read .env file and convert all lines into an object

I'm trying to read an .env file that Foreman is using to read env variables that you might want to have when starting the node server.

I'm using:

var path = require("path"),
    _ = require("underscore"),
    fs = require("fs"),
    variables = fs.readFileSync(path.resolve(__dirname, ".env"), "utf8");

At this point I have a string containing something like this:

NODE_ENV=development
PORT=8080

I would like to convert that string into an object so I can read it like this:

{
    NODE_ENV: "development",
    PORT: 8080
}

I'm not sure how I could do it. I was thinking of Regex but I have no clue how to read line by line. Or how about the type of the variable ? Can I detect if it's a string or number ( I was just thinking to see if there are numbers only it means it's a number ? ) ?