“You might be able to trick my son, but not me. I saw you coming a mile off. You’re just after the money. Do you think I did not have you fully investigated? I looked into your family. You don’t have anything. Or anybody! You’re nothing.”

“Tricking him? It’s you who is tricking him. Using me to bait him out of the mountains. Did you ever take a moment to think of what he wanted? How can you do that to your own son?”

Her chin rose haughtily. “I did it because I love my son. Is this a life for a man of his talent, capability, and wealth? He is rotting away here. He has a family who loves him, beautiful homes, great wealth, important work, friends who care for him. His whole life was put on hold after the accident. It’s time he came back to where he belongs.”

I looked at her speechlessly, at how sure she was that she was making the right decision for her son.

“Have you even thought about what you’re doing? Were you planning to live out here with Cade, all alone in this tiny cabin, no jobs, no friends, not ever seeing your poor, sick sister?”

I hadn’t thought about how long we would be here. It did worry me to be so far away from my sister. Up here, we were too far away to make regular visits. I lifted my chin defiantly. “Cade and I haven’t exactly figured all the details out yet. We’re just at the beginning of our relationship.”

“Or is your plan, which is much more likely, to milk as much money out of this entanglement with my son as you can? Waving your tits and ass around for money just like you did with all these other men?” From that coat of dead animals Lynn brought out a stack of photos. She didn’t give them to me. Deliberately, she threw them all over the floor.

Pictures of me dancing in the club with folded up dollars tucked around my thong and stockings were everywhere on the floor of the cabin. Taken in secret, the pictures were dark and dingy, but unmistakably me. There were pictures of me giving lap dances, and the worst were the ones where the men who paid extra so that I would touch them. She even had pictures of me working with another girl at the club. We were in the middle of a special room in the back, up on a platform with several men in chairs around us. A bachelor party. We do a lot of those.

My friend, who I worked with on these gigs, and I split the money, and it was enough to pay rent for the month in just a half-hour. We kiss and pretend to writhe around together on the spinning platform so the guys get a good view of everything.

They just want to see us feel each other and get off on it. It’s all a show. We were performing an act, and just thinking of the money. Whenever I had to do those gigs I went into my own world in my mind and kind of even forgot the guys were there.

Except now, I was looking at these pictures and I could see the faces of the men watching. There were so many faces in those pictures. All watching me writhe for them.

All with the same look in their eyes. I was only there to satiate a need in them. I had no other use to them. I had no life outside their hard on. I was there for no other purpose than for them to cum over.

Suddenly, I was on my knees trying to pick up these degrading, disgusting pictures that were scattered across the backdrop of where my love for Cade began. I felt like dirt. Tears started to roll down my cheeks as I scrambled around picking the horrible photos up.

“There now, don’t cry. Come on, let’s get you out of here before Cade comes back and sees you like this.”

“But, I love him.”

Lynn laughed. “Hush now, darling. That’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard.”

“But it’s true. I really love him,” I insisted.

“Look at this picture.” Lynn crouched down by me and held a picture up in front of my face. It was of me giving a lap dance to an enormous man in every sense of the word. He was over a foot taller than me, and a big eater. He wore gold rings on almost every finger and a fedora hat over his bald head. He was secretly wanking himself behind me. “Does this look like a picture Cade would like to see? If I show this to him, do you think you’ll still be his girlfriend?”

Hot tears ran down my cheeks onto the photographs. Shame rose up in my belly. Every cell in my body cringed. What have I done to myself? I could never bear to let Cade see me like that. I couldn’t see the light die from his eyes.

“My son needed time and space. He’s had that. It’s time for him to come home now. And, my dear, even if you follow him back to his life, you just won’t fit into the world we live in. Everyone in our circle is educated, wealthy, and exhibit more than class than you appear to have. All Cade’s friends belong to our set. You’ll know you’re different. They’ll know you’re different. You’ll feel that the others in Cade’s circle don’t like you. They’ll always whisper about you. You’ll feel embarrassed, which is understandable, but then Cade will start to feel ashamed of you, and that’s what will hurt you the worst.”

“But what if we stay out here in Colorado?” I said through a wash of tears.

“No, this is not his life. He has a life. A business. He just fell apart and needed to be alone for a while. That is over now, partly thanks to you.”

“I love him.”

She blinked. I could see she was losing patience with me. “Cade has responsibilities in New York. He’s coming back with me, and if you try to stand in his way then …” She rifled through some of the photographs still on the floor until she found the one she was looking for. “Ah, this is one of my favorites.” She held it up and talked about it like it was a picture she was really proud of. “Cade will be shown this photo and all the rest of them.”

I refused to look at the photograph. “And what will he think of his own mother when you reveal all? Maybe I should just stay right here until Cade comes back and we’ll see how he reacts to what we’ve both done.”

She stepped closer, amusement glittered in her eyes. “You imagine he would choose you over me? A whore who opened her legs for money.”

“Can’t you understand that I love him?”

I saw it in her eyes. How she changed tack. “Honey, you’re young and beautiful. You have your whole life ahead of you. Take this money, which is probably more than you’ve ever seen at one time in your life, and likely never will again. Help your sister. That’s very noble of you and then start over. Just start over. Go wherever you want, and do whatever you want. There’s more to life than you’ve known so far, which is why you’ve fallen for Cade. You’ve never known someone with decency and class before so even a sullen hermit living alone in the wilderness is like a chink of light coming through to illuminate how terrible your existence has been up until now. I promise you, you’ll thank me one day.” Lynn patted me on the back like we’d just played a game of tennis together, “There’s a lot of other fish in the sea. Cade’s just a little bit out of your reach right now.”

I was heartbroken to hear what she said. Somewhere after I crashed my car I totally lost sight of what I was supposed to be doing, lost sight of my place in the world, and romance clouded my mind. I felt like such a fool.

“Come on.” Lynn helped me to stand up, picked up my tacky bag and held it out in front of her like she was afraid of what germs might be on it. As if by divine knowing a car drove up at that moment. “There, your ride is here now.” She guided me towards the car.

As we passed the fire pit outside, I stopped. There was a little tiny piece of carving lying near the pit that Cade had been messing around with the other night. I wasn’t paying much attention at the time. I picked it up and ran my finger over it. It was the mountain lion. He’d carved the majestic face of the lion we’d encountered on the mountain together.

“Tell him I’m going to write him a letter and explain everything. Will you please tell him that?”

“Katrina, darling, you’re embarrassing yourself now. You signed an NDA. You cannot tell anyone anything or you’ll end up behind bars. Now, be a good girl and get in the car.”

“You won’t show him the pictures, will you? Please?”

She shook her head. “As long as you keep to your side of the bargain. I won’t.”

“I’ll keep to my side of the bargain.”

“Then he will never see them.” She smiled at me then. A polite, cold smile. “Goodbye, Katrina.”