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On his way out the door, Levi stopped by the bar and handed Brian cash for his drink.
“Hey, man, I’ve never met your girlfriend...”
“You, too?” Levi swore under his breath. “What did Brook do? Drop flyers from a plane?”
Brian raised an eyebrow. “I was going to say that you should bring her in. She sounds like an interesting lady.”
Levi’s shoulders relaxed, and he took a deep breath. Brian didn’t deserve his anger. “She is an interesting woman. I’ve never met anyone like her.”
Brian cocked his head. “I heard the rumor, too. Brook was in here with a friend yesterday. She told Mary. It’s not that big of a deal. People who matter won’t care.”
Levi shook his head. “That’s not the issue. Brook shouldn’t have said anything, whether it’s an issue or not. And—” he steadied himself before saying the next part “—I told Brook when I shouldn’t have. It wasn’t my business to share with her, and if I hadn’t told her, she couldn’t be spreading the news around right now. Ultimately, I’m responsible for this. And I’m sorry to have trusted someone when I shouldn’t have. And I’m sorry someone trusted me when they shouldn’t have.”
“Sorry, man.” Brian put Levi’s change on the bar.
“Keep it. Put it toward Dennis’s cab fare if he needs it. I’m not coming back for him.”
* * *
LEVI STOOD ON Mina’s front porch for several seconds, knocked hard a couple of times, then put his hand on the knob and went in. When she’d first moved here from Chicago, and they’d begun dating, her front door had been locked all the time. A big-city understanding of the world and its dangers. How much of that would change when he told her what Dennis had said, and Missoula stopped being the welcoming, friendly town Mina believed it to be?
Maybe he was selling his hometown short.
Or maybe he knew that he couldn’t protect her from this. This was something Mina would have to face mostly on her own. What was it she had said? He could care for her, but he had to let her take care of herself?
He sighed, rubbing at the whiskers on his face as he walked through her house. He still didn’t fully understand what she had meant by that, but he was determined to give her what she needed. That was what love was, as far as he had always understood it.
In her kitchen, Mina was singing to Taylor Swift, her hips swaying as she chopped carrots. It was that catchy song about never speaking to an ex again, and Mina crooned it like it was an ardent love song, rather than a breakup song, which didn’t seem to bode well.
Or maybe he was letting years of astrology reading trick him into believing that mundane, everyday things like singing along to a pop song were signs of a fated future. He didn’t actually believe anything like that, but old habits die hard.
“Hey,” he said as soon as the song ended, pitching his voice to be heard over the next song on the album.
“Oh!” She flipped around, one hand holding the knife up, the other clutching her chest in surprise. “I didn’t hear you come in.”
“No, not over Taylor.”
“I didn’t expect to see you tonight.” She rubbed her teeth across her bottom lip. “I miss you.”
“Then why haven’t you come over? Or called? Or texted?” Being apart from her was physically painful, a heavy weight that sank him.
She blinked; the pleasure of singing slipped off her face. “You said you needed to think. And you needed to think apart from me. I was trying to give you that time.”
She was battling something internally, because she blinked again, and a small smile crossed her face. “Especially since Dennis is in town, I didn’t expect to see you tonight.”
The pleasure wasn’t just from singing, he realized stupidly. She was happy to see him unexpectedly, when she hadn’t thought she would. If he hadn’t already felt like a dick, he did now. Especially because he could see the moment where something he’d done built up to the pain he was about to cause the woman he loved.
All his fault. And nothing he could fix.
“I came home to tell you something.”
