I tried again and then again.

Finally in the fourth picture my freckles didn’t look like a rash against my pale skin, and my boobs were actually in the picture and my hand down my underwear looked sexy…really sexy instead of kind of strange. (I’d had to change my underwear, because the pink looked too little girl and that was the last thing I wanted.)

So, in the end I had a pretty hot picture of myself, but not my face.

I sent it to him.

Me. Annie McKay. Sent a picture of my naked body to a man.

One minute later my phone rang. I answered, but before I could say hello he asked, “Is that you?”

“No, it’s the stripper I brought home.”

“Is that a joke?”

I smiled. “Yes.”

“So that is you?”

“That is me.”

“You…” He exhaled hard. “God, baby you’re so pretty. Your skin, it’s like…it’s so fucking beautiful.”

I’ve never been called pretty. Much less fucking beautiful. The only nice thing Mom ever said was that I had nice hair, implying everything else was ugly, and Hoyt said I was a hard worker and a fine woman…I know, such a charmer.

But this from Dylan; I was flushed with pleasure. Ecstatic at the idea that someone would think I was pretty.

Because I was. A little.

Not like Joan, but I was me. And I was pretty.

“Tonight…” I sighed.

His dark laugh was delicious.

“That was the fucking hottest thing I’ve ever heard,” he said.

“I doubt that. You were wild, remember? I bet you’ve heard a whole lot worse than that.”

“You’re wild now, too. And brave. What else do you want to be?”

“I want to be with you.”

The words slipped out before I could stop them and I heard him suck in a sharp breath.

The brittle silence told me I’d done something I couldn’t ever undo. I’d changed everything.

I knew it with the terrible sixth sense that I’d developed over the years, that specific and terrible skill of knowing when something was falling to pieces around me. “I know that’s not going to happen,” I said in a rush, desperate to try and put back together this thing that I had shattered. “I do. I get that. I have my own reasons for why that’s a really terrible idea. But I watched this girl dance on this guy’s lap. She was facing him and he was…he was grabbing her ass. So hard with both hands that the skin around where he was grabbing her was white. And it was like he couldn’t hold her close enough, or hard enough against him, and I’ve…I’ve never been held like that. Not once. Not ever. And I wondered what that would feel like. What would it be like to have someone want me that much that he…just grabbed me and held on as hard as he could.”

“Layla—”

But I didn’t stop. I was on a roll. “What would that be like with you? And what would it be like to hold your cock in my hand and to put it in my mouth? Or to slip my fingers into yours, my fingers covered in my—”

“Layla,” he said, his voice sharp. Almost a crack. “Stop it. You have to…We can’t.”

“I know. But I want it. Don’t you…want that?” Just tell me you want that.

“Listen to me.” His voice was different. Totally different. “This is over now.”

“What?”

“It’s over now. I told you not to…build anything around me and I meant it.”

“I don’t know anything about you!” I cried.

He was silent for a long moment. “That’s not true and we both know it.”

“I know you wear a tux to parties,” I said. “You work on cars.”

“You heard my voice mail message, didn’t you?”

Dylan Daniels.

“Yes.”

That’s when I realized why he always answered the phone so fast. It wasn’t eagerness for my calls. It was so I wouldn’t find out who he was.

“Is this because I’m poor?” Because I wasn’t. I was actually far from poor. My name was on the deed to a thousand-acre farm in Oklahoma, one of the biggest corn providers in the state. I was actually pretty fucking rich in my own right.

Not that I had ever, not once, thought about it that way.

And now, actually, I was pissed. “If it is, fuck you. Fuck you—I don’t give a shit about your money.”

“It’s not money. It’s not…it’s just not anything that should have started. I’ve had someone look in on Ben for five years and I’ve never, ever started anything like this. I’ve barely given a shit about them before, Layla, and then you come around with your bad jokes and wanting to be brave and I’m…” He stopped and I waited, breath held for him to keep going.

“And you’re what?”

“Breaking my own goddamn rules.” I didn’t know what to say to that. To the grief and the frustration that filled his words. Who gave a shit about his rules? He was rejecting me. I’d gone to a strip club for this guy. Laid myself bare for him. Opened myself up to the worst kind of ridicule and he was worried about breaking his own stupid rules? Bullshit! “The phone is yours. I’ll keep the plan going.”

“I don’t want your fucking pity,” I spat at him.

He did that groan. That weird, sexy, half-laugh, half-groan thing that I had believed all along meant that he liked what I was saying, that whatever it was that I was saying was exciting to him. And now I didn’t know what it meant.

I didn’t know what any of it meant.

“It’s not pity. I want…God, Layla, I want you to call me if you need anything.”

“Not fucking likely.” I could not believe how angry I was. I was furious with him. And I couldn’t stop.

“I’m not kidding. If there’s an emergency—”

“I’m not kidding, either. I won’t call you again. I won’t even think about you.” That was a lie and we both knew it.

“That’s too bad,” he said, sounding sad and tired. “Because I’ll be thinking about you. You really are just so beautiful, Lay—”

I hung up. Or disconnected or whatever. I ended the goddamn call and I wished I could call him back so I could end it again.

Fuck you, you fucking fuck, I thought, and threw the phone back into the drawer and slammed it shut. But the stupid thing was so cheap—the whole goddamn RV was a piece of shit ready to fall apart in the next high wind—that the drawer slid back open.

So I slammed it again. And again.

And then it broke.

And so did I. I collapsed back down on the bed, in pieces.

When Mom got angry, the whole ranch cowered. I scurried away, trying so hard to anticipate and make right whatever might be the next thing to set her off. It was a useless effort, of course. On those days, the earth didn’t spin right. The wind was all wrong.

Even the cows looked away when she walked by.

Smith stopped coming to the house for chess games.

My mom was tiny. Like five foot nothing. Yet when she was angry like that, she was a giant. Blocking out the sun.

The next day, after Dylan broke up with me…or whatever, whatever that was…I was that way. The ground shook under my feet as I stomped out of my trailer.

“Whoa-ho!” Joan said as I walked past her trailer. “What the fuck is wrong with you? Boyfriend didn’t like your little game last night?”

She was sitting back on her deck in that silky green robe, the ashtray next to her elbow full of cigarettes. Her beauty was different in the early sunlight.

“What’s wrong?” I snapped, in probably the worst effort ever to get a person to open up.

“With me?” Joan asked.

“Yeah, you look like shit.”

“What got you in a snit?” she asked with a smile that indicated my bad mood was entertaining.

“Life, Joan. Life got me in a snit. Now why do you look like—”

The front door of her trailer opened and out walked the guy from weeks ago. The hairy guy with the skeevy wink and smile. This time, though, he wasn’t winking or smiling.