Melodies of the Heart

Chapter Sixteen

Levi

Humidity hung in the attic room and Levi let it sit on his skin like a fine film of sweat. He'd never minded the heat, but as May was coming to a close, it was the humidity that was starting to get to him.

The little room he was renting out was nothing like the hotels he'd spent the last six years in and out of. It certainly wasn't anything like the mansion he'd bought in Malibu a couple years ago, the one he'd probably spent all of two weeks in since he'd bought it off some washed up actress.

And yet he was happy in the humid little room. It was more real to him than any place he'd stayed in since Fable Heart made it big and he had no intention of trading up any time soon.

Even doing chores for the woman who ran the boarding house, Mary Alice, didn't get on his nerves. He'd scrubbed her floors since arriving, mowed her lawn a few times, and had even helped her shuck corn. Corn! It was so rustic that he almost didn't believe it was real.

There was only one thing he'd said no to when she asked. The night before she asked if he wouldn't mind helping with bingo over at the retirement home on Main Street, but he'd declined. He was too lost in his own head to be good company for the elderly, and it wasn't until after the old woman had left that he remembered that Kassidy was her assistant for the game.

He had thought about getting up and going over to Main Street on his own, but his own doubts had stopped him. Only a couple nights before, he'd been out until three in the morning with Kassidy, and he still hurt from not being able to say the words he knew she wanted to hear.

Levi's real regrets came from not being able to say those three little words to her. The way she'd looked at him with those pale green eyes, her cheeks flushed pink – not from embarrassment, but with love. It should have been so easy for him to tell her that he loved her, but he couldn't.

Not yet.

There was no denying that he was falling for her. When he wasn't with her, all he thought about was seeing her again. He'd started writing half a dozen songs that all centered on a beautiful country girl with strawberry-blonde hair and a heart of gold.

He'd written about her legs, her eyes, her fingertips, and most of all, about her smile. That smile that told him that everything would be okay, that she had his back and truly cared for him. She wasn't after his fame or money, not like every other girl he'd dated since he'd turned twenty-one. She only wanted his heart, and yet he hadn't been able to give her that.

It was for the best that he hadn't said it, or at least that was what he kept telling himself. He was too scared to let himself love her. Too scared of breaking her heart, too afraid of her realising that he isn't the man she thinks he is.

You don't deserve her, an ugly voice inside his head told him. It was the same voice that had told him to have flings with models, to try drugs, and to throw his life away because he didn't deserve any better. It was a voice he'd been struggling to defeat for years, and a voice he'd heard less of when he was around Kassidy.

Do something to deserve her, he told himself, pushing that dark voice deeper inside himself, so deep that he could at least ignore it. He needed to do something that would show her how much he really did care about her, how much he wanted to be with her, even if he couldn't say the words, "I love you."

"Actions speak louder than words," he told himself as he pushed himself off the bed. He didn't have much time. Mary Alice would be leaving in ten minutes, but this time he was going to join her.