Love Scars by Lark Lane Read Free Book Online

the same time, thinking about J.D., I felt like a disappointed child. Oh-so-sorry for my sorry little self.
    Not that I expect to ever have a normal relationship. I usually don’t even try. After what happened to my family, I had a kind of mental crackup and went on a sex binge. Angry, ride-’em-hard-and-hang-’em-up-wet sex. When Grandma died it got really bad. I had someone new in the house every other night. It only ended when I found that creep watching Stacey in the shower.
    So I don’t go looking for relationships now. The very idea scares me. Still, I’m human. Every six or seven months I forget that I’m a lunatic, and my loneliness comes out and demands to be fixed. I find someone, anyone, and it ends in anger and despair and a lonely supply of condoms in my nightstand.
    Tonight I blamed the martinis for impairing my self-control. J.D. was fatally flawed as a potential boyfriend, despite my body’s conclusion to the contrary. It was crappy of me and unfair, but if I ever did manage to keep a man in my life, it would be someone with a consistent employment history.
    Yes. I’m a hypocrite. Who was I to judge? I’d never worked anywhere beyond my McJob at the mall. So yes, crappy and unfair of me, but there it was.
    Romanticism died for me a long time ago. In the real world, the practical world where I had to live, J.D.’s sexy voice and yummy arms and dark eyes that looked into my soul weren’t enough. His kindness and intelligence and compassionate nature were not enough.
    Were they?
    “Are they enough?” I said to the flower. Inexplicably, I burst into tears.
    Something landed at my feet and broke, covering me with cold liquid. A water balloon. Amid shrieking laughter, another one hit the iron fairy and broke over her.
    “Dude!” Someone yelled. The bozos had migrated from the keg.
    I jumped up, my pulse racing. In the veggie garden, they were pulling up plants and laughing like maniacs. My hands started shaking.
    “Put your hands up!” one of the guys yelled. He held one of Frank’s topiary bunnies between his hands.
    I broke out in a sweat and started hyperventilating.
    The other guy put his hands up like a referee calling a touchdown.
    “Field goal!” the first guy yelled. My hands clenched as he drop-kicked the bunny through the other guy’s arms.
    Then the screaming started. Ear-splitting, tortured yowls from hell. My nostrils were bombarded by the scent of pine trees and wet dirt. I clamped my hands over my ears, but the sounds only grew louder and more tormented. I couldn’t get the screaming out of my head.

    An Adele song had the crowd moving on the lawn. The singer’s voice was full of sex and desire and longing, but the unrelenting beat wasn’t slow enough. I wanted to wrap my arms around Nora and press my chest to her back, plunge my face into her hair, and feel her body grind against mine. 
    She moved between me and Brad, her hips swaying and her arms up and bent over her head, turning in a circle, her eyes closed. The worry had fallen away from her face, and she was even more beautiful. I wanted to take her in my arms and never let go.
    It wasn’t merely the scent of Nora’s long dark hair that drove me crazy or the lure of her soft skin, or the mystery of her haunted brown eyes. All those things drew me to her before she ever said a word, but I’d hoped when she did speak it would break the spell. That she’d turn out to be an ordinary woman, easy to walk away from.
    But then she did speak, and she did become a real person—but nowhere near ordinary. Despite horrible losses, she had so much to give. She looked out for the people she cared about, to the point of taking on heavy burdens so others’ loads were lighter. The opposite of every woman I’d ever been with.
    If I didn’t get some space, I was going to grab her and kiss her right there.
    Brad stopped dancing. He stared back at the boulder Nora hauled us down from. “Damn, she said yes.” From the way things