formatted by E.M. Tippetts Book Designs
Books by Selena Laurence
The Lush Series (Rock Star Contemporary Romance)
A Lush Betrayal (Lush No. 1)
For the Love of a Lush (Lush No. 2)
Lowdown and Lush (Lush No. 3) Coming Summer 2014
A Lush Reunion (Lush No. 4) Coming Fall 2014
The Hiding From Love Series (New Adult Contemporary Romance)
Camouflaged (Hiding From Love #0.5)
Hidden (Hiding From Love #1)
Concealed (Hiding From Love #2)
Buried (Hiding From Love #3) Coming Summer 2014
The Bittersweet Chronicles (YA/NA/Adult Contemporary Romance Novella series)
Book One: Carly (YA) Coming Late Summer of 2014
Book Two: Pax (NA) Coming Fall of 2014
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To all those who've had the courage to make a searching and fearless moral inventory of themselves.
Walsh
FOR AS long as I can remember, I’ve loved two things in my life—booze and Tammy DiLorenzo. I lost them both in the last couple of years, and I can sincerely say that it sucks. The nights I wake up in the dark, breathing hard—and feeling hard—remembering the way her silky skin would slide across mine as we made love, her long, smooth hair brushing over my chest and abs, her tongue gliding along my cock… Yeah, those are the times I need a drink so badly I can almost feel that burn on my tongue, the smoky tang of a good bourbon rolling all warm and smooth down my throat.
So here I am, my dick and my heart missing Tammy, and the rest of me missing the bourbon and the oblivion it brings—the fuzzy static that descends over my mind and body, dulling the pains of the day, blurring the feelings into one big sensation of good. Not great, not horrible, just good. I liked good. I was good with the good. But it started taking more and more to reach that place. More booze, more often. And eventually, I needed it all the time, every day, from sunup ‘til sundown. So yeah, that shit didn’t work out so well for me.
I roll over in my tiny bottom bunk and see that the sun is already rising, so I stretch, try really hard not to think about how sexually frustrated I am, and sit up. I can hear barking outside, and my boss, Ronny, hollering at Two-Bit, the Aussie sheepdog who must be nipping at the horses again.
"Clark!" Ronny leans in the door to the bunkhouse, letting in one of the barn cats, who races over to my bed and jumps up to rub against me.
None of the cats have names, but this one seems to like me a lot, so I call her J.B., after Jim Beam, as a reminder that, while it may make me feel all warm and fuzzy, it’s got claws that’ll slice me the fuck up.
"Yo, man," I mumble as I scrub my hand over my hair, which needs to be cut.
"That fence in the south pasture has about sixteen feet that needs to be replaced along the east side. Can you drive out and do it after breakfast?" he asks in his unique accent that’s a combination of Texas drawl and south-of-the-border. Ronny’s dad was a Mexican vaquero, born and bred, and Ronny’s been around ranches every one of his forty-some years.
"Yep. First thing."
"Thanks, you cowboy, you."
"Fuck off, Ronny."
He chuckles as he shuts the door.
"It’s another glorious day on the cow farm," grunts Mike from the bunk above me.
I stand up and grab my jeans off the nearby chair. "You can go home anytime, dude."
"Eh, nothin’ to go home to. Might as well make some cows happy. Not to mention enlighten some of these country girls."
I shake my head and pull on the jeans, then a t-shirt, before I head to the bathroom to finish getting ready for my day.
There are six of us altogether staying at the Double A Ranch right now. And yeah, Double A is a play on Alcoholics Anonymous. The ranch is owned by Ronny Silva, a recovering alcoholic who decided to give back to the community—the community of lushes, I guess you could say. So if you’re working your steps and you’ve been clean and sober for at least ninety days, you can have a place to stay and three squares a day plus a lot of hard labor, fresh air, and cows.
The Double A is a working ranch. Ronny raises cattle and sells them at auction. There’s a thousand acres on the ranch and three hundred head of cattle, along with a bunch of chickens, horses, and the dogs and barn cats. Ronny’s soft spot extends from drunks to all creatures great and small. He also provides jobs to quite a few ranch hands in the area, but only the guys who are in recovery live here. Well, and Mike. Ronny made an exception for Mike.
Mike is my childhood friend and former band mate. Yep, band mate. See, until seven months ago, Mike and I were in one of the hottest rock bands in the country. Actually, in the world, I guess. Lush was the dream that Mike, me, my former best friend Joss, and our buddy Colin had worked on for ten years. Joss sang, Mike’s one of the world’s best rock guitarists, I was the drummer, and Colin played bass. Then, just as we were hitting the mega big time, I developed my little drinking problem and had to go to rehab. From there, the dominoes tumbled. The end happened in a hospital room in southern California mere hours after we’d played to a crowd of about 70,000 at Coachella.
There’s nothing quite like finding out that your fiancée and your best friend slept together while you were locked away in a rehab facility, trying like hell to keep from going insane with withdrawals and really intrusive personal dissection. I’d thought my first full day without alcohol was the worst day of my life, but no, finding out about Joss and Tammy topped anything the world has ever—or could ever—throw at me.
After a hearty ranch breakfast cooked by Ronny’s wife Leanne, Mike and I load up the truck with barbed wire, posts, and tools. Ronny’s got a few pickups that we use for work. I’m stoked when I manage to grab the newest of the fleet because it’s got an iPod connector. I plug in and crank up Imagine Dragons as Mike hops in and props one boot-clad foot up on the dash.
Neither one of us can ride a horse worth a damn, so we’re not really cowboys. We do all the other manual labor around the place while the guys who’ve lived out here their whole lives ride the horses and get the glory. Mike is a big guy—six feet two, two hundred twenty pounds or so, solid muscle, unruly hair, and constant scruff. With his tattoos and pierced nipples, he’s about as far in looks from a cowboy as you can get. But both Mike and I jumped on the cowboy-boot bandwagon as soon as we got our first look at those bad boys. Cows may be the dumbest creatures on the planet, but cowboy boots rock.
"Christ, Wing’s work on this album is so stunted," Mike bitches, referring to the Dragons’s guitarist as we bump along the dirt road. "The dude could do a hell of a lot more if he’d break out of his little guitar-school box."
"Yeah, well, their sales numbers indicate a whole lot of people disagree with you."
"I s’pose so," he mutters.
We bounce along in silence for a few more minutes as the music shuffles through my playlist until, suddenly, Joss Jamison’s voice comes rolling out the speakers. "If I could only breathe one thing, it would be your air…" I lurch for the power button on the radio, slamming it to "off," and almost weave off the road.
"Sorry, man. Sorry," I say as I rub my chin and correct the truck’s course.
"Fuck. It’s okay," Mike answers. He sits quietly for a minute looking out the window at the rolling grazing land that goes on for as far as the eye can see.
I grind my teeth, Joss’s voice still reverberating in my head. Only it’s not the song lyrics I hear, but some of the last words he said to me. "It wasn’t what you think." As long as I live, I’ll never understand that. He slept with my fiancée. What other way is there
to think about it? My best fucking friend screwed the woman I love while I was locked up in rehab. I shake my head silently, the memory of it burning a hole through my damn chest.
Unexpectedly, Mike asks, "Do you think it was about her?"
I watch the dust churning up in our wake as I glance at the rearview mirror. It reminds me of the trail I left behind when I hopped on a plane to Texas after finding out about Joss and Tammy. A cloud of gritty filth that coats everything it touches, settling in all the crevices and holes around it.
"I don’t know whether he wrote it about her, but for me, it was always about her. Everything’s always been about her."
"Yeah," he says in response.
Mike can be, and in fact usually is, an ass, but he gets it. Gets me and Tammy. Gets what it meant to me for her and Joss to have gone where they did. Mike was, actually, the guy who let the proverbial cat out of the bag. When I found out, I was so torn up I couldn’t talk to or be around any of them—the band, my friends, Tammy. But after a while, when Mike wouldn’t quit texting and calling, I finally answered.
He said simply, "You shouldn’t be alone, man. I’ll be there in the morning. Just give me the address."
He showed up the next day before lunch, and he’s been following me around, working on the ranch ever since. Five months later, here we are, the odd couple, two hopeless bachelors nagging at each other all day, and I’m definitely Felix, which if you’d known me back when I was drinking would come as a real shock.
We spend all morning setting posts and stringing wire. It’s hard work, and the early spring weather is already hot. We don’t talk much, and little by little, I feel the pain of hearing Joss’s voice bleed out of me. I resolve to leave it behind, there in the dirt and scrub grass of the Texas plains. Once we’re done, we trundle back to the main house, ready for some of Leanne’s cooking. When we pull up, there’s a car I’ve never seen before in the drive.
"Wonder if we’ve got a new guy," Mike says as he pulls the toolbox out of the truck bed and heads toward the storage shed to stash it.
"I don’t know, man. Ronny didn’t say anything about getting someone new, but it could have been last-minute I guess."
Mike grunts at me as he walks back from the shed and we amble on inside the house.
Leanne runs her domain like a fucking military camp. Workers come in the back door, then through the kitchen so she’ll know how many she’s serving, and finally on into the big dining room, where everything is set up to feed as many as two dozen hungry guys. But in Leanne’s dining room, there’re no hats, no swearing, and no belching. Let’s just say that Mike had a period of adjustment when he started staying here.
As we walk through the utility room toward the enormous kitchen, I hear her chatting to someone, her homey Texas twang carrying clearly through the space.
"He’s been doing real well. Such a lovely guy. I’m sure he’ll be happy to see a friend from home."
"So no one else has been to visit him?"
I stop dead in my tracks, a handful of steps from turning the corner into the kitchen. Everything inside me goes boiling hot and then frigid cold in a matter of seconds. My heart feels like it’s stopped inside my chest before I bring my fist up and pound—hard—to get it to start beating again. Mike, who is a few steps ahead of me, turns the corner at the same moment I halt, and I hear him say, "Oh fuck."
There’s silence for a minute, and then Leanne clears her throat uncomfortably. "Uh, Mike, I guess you know Walsh’s friend?"
I’m breathing hard now, and I’m not sure I can keep standing. It feels like my damn heart is going to pitch itself out of my chest onto the floor. I bend over and put my hands on my knees, praying that they can’t hear my raspy breaths from inside the kitchen.
"Uh, yeah," Mike answers tentatively.
"Is he here?" the visitor asks. I hear the hope in the voice—and the false bravado that only I would pick up on.
Mike turns his head slightly to glance at me over his shoulder, but I can’t look him in the eye. I’m working too hard at being able to stand up straight and breathe.
"I’m not sure—"
"Mike, please," the guest interrupts, that bravado slipping and a certain desperation leaking through. Even after all this time, I can’t stand to hear that need. I’m compelled to comfort, make it better, find a way to bring the hope back.
"It’s okay, Mike," I say hoarsely as I finally step forward to stand next to him in the kitchen.
I stop, taking in the scene, like a frozen tableau, all eyes on me—one pair waiting for me to freak the fuck out, the second questioning what the hell is going on, and the third—ah, the third. I look into the depths of those eyes, remembering all the hours I spent lost in their velvety texture, their warmth, their love. The love I thought was mine to hold forever. Those eyes in the face of the person who committed the greatest hurt I’ve ever felt in my twenty-eight years. The eyes that looked at me every day for months on end and lied. The eyes of the woman I still, very reluctantly, love to this day.
I blink, take a deep breath, and say, "Hi, Tammy. What brings you by?"
Tammy
IT’S FUNNY, you know. Most women I’ve met say that they’d die if they were to end up with a guy they dated in high school. They all tease each other and make fun of the guys they picked for boyfriends when they were fourteen.
I have to admit, far back in a little corner of my mind, there was always a voice that asked, "What’s wrong with me? Why do I still love the boyfriend I had when I was fourteen?" Now, as I stand looking at the man who was once that boy, I know that, if there’s something wrong with me, I don’t want it fixed. Seeing him at this moment gives me the same ridiculous rush through my stomach, up into my heart, and then straight between my legs that I felt the very first time I laid eyes on him in freshman algebra class in Portland, Oregon.
It’s the second day of school at Rose City High, but our first meeting of Algebra I. I hate math, so I’m dreading this. I also hate having to go into all these classes for the first time. I was "an early developer," as my mom says. I’ve been five feet eight, one hundred and twenty-five pounds, and a C cup since I was twelve. I hate being so big. In middle school, all the boys were shorter than me. They talked to my tits and made up names about me like Tamazon. So I sort of hate boys too, and as I stand in the doorway, I can see that there’s a boy blocking my way to my desk. Dammit. I’ll have to talk to him, and he’ll be a jerk and look at my chest the whole time. School sucks.
As I get closer, I see that he’s wearing a Nine Inch Nails t-shirt and a pair of jeans that really should have a belt, his boxers showing out the top of the waistband. I feel my breathing get faster, and I tell myself that it’s just adrenaline because I don’t want to have to talk to him, but it might also be because he’s taller than I am. Like, by a lot. He’s also got broad shoulders and really nice, thick reddish-brown hair. It makes me want to dig my fingers into it.
I walk toward my desk. He’s leaning with one hand on the back of my chair, talking to a dark-haired guy who’s sitting in the next row.
"Dude, I’m telling you, Joss can get us tickets. We just need your mom to drive and we’re set."
"Excuse me?" I say, trying really hard not to sound like I give a shit if he notices me or not. "I think I’m supposed to sit here."
He turns, and I find myself staring into the softest, sweetest brown eyes I’ve ever seen. Looking into them is like being cocooned in something warm and plush. I feel safe, peaceful, and happy—things I don’t very often feel. He must see something interesting in me too, because we both just stand looking at one another for what feels like hours. His soft lips turn up on the ends and his smile is as gentle as his big brown eyes. He’s not looking at my chest and he’s not looking up at me—he’s looking at me. The real me, like I matter, and I think maybe I could have him look at me that way forever.
Then I hear the other boy’s voice. "Dude, she needs to sit down. Move your ass."
"I’m
Walsh," he says, cutting to the heart of it all.
"Tammy," I reply.
He steps back as the teacher walks in and asks everyone to sit down. Walsh is assigned to the seat behind me, and for the entire class, I can physically feel him there, like a tantalizing brush of fingertips across my back. A buzzing, warm sensation that makes it nearly impossible to concentrate on quadratic equations, which, let’s get serious, I’m never going to need to know anyway.
By the end of class, I’ve decided—I have to have him. There is no doubt, no indecision, or need to consider it. Walsh Clark—I learn his full name when roll is called—is the one. The problem being, I don’t know exactly how to make him mine. Since I’ve hated boys for the last three years, I haven’t had much practice at getting them to like me. But I’ve always been a "woman of action," as my dad calls it, so I figure I’ll approach it like I do anything else—make a plan and follow it through until I get what I want.
I’m contemplating all of this as the bell rings and the teacher dismisses us. I pack up my stuff, disappointed when Walsh and his friend hightail it out of class before I can catch up. But when I reach the door to the hall, there he stands, leaning up against some lockers, a smile on his face as I walk toward him.
"Where’s your next class?" he asks, moving his books to the hand farthest from me.
"Art. Annex B. You going to walk me?"
"Yeah," he answers as he reaches over and gently lifts my backpack from my hand.
Now, as I stand in the kitchen of the Double A Ranch in Nowheresville, Texas, I look into those same eyes I first saw fourteen years ago, and I can see what the years have done. My beautiful boy is a man. A man who has suffered pain and seen things he never should have seen. Some of that pain I brought on him. Some of it I watched and didn’t do enough about. All of it I’ve felt in my own heart every day. Somehow, Walsh and I hurt each other—badly—and now I’m here to figure out how to make it right. If he’ll only let me.
For the Love of a Lush (Lush No. 2) Page 1
