Star Crossed: A Hollywood Romance

by Reiss, CD

  Star Crossed

  A Hollywood Romance

  CD Reiss

  Star Crossed

  CD Reiss

  © 2015 and revisions 2020 - all rights reserved. Flip City Media Inc.

  An earlier version was released in 2015 under the title Shuttergirl.

  This book is protected under the copyright laws of the United States of America. Any reproduction or other unauthorized use of the material or artwork herein is prohibited.

  This book is a work of fiction. Any similarities to real persons living or dead is purely coincidental, and pretty wild if you ask me.

  Cover Art designed by the author

  There’s a dude in Texas who reads romance.

  He sent me a long letter in 2017 about Laine.

  It’s not my habit to heed demands for changes, but his cry for justice could not be ignored or forgotten, so I tried to deliver it for Laine.

  I wish I could deliver it for every child who’s been hurt.

  Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Epilogue

  IRON CROWNE

  Also In Kindle Unlimited

  Prologue

  Los Angeles is mine.

  From the ports of San Pedro to the base of the Angeles National Forest, from Santa Monica Beach to the trench we call a river, I own this city. And like mother and daughter locked together, the ownership is reciprocal. I’ve been nurtured in her arms, brought to adulthood as if pulled by the roots of my hair, sung to sleep with a lullaby of car alarms and freeway traffic.

  I grew up in twelve neighborhoods, the ward of foster parents who didn’t give a shit if I stayed out most of the day, as if they knew I was the city’s child. I learned how to fold myself between alleys, how to hide, how to appear in unexpected places, how to whisper my intentions to the city and stand still long enough to listen to her directions. I didn’t finish high school. I didn’t need to. The only lessons I ever needed came from the throb and hum of this wide-open, sexy metropolis.

  Every greased-palm-coated street leads to opportunity. Lights turn green when I approach. Traffic parts like the Red Sea. When I stop, a parking spot opens up before me. The city speaks in my gut, whispering the way to go. I should rob banks for a living, or drive a cab. I should be a cop or a paramedic. But that’s not how it worked out. That was never the city’s plan for me.

  I am a paparazzi. Or, if you want to split hairs, paparazza. With an a.

  I can get to a mark and get away with the shot faster than any of them, in heels and backward. I’m prettier, I smell nicer, and I take exactly zero bullshit from celebrities. I don’t work for them. I don’t kowtow or suck up. If they’re in public, their ass is mine.

  This is the story of one celebrity, and as much as the city, he is mine.

  1

  LAINE

  My butt hurt. My feet were fine, even in heels, and my shoulder didn’t ache, even with the twenty-pound camera bag slung over it. But my ass, which leaned against a railing not meant for leaning, throbbed like a dance floor.

  Tom, my foster brother, stood next to me, his camera hoisted like a javelin. He had a scraggly beard and a hipster’s idea of grooming. Even in broad daylight, he was so sallow, he looked like a black-and-white picture pasted into a Kodachrome world. At night, he was barely even visible.

  “My phone’s buzzing,” he said.

  “Mine too.”

  Our phones always buzzed. It was the Muzak of our lives. I checked my screen.

  —Britt’s at NV—

  Too little. Too late. At one in the morning, we’d already been staking out the back of Club NV for three hours, waiting for Britt to walk out with Maryetta, her longtime lover. The back exit faced the parking lot and was manned by two huge Armenians in leather, standing behind a velvet rope. I was on a first-name basis with both of them.

  I might have known the city like the back of my hand, but I didn’t have a line on when some self-hating actress would get tired of a club and decide to go the hell home. So we waited in the weed-bitten corners of the alley, under the hard shadows of the street lamps. Anyone would think the alley was empty but for the two Armenians, but paps were hiding in the corners and behind the SUVs, wedged between buildings and cars. Two were on a garage roof three doors west. They’d rented it just to keep their lenses on Club NV.

  Tom poked his phone. “Kill Photo.”

  He still used an agent, and they sent him calls. I was past giving someone a chunk of my money for their connections. What had been great while I was with Kill was that the outlets looked at their pics first. When a mag got upward of forty thousand frames a day, you needed to be fast, and you needed to be verifiable. Kill’s photos were fast-queued. Head of the line. Seen first and paid on time.

  But I’d gotten to the point where my frames were in ahead of everyone else’s at Kill, and I didn’t need them anymore. I kept telling Tom to ditch them. I’d help him get fast-queued, but he was too timid to go out on his own.

  “I told her we’re already staking it out on your hunch.” He scrolled down Kill’s text. “Britt. London. Michael. Blah blah.”

  In an unreciprocated intimacy, everyone in Hollywood called anyone who was someone by their first name. Michael was a name I loved hearing, partly because his pictures netted me a nice take, and partly… mostly, because he was Michael Greydon. There had been times, maybe three or four in the past years, that I’d imagined he saw me past the lens.

  “Is Michael snorting anything?” I asked. “Because America’s Boyfriend cutting lines would be a million-dollar shot.”

  I was being snarky, but the fact was, I didn’t want to hurt him. He was perfect, from the breathtaking smile that implied sex but never stated it, to the sharp green eyes that didn’t look at but through, from the way he moved as if carried on his own jet stream, to the body that made me shudder. I wanted him to stay exactly as he was. Stunning. Captivating. Catching the world, and me, in the tractor beam of his personality. Bringing him down with a photograph would have been criminal.

  The valet pulled a Ferrari up to the velvet rope. Paparazzi crawled out of the dark corners, their cameras up like shields. Only the VIP room could call ahead to the valet. Like clockwork, the back door slapped open, and Britt Ravenor, w
ith her pixie cut and big hoop earrings, stumbled out of the club. The valet held the driver’s door open for her. Michael Greydon—with his walnut hair and wicked smile, lithe body and immeasurable talent—came out behind her. Every time I saw him in person, he blew me back, and I had to pause before putting the camera in front of my face. I heard the cadence of his voice in my head, the way his mouth moved, the way his face lit up when he smiled. And his hands… God. A tingle went up my back, and I put the camera in front of my face to stop it. I had work to do.

  Lots of stars had entourages, but Michael Greydon didn’t. His isolation made him less accessible because he wasn’t surrounded by people I could connect myself to. Charming and only slightly aloof, he was so adept at managing his career and public image that everyone assumed he’d gotten more than talent and looks from his movie-star parents, Gareth Greydon and Brooke Chambers.

  I didn’t assume. I’d known him in high school, and he’d been as gorgeous as he’d been a workaholic. I imagined he was much the same as an adult.

  The valet handed Britt her keys. She swiped for them and missed but got them on the second try.

  Britt had been a victim of the beauty pageant circuit, the daughter of an ambitious single mother who’d pushed the girl until the family broke. Britt broke slowly, over the course of a decade, from drinking too much and driving while doing it. It was the mother who was wrapped up in a straitjacket at Westonwood. I sympathized with Britt, understood her life, but that didn’t stop me from making money off it.

  Flashes went wild as Britt got into the car. Not mine. I held my shutter back. That wasn’t money. Not yet.

  Britt was halfway in the Ferrari when Michael went for her keys with a quick, decisive move that came from years on varsity tennis. Britt giggled and bent over, hiding them. He pushed her out of the way, trying to get behind the wheel instead. She wrestled him aside, and he put his arms around her, tickling her to get her away. It was delightful and charming, and it would make fantastic copy.

  That was my picture. I got my manual focus going, because they were moving, and no auto-focus lens could think faster than I could.

  Click. Money. Click. Money.

  I kept them in frame, head to toe. The money was in what they were wearing, from shoes to hair bobs. Even when Britt held her arm out and Michael reached for it, I moved with them, keeping all appendages in the frame.

  I realized, even through the lens, that Britt was drunk and Michael was trying to keep her from driving. They were working together for a big Oscar-season thing, a remake of the 1970s classic Bullets Over Sunset. Big feels. Big tears. Big money. Michael’s father had played the green gangster then, and now he was to play the role of the old mob don his son had to kill. It was marketable to a fault, especially since Gareth hadn’t made a movie in a decade.

  Through the frame, where everything was clear, there was a touch of desperation on Michael’s face, even when it looked as though he had his co-star under control. Unfortunately for him, she’d shot all of Zombie Apocalypse drunk, so when she twisted away from him, she was skilled at it.

  I pushed against Roger, the pap next to me, to keep them in the frame, digging my heel into his foot.

  Michael went for the keys again, smile gleaming as if he was simply doing a sight gag, and Britt twisted, dropping her hands. Michael caught the keys, but Britt put her knee between his legs. Her aim was perfect, and Michael took two steps back, letting go of the keys.

  Even the dog pack of paps went ooohh. I got a couple of shots then put my camera down.

  Michael Greydon, an A-lister’s A-lister, was crouched over in pain while everyone else shot Britt. I should have been shooting. It was money, and I only had four pictures. Yet I’d stopped because he was looking at me through the lens. Not just looking but appreciating. I felt a warm tingle over my skin, as if hands had gone up my shirt. He saw me.

  I’d shot him a hundred times over the past years, yet I had always been convinced he didn’t know I was there. Did he recognize me? Shit. I’d considered the possibility every time we were on the same block, but it had never seemed so likely.

  The glance must have been the length of a shutter snapping, because by the time I got the camera down, his attention had shifted back to Britt. She slipped into her Ferrari, and he held the door open, saying something I couldn’t quite decipher. It sounded like don’t do this. The engine revved to life, and the tires peeled against the cracked pavement, sending scree flying. I got caught in the rain of rocks and moved just before she skidded off with the door still open.

  She came to the T at the end of the alley and cut the right too close, and the centripetal force shut the door as it scraped the corner of the building. The Ferrari missed a parked Civic, blew by two girls in sparkly outfits, and took off. Britt was gone.

  “That’s gonna be the end of her,” Tom said.

  “Shame,” I said. “She had talent. Did someone call the cops?”

  “Raoul has a contact. They’ll pick her up before she gets to Venice.” He turned, and his eyes went wide. “Oh my God.”

  I craned my neck toward the entrance but only saw the sparkly-shoe girls hustling away from the dented driver’s side door. They went around the corner to the front of the building.

  “What?” Was he talking about Michael looking at me? I still felt undressed from it.

  “Nothing,” Tom said.

  The rest of the paps were taking pictures of the Ferrari’s rear lights getting smaller in the distance, but I had my camera back on Michael Greydon. He laughed with one of the bouncers and hobbled inside. The big Armenian had his phone to his ear. I hoped he was calling the cops about the drunk in the Ferrari.

  I jabbed Tom’s calf with my stiletto. “Talk to me.”

  “Randee. That’s her. She just walked in.”

  “With the sparkly heels?”

  He nodded as if the rest of his body was paralyzed. Tom had spoken about Randee from the band Razzledazzle. He had a huge crush on her but had been unable to cross the photographer-artist barrier.

  Any time he wasn’t making money with me, he was shooting hip stylings in Silver Lake or rock bands playing in parking lots. He had a knack for catching a musician’s passion and had a deft hand at retouching. He should have been doing clubs and performers full time, but there was no money in that. The money was in one-in-the-morning stakeouts and chasing celebrity drunks. I’d stopped promising him he’d get a big break doing a candid celeb shot. I’d stopped trying to convince him it was photojournalism. I just called it money, and he heard that.

  “Come on.” I pulled his sleeve. “Let’s upload from the Exploder while these douchebags chase a dead story.”

  We trotted over to Cordova Court, where he’d parked. We cut through a residential driveway I’d discovered when I was eleven, through a little-used gate, over a chain-link fence, and through a narrow space between buildings, cutting seven minutes out of our walk time.

  Tom’s Explorer smelled like camera grease, fast food, and armpit. I’d driven it before, and it shimmied to the left so badly, I’d barely been able to make right turns. Since then, I called it the Exploder. We got in and, as if we were EMTs on a scene, immediately unpacked and laid out our equipment: wifi routers, laptops, cables, cameras, and cell phones.

  “I don’t have my USB cable, damn,” Tom mumbled.

  He was a chronic forgetter of parts and pieces. I carried extra around just for him. I reached into my bag for the extra USB cable he needed every couple weeks.

  “Thanks, Laine.” He plugged in. “You’re all right for a girl.”

  “You’d starve without me.”

  He shrugged as if he knew it was true.

  I brought up my shots, did a quick edit on the best ones, and got them up on my server. Then I emailed my contact list the link and told them I was selling the four pictures on the server: one of Michael trying to get the keys away from Britt, one of Michael getting kneed in the groin, one of Britt hitting the side of a building, and one
of Michael Greydon looking through the lens at me. I took a second with that one. He couldn’t have been more inaccessible, yet the photo was so intimate, as if his eyes felt places only hands could reach. But that was what he did, wasn’t it? That was his talent, to expand the space of the frame until you thought he was looking at you, touching the places that needed healing, when in fact, he was only looking at himself.

  I changed my email before sending. I had three pictures. That last one made me tingle, even if I’d imagined it. That gaze was mine.

  I snapped my laptop shut. “What now?”

  “Kill servers are so slow.” He stared at the screen, tapping the edge of the machine as if Kill Photo’s servers would hurry up to a rhythm.

  “Let’s go in,” I said. “We got the shots. Let’s chase your future girlfriend.”

  “What? We can’t go in there.”

  “We’ll go in the front. It’s different bouncers.”

  “I can’t.”

  “Does she even know you exist without a camera in front of your face?” I flung my laptop into the backseat. “Have you said one word to her as a man, not as a guy who takes pictures of musicians?”