Chapter 26

DIANA

“Yes,” I agreed wholeheartedly.

I didn’t know why, but the idea of meeting Levi’s family warmed a scabrous, bleeding corner of my heart. Perhaps it was the elated smile on his face, or a longing for a family I’d forgotten about suddenly reawakening.

He opened the car door for me.

As we walked up the long driveway, new questions invaded my mind.

What was his family like? Would they like me? Did they know about our relationship?

Levi lifted his hand to ring the doorbell, but I shot out my hand and stopped him.

His head whipped down to me, and his brow arched.

“Wait, what are we telling them? You know…about me and you and why I’m here,” I blurted.

A brief chuckle slipped past his lips, and he pressed his finger into the doorbell.

Noise exploded inside the house, and he answered, “Easy. You’re my girlfriend.”

Then the door flung open.

“Ah!” A petite woman with a plump frame and short brown curls screamed.

Her hands waved at the side of her face, and her brown eyes glittered.

Then she lunged, flinging her arms around Levi’s shoulders. “My boy is home!”

He fell back a step but wrapped his arms around her, chuckling. “Good to see you too, Mom.”

“John, our son is home!” Levi’s mother reared back and shouted into the house.

Without waiting for a response, she angled back to her son, pinching his cheeks and assessing his frame. “Are you getting enough to eat? You look thin.”

Quick footsteps trampled down the stairs, matching the erratic rate of my heart.

From around the corner of the front foyer, a young girl with long golden-brown pigtails rushed toward the front door.

“Levi!” The girl ran into her mother’s backside, pushing and shoving to get her out of the way.

“I’m eating enough, Mom. I just work a lot,” he reassured her before looking over his mother’s shoulder.

“Levi. Levi. Levi!” the young girl chanted.

“Ginny!” Levi swept past his mother and scooped the girl into a spinning, bone-crushing hug.

The family resemblance between him and his younger sister was undeniable.

Aside from hair color, they were nearly identical, as if their mother made a female copy of Levi fifteen years after him.

As Levi got distracted by his reunion with his sister, his mother finally noticed me standing on the patio.

Her head swung up to me, and a practiced smile fell onto her face.

“Oh, dear, and who might you be…,” his mother began, raising her palm for a handshake, but it slowly curled into a trembling pointed finger.

A flash of nerves crackled under my tightening skin.

“You’re…you’re Diana. ~The~ Diana Winslow.” She slapped her hands on her pink stained cheeks. “Oh my God, you’re Diana Winslow!”

A relieved breath of laughter passed over my lips. “Yeah, I am. It’s a pleasure to meet you, Mrs. Stark.”

I offered my hand, but his mother ignored it completely.

In the blink of an eye, her impressively powerful arms were around my ribs and squeezing the life out of me.

“We’re huggers in this family!” she proclaimed.

“Mom,” Levi grasped her shoulder and peeled her back. “You’re going to crush her.”

“There’s my boy,” a booming male voice called out. “How was your show tonight, son?”

A man with dark as night hair and a full beard followed the sound of his chattering family.

His mother made flustered noises at her husband, mirroring a clucking chicken.

Then she wheeled on Levi. “Diana Winslow is at my house. Why is Diana Winslow at my house?”

“Devin Johnson’s daughter?” Levi’s dad stopped in his tracks and rocked back on his heels when he saw me.

A flush of heat swept over my cheeks, and I wrung my hands together.

“Diana Winslow.” His sister’s awed whisper interrupted the excited tension.

I glanced down at the thirteen-year-old girl shaking in the doorway.

Her eyes went as round as dinner plates.

The front patio light sparkled within them like fireflies in a forest.

“Calm down, everyone. Take a chill pill,” Levi said.

Seeing a man dressed up like a freshly risen skeleton soothing a family was almost comical enough for me to laugh.

He should have washed his face before we left, but I’m glad he didn’t.

Levi passed his mother and grabbed my hand.

He pulled me under the cone of light in front of the door, tugging me intimately close to his side.

Then he draped a heavy arm over my shoulder in a clearly possessive gesture.

He proudly stated, “Diana’s my girlfriend.”

My heart palpitated dangerously.

A half-second of shock passed over their faces. Then his family erupted into chaos once more.

“No way! She’s too pretty for you, stinky!” his sister, Ginny, shouted.

“Good for you,” his dad breathed out, adding a sly, yet completely unsubtle, wink.

“Come in, come in. I can’t have Diana Winslow standing outside my house in the cold. You’re welcome inside,” Levi’s mother said as she ushered us through the door with fluttering hands.

Levi kept his arm secure around me, supporting me through the first steps of his family home.

My weak knees might have given out without him by my side.

I only had a quick glance over the house before his family swarmed around us like a tornado.

Pale gray walls, various shades of blue and gold décor.

Simple, elegant, and clear that his mom had decent taste.

Levi’s parents guided us into a spacious kitchen open to a massive living room where a late-night game played on the flatscreen.

“So, how did you two meet?” His mom got right to the heart of what she yearned to ask.

“Christi, give them some room to breathe,” John said as he moved in, placing his meaty hands on his wife’s shoulders and steering her to the side.

“You guys want some drinks? Wine? Beer?”

“I’ll have a beer,” Levi replied to his dad.

John gestured at me. “Diana, would you like a drink?”

Christi jumped in. “I have a brand-new bottle of peach Moscato!”

An unbidden chuckle breached my lips. “Sure, I’d love a glass.”

Levi addressed his mother again. “To answer your question, we’re working together and that’s how we met.”

“Diana, are you singing again?”

His sister’s voice from the corner of the kitchen partially startled me, but her question hit harder.

An innocent question, but one that gnawed at my insides.

I forced the corners of my lips up for her benefit.

“Wouldn’t you have been three years old when I was still performing? How do you know my music?” I asked, forcing a jovial tone.

“Oh, everyone in this house knows you, dear,” Christi answered. She slid an overly full glass of Moscato, smelling heavily of fruit, toward me.

“Really?” I laughed.

“Yes. In fact, I think Levi was about seventeen when I took him to one of your concerts. He just wouldn’t stop begging me day and night to let him go see you live.” She barked with laughter at her son’s expense.

“Mom,” Levi intoned. The black and white face paint hid most of his embarrassment, but the intensely red tips of his ears stood out. And I loved it.

“I knew he listened to my music back in the day, but he never said he saw me live,” I admitted to his mother.

When I met Levi’s eyes, he bashfully shrugged, fighting back a sheepish smile. He accepted a beer from his dad and heavily exhaled.

Mid-sip of wine, she nodded her head. Once she swallowed, she said, “Yeah. That’s where he got that poster of you. It’s still up on the wall in his room too.”

This time, my ears turned red. I knew what he used to imagine and do to himself while staring at that poster. My face burned knowing that was in the house we stood in now.

“He accompanied me to a few of your dad’s concerts when he was a little fellow too,” John stated between swigs of beer. Though half of his attention was across the kitchen and on the game.

“Anyway,” Levi interrupted, fingers tight on his drink, “Diana isn’t performing with me. She’s helping me write music.”

“Oh, that’s so interesting. So, is that what you do now? You just write music?” Christi peppered me with questions I didn’t mind answering.

“It is. That’s what fits me best these days.” My next sip of wine might have been a bit too much to accommodate my nerves. They were quickly fading thanks to the Stark family’s warm welcome, but I still wanted the aid of liquid courage.

Ginny rushed toward the kitchen island and tossed her hands in the air. “I write music too, Diana. Can I show you?”

“Yes.” The word fell off my tongue without needing to think about it.

Ginny rounded the island and grabbed my hand. I stared wide-eyed at Levi as she tugged me away.

He simply winked in encouragement at me. I heard him answering more of his mother’s questions as his younger sister dragged me through the house.

Up the stairs and through the first hall, I slowed down. Levi’s posters, pictures of his awards, and newspaper clippings lined the walls, intermingled with family photos.

I spotted Levi throughout his life, from family vacations to school graduations, smiling at me through the frame. Ginny’s small hand urged me along until we passed an office room with a wall of guitars.

At once, I thought of Levi’s guitar wall in his personal studio. “Oh, are these Levi’s instruments?” I asked her.

She paused and pivoted around in her fuzzy socks. “No, those are our dad’s guitars. He taught Levi how to play.”

“My dad taught me too,” I responded.

Ginny turned her round brown eyes to me and beamed brighter than a star. “Dad’s gonna teach me how to play too. I want to be just like you someday, Diana!”

I choked on my next breath. Tears pricked behind my eyes, and my lips quivered. The young girl staring at me brought out something I’d lost a long time ago.

I reined in the sudden influx of unwanted emotions and wrestled a smile onto my face. I squeezed her hand. “You don’t need to be like me, just be the best version of yourself. Now, show me those songs you wrote. I’d love to see them.”

When Ginny radiated at me with her admiration, a small flower of hope bloomed in the broken crevices of my heart.