Riptide (Rock Stars, Surf and Second Chances Book 2)

by Michelle Mankin

  “Yo.” Ash arrived, hair slicked back from his face. Linc and Simone paddled up behind him, together on the same board. Simone leaned close and straightened my only wedding accessory for the nautical part of the ceremony, a blush dahlia over my ear, the type of flower I’d had in my bouquet all those years ago. Homage to the wedding that had preceded this one and to a fallen soldier everyone in attendance had loved in their own complicated ways.

  I glanced at the shore and at those who stood on it. Franklin. Enrique. Gonzolo. Luna. “I hope they don’t feel left out.”

  “They don’t,” Ramon said. “They know your inner circle’s out here. Let’s do this. Luau on the beach with everyone in OB afterward.”

  He turned to Diesel. Who knew the guy had a license to officiate weddings?

  The bassist spoke the traditional words while we floated on the water. The sun started to slip beneath the horizon as the short ceremony ended.

  “You may kiss the bride,” Diesel announced with a twinkle in his eye, tucking his shoulder length hair behind his ears and grinning widely.

  Ramon lifted a brow. “Finally,” he said before pulling me toward him using the leash attached to my ankle.

  “Hey, surfer wife.” His lips curved, and my heart flipped the way only he could make it do. “I love you.” Then he kissed me to make it official.

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  Turn the page to read a sample of Rock F*ck Club …

  Rock F*ck Club

  10 cities in two weeks, 10 famous rockstars. On my knees. Against the wall. On my tits, I don’t care. As long as I get the evidence to prove it. Why? Because I caught my former prick-of-a boyfriend, from Heavy Metal Enthusiasts, doing a groupie doggie-style, backstage on the night we were supposed to be celebrating our 1-year anniversary.

  He told me I was too uptight. Too vanilla. Too boring. So I got drunk with my bestie, Marsha West, the aspiring videographer. I ranted. I raved. I came up with a crazy idea. What I didn’t know was that my best friend recorded me. Marsha put the video up on YouTube. It went viral with 10 million hits. Now I’ve got fans and sponsors offering me big bucks.

  Rockstars are volunteering to be my f*ck buddy.

  Hollywood is calling.

  I get to choose which rockstars I want.

  The stakes are high.

  This sh*t just got real.

  What could go wrong?

  Chapter One

  Tears curtained my eyes. My stomach churned. Raw emotion nearly doubled me over as I stumbled back out into the busy corridor at the Verizon Theatre my arm thrown protectively across my waist. Don’t be sick. Walk away don’t run. Exit the venue with your remaining dignity intact.

  “Raven.” I jerked upright at the sound of his voice. His lying cheating voice. No lead singer croon at the moment, just ‘I got busted’ conciliatory whine. “It’s not what you think. Come back inside and we’ll talk it out.”

  “It is exactly what I think.” I threw a long length of my hair back over my shoulder pretending to be indifferent, amazed that I was able to string together coherent words while my mind kept replaying the scene of that two-timing bastard doing another woman doggie style on the dressing room floor. I would never be able to Clorox wipe that image from my memory.

  “It’s over.” My voice warbled. We had been through so much together. I had begun to nurture hopes of a future for the two of us, though I hadn’t shared them with him. Thank God, I was spared that humiliation. “We’re through.” I threw a hand on my hip brandishing sass I didn’t feel. “Don’t bother calling. I sure won’t.”

  “C’mon, baby. Don’t be like that.” Ivan Carl the front man of Heavy Metal Enthusiasts leaned his tattooed forearm against the dressing room door while holding up his unbuckled jeans. “Come join the fun. Expand your horizons. Try a little spontaneity for once, instead of planning every single thing you do down to the nth degree.”

  “I don’t.” I huffed.

  “Oh yeah you do,” he retorted. “It’s that way with everything. Especially sex. It’s the same position, the same two damn days every week when I’m home. Maybe I need more. Maybe I just wanted to shake things up a bit. Rattle your cage. Get back the girl I knew at the beginning, the one who knew how to relax and have a good time, the one I started out with a year ago.”

  That girl was gone. She wasn’t ever coming back. I thought he understood. He had been so patient while I had regrouped and tried to put the shattered pieces of myself back together. I thought that he had loved me. I believed that he had been faithful. But who the hell knew after something like this? Maybe he had been cheating on me all along. My world careened on its axis. The blood drained from my face. Forget my mind. I suddenly wanted to sanitize my entire body.

  “How many other women have there been?” My fingers clenched into fists my nails biting into my palms.

  “Only Clarissa. Honest to God.”

  I glared at him. So doggie had a name. The knife already lodged in my abdomen twisted in so deep that it seemed to sever my spine.

  “I can’t believe you’re being like this.” He sighed, his dark brown eyes shimmered with emotion. Regret, perhaps. Too damn late for that. He ran a hand that visibly trembled through the chestnut strands of his medium length hair. I think he was beginning to see how this was going to play out. The ‘that’s-all-folks’ had been pretty clear to me from the moment I had caught him fucking someone else.

  “So help me Ivan. If you gave me a venereal disease I’ll lop off your dick with a pair of kitchen shears.”

  He winced. “You’ve got nothing to worry about. I wore a condom. Besides, it was only this once.”

  “And it didn’t mean anything.” I cut him off, finishing his sentence for him.

  “Exactly, baby.” Biting down on his silver hoop lip ring, he stepped closer to me his hips hitching with the cocky swagger I had once found so irresistibly sexy. But his hand holding up his pants reminded me yet again that his cock had just been inside someone else. That sobering fact negated the I’m-so-sorry pleading expression. It negated all the hopes and dreams I had built for us. I straightened my shoulders, not all that impressive, but it was the best show of strength I could manage at the moment. I would build stronger defenses later. For now, I stood up to his bullshit rock star charms. I recognized it for what it was. Cheap pyrotechnics and lyrical subterfuge. I should have known better. I should have listened to my father, my best friend, and even my brother. They’d all seen through him. Why hadn’t I?

  “Don’t touch me.” I backed further away when he reached for me. His big brown eyes glistened like melted chocolate, but I ignored the temptation, spinning on my fashionable heels and running smack into a cart stacked with amplifiers.

  “Sorry, Raven, I didn’t see you.” Peter stopped and moved toward me. “Hey, why are you crying? Did I hurt you?”

  I shook my head. How pathetic was it that I knew all the roadies by name and had knitted cute little scarfs for them at Christmas.

  “What’s wrong then?” the roadie pressed while Ivan’s presence loomed behind me.

  “It’s nothing. I’ve gotta go,” I mumbled, sliding my cell out of my bag. I had her number dialed before I hit the metal bar and opened the door to the blast of heat from the parking lot. “Marsha it’s me, I said as soon as she picked up. “You were right. Ivan is an asshole. I need you and tequila stat.”

  Chapter Two

  I squinted at the shot glass. Glasses. Plural. My vision had gone blurry about two hours into the marathon of tequila. My chapped lips burned with every bite of lime and shake of salt. But I wasn’t through. I was on a quest for oblivion. I needed more to erase the memory of Ivan and Doggie Girl from my mind. I just needed t
o figure out which glass on the bar in front of me was the real one. I reached for the one on the right. It seemed the more solid of the two.

  My hand went right through it. A mirage. Just like Ivan had been with his music, his thoughtful words and his mind-blowing kisses.

  Left, then. The only other choice I had. My fingers closed around the thick glass. I licked the salt from the back of my hand, plucked the lime from the rim and lifted the measure of tequila toward my mouth.

  “I think maybe you’ve had enough.” Marsha West, my best friend and partner in too many crimes to count, seized my wrist. Her grip only tightened when I turned to glare at her. Both of her. Duplicate gorgeous blue eyed blondes. Each with identical frowns. Lips pursed, I tried to mentally merge them into one person again.

  “Just a more couple,” I begged them, batting my lashes.

  The two heads of Marsha shook their denial.

  “Ok, maybe just this one.”

  “Maybe none. You’re cross-eyed drunk. You can’t even focus. You’re gonna be sick.”

  “Please, Mars. It’s already poured.”

  She sighed. “Ivan wasn’t all that. You weren’t even interested until I pointed him out to you. He’s certainly not worth hurling over. Not after what he did.”

  I narrowed my gaze. “You’re the one who said, and I quote, ‘Ivan Carl is the hottest front man I’ve ever seen. I want to have his babies.’ End quote.”

  “So I exaggerated. But he did look good in jeans. And he had that panty melting singing voice.”

  My expression must have turned wistful or pained because she added, “But that was before I found out what a lying, cheating, arrogant prick he was. Now I say good riddance.” She let out a weary breath. “Oh alright. Stop giving me that kicked puppy look. Have your one last shot. But don’t say I didn’t warn you.” She released my wrist and twisted in her stool. “Bartender,” she called, knocking annoyingly on the wood. Or maybe it was my pounding hangover headache kicking in early. “Pour me a double and fast. Can’t you see I need to show some solidarity here?”

  Through my alcohol induced haze, I saw a blur of movement and heard the slide of glass on polished wood.

  “Here’s to getting over Ivan.” Marsha clicked her glass with mine, and I drained the double shot in a big gulp that washed down my throat like liquid fire. The room immediately started spinning in a dangerous way.

  “Raven?”

  “Yeah, Marsha?” I slurred.

  “You’re looking a little pale.”

  “I’m always pale.”

  “Paler than usual.” She lifted my fringe of thick bangs feeling my forehead with the back of her hand as if she were checking for fever. “You gonna be ok bestie?” She searched my eyes.

  “I’ve got you, haven’t I?”

  “Always,” she said gently. “No more tequila, ok?

  “Ok.” I would have nodded, but I thought better of it. The less motion, the better. In addition to my buzz and blurry vision I was nauseous now. “But do you think maybe Ivan’s right? Am I too uptight? Am I boring?”

  “Who cares,” a male chortled. “You get a pass because you’re smoking hot.”

  “Shut up, Joey.” Marsha shot a glare toward the other end of the bar before she took and squeezed my hand reassuringly. “Don’t listen to that idiot. You’re alright. So you’ve had a couple of bad breaks recently. It’s understandable that you’re a tad OCD now.”

  “She’s a walking talking Rain Man.”

  “Joey, so help me if you don’t stay out of this, I’m not sleeping with you ever again, no matter how drunk I get.”

  “Don’t baby her so much.” Joey tossed his bar towel over his broad shoulder and turned away from me and my drama to wait on another customer.

  I dropped my head to the bar. The wood didn’t yield but the cool glossy surface soothed my tequila flushed skin. “I’m a mess,” I mumbled from beneath the black curtain of my hair. “I’ll never be right again.”

  “You’ll figure it out, honey.” Marsha stroked my hair back from my face. “You’ve had a shock. Give yourself a little time to bounce back.”

  “Maybe,” I allowed. “Or maybe I never will. I’m tired of being on the losing side. I’m tired of trying to do the right thing. It just doesn’t matter. I’m never going to be able to undo the mistakes I’ve made.”

  “Raven, what happened to Hawk was an accident. It’s not your fault. You need to stop beating yourself up about it.”

  I squeezed my eyes shut. A wave of soul crushing loss engulfed the pain of Ivan’s betrayal. My brother’s beloved face flashed inside my mind. The way his eyes crinkled when he smiled. His positive life force. His steadying influence. All gone forever because of how utterly I had failed him.

  I had tried to atone. I had reordered my life. I had buried my wilder self alongside him. I had forced myself to go forward telling my reflection in the mirror each morning that everything would be somehow ok. But my tight grip on my life kept slipping. Bad things kept happening. I felt like an overwound spring, all that repressed energy begging to be released. This thing with Ivan was the catalyst for what was about to become a chain reaction.

  “Why do guys like Ivan always get a pass?” I slapped my hand on the bar. “Why are women expected to be monogamous while guys get pats on the back for sleeping around?”

  “Yeah,” Marsha agreed. “Talk to me sister.”

  I lifted my head and managed to focus on her. The red light on her Gopro video camera flashed in my eyes. It was almost always on. She filmed most of the stupid shit I did. She wasn’t the kind of friend who would talk me out of doing something crazy. She more often helped me map it out. She had submitted some of our more amusing stunts to film contests. She had even placed in a few of them. I knew she wished she could have afforded to go to college to study film, but she had settled for a job as a freelance legal transcriptionist. The youngest of three children, her mother had split when she had been only fifteen, leaving her father to raise them alone on a cop’s salary. Marsha was good at what she did, and the money was ok, but her passion lay elsewhere, like me with my music.

  “Keep going,” she encouraged, making a rolling gesture with her finger. “Get it all out. You’re speaking some major truth.”

  I obliged her, raging against the injustice of it all, ranting about the double standards. I had an outlet for my anger. A balm for my pain. I straightened in my seat. I’d paid my penance this past year. A heavy dose of insanity was what the present shitty reality demanded. “Why do chicks always have to be the ones to take whatever a guy wants to give us? Why can’t I point out what looks good to me, crook my finger and get what I want for a change? Why can’t I get some cute rock star ass without it having to mean anything? Why can’t we fuck ‘em then leave ‘em? It’s time to turn the tables on the guys with guitars who seduce us with their soulful lyrics and twist our hearts with their lying bedroom eyes.” I lifted my shot glass and pointed to it for a refill, nodding my thanks to Joey as he sloshed in more golden elixir. “Tonight marks the end of boring Raven.” Fresh pain gripped my heart as I recalled Ivan’s accusations but I powered through it. “From this day, I vow to be uptight no longer. I’m going to ‘Kumbaya’ and give into my wild side, and you’re going to document it. It’s time to shake things up. It’s time for a new way of doing things. It’s time for women to be the ones in control.” I held up one finger. “We say when.”

  “When,” she echo, echo, echoed as if she had shouted the word into an empty concert hall.

  “We say how.” I held up two fingers.

  “I vote dirty.” She grinned. “Filthy dirty.”

  I returned her grin, appreciating her enthusiasm but giving up on the finger counting thing. I was too drunk to go any higher anyway. “We’ll hit the concert scene in ten different cities and rank the rock stars we fuck along the way for the betterment of all womankind so the sisters who follow us don’t waste their time on losers.”

  Marsha guffawed. She was
used to my drunken grandiosity. She put her fist up in the air, and I managed to bump mine to hers to seal the deal on the second try.

  “We’ll call ourselves the Rock Fuck Club.”

  Acknowledgements

  You. My loyal readers who make it possible for me to do what I love doing.

  My family who understand me and love me anyway when I get that look in my eyes, stare off into the distance and they have to ask me the same question twice.

  My bestie who never says never and somehow always seems to make the impossible possible.

  My friends, the ones in my hometown and the ones across the globe…Switzerland, England, Canada…you know who you are.

  My writing team. No, I can’t do it alone. Lisa, Brandee, Evie, Laura, Felicia, Diane, Julie, Michelle, Lexxie.

  My Rock All Stars.

  About the Author

  Michelle Mankin is the New York Times bestselling author of the Black Cat Records series of novels.

  Rock Stars. Romance. Redemption.

  Love Evolution, Love Revolution, and Love Resolution are a BRUTAL STRENGTH centered trilogy, combining the plot underpinnings of Shakespeare with the drama, excitement, and indisputable sexiness of the rock ‘n roll industry.

  Things take a bit of an edgier, once upon a time turn with the TEMPEST series. These pierced, tatted, and troubled Seattle rockers are young and on the cusp of making it big, but with serious obstacles to overcome that may prevent them from ever getting there.

  Rock stars, myths, and legends collide with paranormal romance in a totally mesmerizing way in the MAGIC series.