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that first album on repeat. When it was time to cook dinner as she’d promised her parents, she went to iTunes and purchased all the tracks she liked best before she added the songs to her iPod.
    By time she was putting the chicken breasts in the oven – each tossed in breadcrumbs from their bakery – she had the lyrics to three of the songs memorized and was working on a fourth. They were catchy and melodic and she wondered why Levi and his band had changed styles over the years. She’d gone back to their second album and it had been a mix of their old stuff and what the band had become, but it was the first album that really spoke to her.
    Kassidy was careful to put her iPod away before her parents came upstairs at six for dinner. There would be too many questions about what she was listening to and it would be better to avoid that all together, so she put the mp3 player away and turned on the TV for background noise instead.
    “Dinner smells lovely, honey,” her dad said as he climbed the steps up to the apartment.
    Kassidy smiled at that. Not a forced smile, but a genuine one. She always liked to cook and it was nice to know she’d done well.
    “Thanks dad,” she told him as she took her place at the table.
    “What do you have planned for tomorrow after work?” her mother asked as she took a piece of chicken off the serving platter.
    “I’m not sure,” Kassidy told them honestly. “I might see if Addison or Kayla want to go down to the lake in the afternoon, if that’s cool. Maybe talk to Gillian, she was being a bit weird today when I saw her. I hope everything is okay.”
    “Of course, sweetie,” her dad said. “Just remember what we talked about.”
    “Don’t worry,” she told them, though deep down it was a lie. She would never disobey her parents’ wishes, not outwardly, but if he were to show up on his own, she already knew she wouldn’t try to avoid him.
    The conversation at dinner turned to lighter things and away from the stresses of the day. Her mom was telling them about another cake order that had come in, her dad was discussing going fishing on the weekend with some friends from church, but Kassidy kept oddly silent while she ate.
    It wasn’t that she didn’t want to talk, but she wasn’t paying any attention at all. No matter how hard she tried to focus on what her parents were saying, her mind kept going back to Levi and the music she’d spent the afternoon listening to.

Chapter Six
     

     
    The phone chirped and buzzed incessantly as Levi stared up at the wooden beams that made up the ceiling of his temporary bedroom. The third floor of Mary Alice’s boarding house was drafty, but in the May heat there was a welcome breeze flowing through the room.
    He’d barely left the room in the last twenty-four hours. Once to eat and once to unclog a toilet for the old woman who was letting him stay in her house. Other than that, he’d mostly stared at the ceiling and dozed off from time to time.
    The phone buzzed again and he sighed heavily. He knew what he’d done was wrong. He should have told them what was going on in his head, even though he wasn’t exactly sure what that was. Just leaving without a word was a dirty thing to do, but at the time he hadn’t thought he had any other choice. It was that or get on a bus for LA to start the whole thing over again.
    He was sick of it, though he still hadn’t found the right words to describe the feeling. There was a time he’d been so good with words, they’d always come so easily before, but in the last year it had gotten hard.
    No, he thought to himself. It had been longer than a year. So much longer. Where does the time go?
    A specific ring tone, an old Elvis song, came to life on his phone and he knew it was Dean calling. Only Dean got that ringtone and for the first time since he’d fled Vegas, Levi thought about answering the call. Out of everyone he’d hurt by just leaving, it was Dean he felt the worst about. His oldest