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concern. There were more to them than met the eye, and my experienced touch. After working both left and right sides, I had him switch to pushing against me.
    â€œWhat the hell are you doing, prepping him for childbirth?” Riggs asked.
    â€œI’m pulling the muscles to let the joint relax,” I explained. I turned back to my client. “Push for ten, nine, eight . . .”
    â€œRelax? Nash Drama doesn’t relax. He drinks. He passes out. That’s his idea of relaxing.”
    Riggs wasn’t helping matters any. The trailer was small enough without him throwing his weight and his two cents around.
    â€œHow about some privacy, please? I think he’ll relax more without you breathing down his neck.”
    â€œYeah, dude. Her breath smells better than yours any day of the week.” Nash sputtered a laugh as Riggs stomped down the stairs, but the teeth embedded in his bottom lip were a dead giveaway to the discomfort he was experiencing.
    â€œThink you can roll over for me?”
    â€œOf course.” He winced as he changed position. “I can play dead, too.”
    At my request, he pulled his knees up to his chest, facedown on the bed, prayer-style. I had spied Nash shirtless and careening aroundon the stage, but it was a fascinating flip of the coin to witness him at rest. Passed out in my lap on the tour bus hadn’t counted. I ran my hand up the column of his spine, letting his body speak to me. His entire dorsum, from broad shoulders to tapered waist, rose and fell under my touch. The lone tattoo that rode high on his shoulder was a bluebird in flight.
    â€œWhat?” he asked, hearing me suck back a gasp.
    â€œYour bluebird tattoo.”
    â€œIt’s a swallow. What about it?”
    â€œNothing, I—I’ve just seen a similar one.” So many fine points of my night with Mick in New Orleans were etched deep enough to leave a mark. A sharp memory of my fingers tracing the shape of his tattoo while cradled in his arms as he relayed its meaning rose painfully to the surface. “That’s all.”
    â€œSpontaneous decision with my best buds. We all got them, one crazy night when they came to see me on my first big tour. It was something to commemorate how far I had gone. You know, like a sailor, when he’s sailed ten thousand miles.”
    â€œI’ve heard . . . it was for the hope of a safe return home.”
    Mick had sounded so wistful that night, yet so full of hope at the prospect. And I had obviously been so caught up in him that I ignored every other warning sign.
    â€œFor some? Maybe. Not me.” Nash cast a glance at it, frowning. “I should get a matching one; God knows I’ve logged enough miles to earn a flock of them.”
    I moved along his strong shoulders, kneading in long, gliding strokes. We settled into a quiet rhythm, while outside the small trailer window, the festival continued on at its own frenetic pace. My mind began to thumb through the pages of my mental textbooks, thinking about various possibilities. “Little old lady diseases” be damned, there were a hell of a lot of debilitating conditions that tended to strike apatient when they were young, bulletproof, and thirty feet tall. Although the right side of Nash’s body had taken the brunt in his fall, his entire sacroiliac joint seemed to be a hot spot.
    â€œDoes this area always give you problems?” I asked, my fingers barely ghosting over where his spine met his pelvis.
    â€œStiff as a motherfucker most of the time,” he hissed. “Since I was a teen. Some mornings I can barely get out of bed.”
    I began a series of circle strokes, massaging over the muscles and not the joints. His shoulders relented in small increments, and a sigh of relief pooled from deep within him.
    â€œSo,” he started, when breath and speech came easier to him. “You got a boyfriend waiting for you back