knuckles, hand, and connected to the sleeve of his right arm. The twisted brambles and dying roses gave his arm a bulging effect, not that it needed any help. Her brother had always been a big guy, six and a half feet tall and easily three hundred pounds of muscle. The full beard didn’t help, or the scars on his neck and face from his days on the streets. Kris didn’t see what other people saw, though. She saw her big brother, and as she stared into his hazel eyes that matched her own, she squeezed his hand back with that weird sibling understanding they had.

“I know I haven’t made things easy,” he told her, his head hanging, “but I really am finished with all of that this time. I swear it. I know you might not trust me, that it might take a long-ass time, but I’ll prove to you that you can trust me again.”

“I do trust you.” She hesitated. “But I don’t want to lose my brother again.”

“You won’t, I swear it.”

She smiled and made a mental note to thank Grams later for riding her ass so hard. Honestly, she was lucky she hadn’t followed Dennis and taken up drugs or worse. He let go of her hand, and she picked up the menu again, ready to enjoy a lunch with her big brother when her work phone dinged in her pocket. She didn’t move to answer it at first, but Dennis set his menu down and eyed her.

“You can’t afford not to take the call,” he said. “It’s fine.”

She frowned as she pulled out her cell to answer the call. The man’s voice broke up on the other end. “What? I’m sorry, where did you say you are?”

“Route 25 or something? No, turned… that… farther south…”

Kris stuck her other finger in her ear to try and hear better. “What’s close by? Can you see anything?”

“…sign for…”

“Say that again?” she grumbled. Damn tourists. What the hell is he doing all the way out here?

“Green Valley?” he muttered. “Yeah, Green Valley.”

Kris turned around and glared out the diner window. “Did you mean to come to the middle of nowhere? Sir?” She waited, but he didn’t reply. “Right, well if you can hear me, there’s a tow truck on the way, twenty minutes.”

“Who was that?” Dennis asked after she hung up.

“Some idiot lost on the back roads again. Rain check on lunch?”

“Want me to get you something for later?”

Kris was going to say no, but her stomach growled and he chuckled at the sound. “Guess I haven’t eaten all day. Just get me a burger and fries.”

“Extra bacon?”

“Who are you talking to?” she teased. On impulse, she rushed around to the other side of the table and hugged her brother close. No words passed between them, but there didn’t have to be. She hurried out of the diner and hopped into the tow truck she was paying off slowly, just like the garage she was only able to get because of Grams.

Once on the road, she attached her cell to the dash and tried to call the guy back, but he didn’t answer. She tapped her fingers anxiously on the steering wheel. If the guy could see the Green Valley sign that resided outside town, he couldn’t be that far away. She had no idea what made him come this far off the interstate, but she figured she’d find out if she ever tracked the guy down. The AC clunked and whined in the truck, and Kris smacked her hand on the dash.

“Come on, baby,” she grunted. “Not today. It’s pushing a hundred.”

The truck didn’t care, and after the air let out one last icy breath, it shut off completely. Cursing and hoping this guy could go without AC for an hour, she rolled down the windows and drove a little faster. There were only four cops in Green Valley, and they never patrolled the roads far out of town. The truck barreled down a hill and around a turn when she spotted smoke drifting up from the side of the road, ten miles out of town. She turned on her yellow flashing lights and beeped the horn to get the man’s attention. A head popped around the propped-up hood, and he waved a hand over his head.

“Well now, you’re not from around here,” she whispered as she threw the truck in park. The man in question was dressed too nicely to be stuck on the side of the road. His shirtsleeves were rolled up, and as she climbed out of the tow truck, her attention shifted from the man with his mussed-up hair to the car. “Holy shit. You’ve got to be kidding me.”

“Are you the woman I spoke to on the phone?” he asked, walking towards the rear of his car.

“Yeah, I am. Kristen Rivers,” she said and held out her hand. He glanced at it before shaking it firmly. “Looks like you got yourself some car troubles.”

“Looks that way,” he said slowly, eyeing her up and down.

She was used to it and ignored his look, too fascinated by his car. “Well then, let’s take a look and see what you broke on the old girl.”