Rock Reclaimed (Rock Revenge Trilogy 2)

It wasn’t that. There was something indefinable about him. The crowd had gotten it as well. It had only taken a handful of songs, but he’d won them over even as he insulted the headliners by touching their equipment.

Rebel. Artist. Sex appeal.

Rock and roll.

He had the thing. It couldn’t be crafted or imitated. It just was.

And he’d stolen my damn camera.

I rose onto my knees and took my shot of the boardwalk. The sun was a little higher than I liked—another ding against my collection—all because my hamster wheel of a brain couldn’t settle because of this Ian dude.

When the photo popped out, I waved it until it developed. Amazingly, there were a few streaks due to a natural lens flare.

I patted Lucy. She was my workhorse. Just happened to be perfectly calibrated because she’d been made in this decade, unlike Matilda. “That’s my girl. You never let me down.”

I tucked the photo into the mini album I carried. I shook out my beach blanket, rolled it up, and shoved it in the sleeve hanging on my bag, then wandered into the tide to wash off the worst of the sand on my legs. It was already warming up and I needed to make my rounds. The sunrise photos were the basis of my portfolio, but my backup ideas were always percolating. For the last few weeks, I’d been using the skate park as inspiration.

Done.

Overdone.

Not original.

I shut my eyes for a second and took a deep breath. I could do this. I’d been born to be an artist. It was all I thought about. It didn’t matter what medium I got my hands on, I had to make something with it. That was why I’d been chosen for J Town.

I just had to get my shit together.

I crouched down to my bag and tucked my camera in a side compartment. Half a dozen spray cans clanged together, the little mixing balls rattling as I swapped out my coverup for a pair of splattered cotton overalls. I’d chopped off the legs for ease of movement. I’d learned quickly that me crawling around the edges of the skate park in my bikini was asking for trouble.

The overalls weren’t sexy at all. Especially when my legs were spotted in paint within an hour.

I trudged up to street level and hopped the bus back to the boardwalk. I snagged a pretzel to fill the eternal hole in my stomach as I wandered along the storefronts.

Venice Beach was an eclectic mix of the new and the old, the stylish and the odd. Being bored simply wasn’t possible. My eyebrows rose as I got closer to the hub of street performers. Today’s weird included a guy juggling snakes in the center square. That one, I’d seen plenty of times.

He was a staple.

But someone had decided to play DJ today. The extra in today’s entertainment included a set of triplets o

n old-school roller skates rocking out in a perfect V-formation—each of them wearing rainbow shorts with enough glitter paint on their boobs to keep them from getting arrested. And they were skating around said snake juggler to a One Direction song with a decidedly disco flavor.

Just another early morning in the heart of downtown.

I munched on the rest of my pretzel and took a few pictures of the crowd, of the newest addition to the graffiti-plastered walls. New tags and rude gestures made me smile. Even after six months, I was perpetually surprised at what I found on the boardwalk.

The smack talk definitely didn’t end with tagging. The closer I got to the skate park, the rowdier it got. Some days it was quiet, some days it was chaos. Looked like today was chaos.

A group of the more famous GoPro skaters had taken over most of the ramps. I was small enough to squeeze through the watchers. Thank God I had an extra box of cartridges at my disposal. For once, I wished for my SLR. I had one back in my studio, just hated to use it for anything other than portfolio shots for my website. But it sure would have been helpful here.

Lucy ended up taking a few cool streaming shots.

I smiled because it was what I did. I suddenly wished I had that bitch face some people lamented. Especially as I caught the eye of one of the skaters waiting for time.

Crap, did it have to be him? He was a Z-Boys wannabe with only a quarter of the talent. I knew to avoid him and his little crew.

He hustled along the railing and took a ride down the easy ramps to get to where I was.

“Hey, beautiful.”