Read For the Love of a Lush (Lush No. 2) for Free Online

my memories.
     
    Mel: Please promise you’ll check in every day, and keep following your diet and taking your meds. <3 U back!
     
    I smile. She’s become such a mother hen. I’m so damn proud of her that I can’t believe it some days.
     
    Me : I promise. And you promise me you’ll think about yourself for a while now. I’m going to be ok.
     
    I put the phone away, get my game face on, and start up the car.
     
    T HE ROAD from the ranch house to the main road into town winds through about two miles of grazing land. The early spring sun is bright, and it’s already hot here. I can only imagine what it must be like at the height of summer. I’m watching the patchy green acreage with its clumps of scrubby trees when I see a figure about one hundred yards from the road.
    He’s working without a shirt on, digging out in the hot sun, and my eyes are instantly glued to him. His back and shoulders ripple with the efforts of lifting huge shovels full of soil and tossing them into a quickly increasing pile to his left. I look at the dark patch on the back of his right shoulder, and though I can’t see the details from here, I know exactly what it is—a large heart bisected by a pair of drumsticks.
    Above the heart is the word Love . Below it is the word Lush . Each of the guys in the band has one of his own—Mike’s has a guitar in place of the drumsticks, Joss’s a microphone, Collin’s a bass. They got them when they signed their first recording contract. Walsh wouldn’t let me come when he got his, and I couldn’t understand why since I’d already known what it was going to look like—I’d helped the guys design them—and I’ve never been squeamish around needles. But he was insistent.
    When he came home afterwards, Mike and Joss unloaded him on the front porch of the little duplex Walsh and I were renting in a really seedy area of Portland. He was drunk, which wasn’t the norm yet then, and the guys said that his tattoo had taken longer than anyone else’s. He’d kept drinking through the whole thing—not because it hurt, but because he’d been scared of what I was going to say when he got home. I couldn’t understand what they were talking about until I got him inside and he collapsed face-first on our bed, his shirt hitching up above his waist. There on his left hip was a picture—of me—and below it were the words My Heart. My World.
    Now, I can see that second tattoo peeking out above the top of the dusty jeans that mold to him like a well-worn second skin. I finally realize I’ve stopped driving, so I turn off the engine. If Walsh can hear the car from where he is, he doesn’t give any indication of it as he continues digging. Thrust, pause, lift, dump, repeat. I quietly get out of the car and walk around to the passenger’s side, where I lean against the door and watch him, mesmerized by his movements, his damp skin, the way the sun hits his hair and gleams off the red highlights.
    I feel my breathing increase, and my heart rate picks up pace to match it. It’s as if, from this distance the pain between us can’t reach me—only the desire can. Pure, blazing desire that consumes me like the Texas heat consumes the air and the earth. My mind goes back in time as I remember the way Walsh used to touch me, caressing my skin with his long, calloused fingers and his hot, rough tongue.
    I lay my head back on the car, clutching my waist with my crossed arms as if I can contain the power of my desires. I continue to think of him—his hard, hot body, his warm, soft words. I breathe in and out, visions of Walsh’s naked back straining as he digs and digs through the hot soil like I wish he were digging into me. I feel something shift in the air, and I jerk my head up, my eyes flying open.
    Walsh stands, glistening with sweat, watching me. I can’t see his expression clearly, but I can feel the hunger in the way he holds his body, as if he’s struggling with everything he’s got not to come to