Page 65 of Famous for a Living

“They can run thirty-five miles an hour, Cat. How fast do you think you can go in water?”

“I was far off,” I repeat, jaw tightening.

“From that?”

I swivel around in the direction of the moose I had been taking pictures of. He’s still standing in the middle of the river, tall and majestic, a sight to be seen.

“No.” He turns my shoulder, redirecting me toward the bend where I stopped and began videoing. “That.”

I halt.

Right out from the tree line, almost melted into the wooded background behind the water, stand two smaller moose, skinny-legged and heads bent as they chew on the pale-green river grass around them.

They look so small and helpless, not quite newborn calf level (or at least I couldn’t imagine anything so huge coming out of a body), but a little older. Preadolescent.

Old enough and tall enough to be able to stand in the water without getting their heads wet, young enough to still be hanging around their mom.

Mom.

My eyes swivel to the moose. The mother, not male, moose.

I see it now. No horns. And perhaps it’s my imagination, but just a bit more feminine curve to her long snout.

A mother and her babies.

My teeth start chewing on my lip. When I turn and face Zaiah, my voice is weak. “I didn’t see them.”

If I’d expected that to bring some sympathy, for the frown between his brows to ease up or for him to say, “Oh! You didn’t see them. That all makes sense now,” then I was wrong.

If anything, he only seems more exasperated as he throws out his hands.

“Of course you didn’t see them, Cat. That’s the point. I saw you. Saw you so dang focused on getting a good selfie of yourself with the moose for your Instagram page or whatever that you didn’t pay a lick of attention to your surroundings. They were literally three yards away behind you. Do you even know what could’ve happened if the mother saw you between her and her calves? Do you even understand how aggressive they can be? Just one look and that could’ve been it. You could’ve gotten yourself killed.”

My gaze shoots over to the mother moose I had been taking pictures of so peacefully before.

Heat creeps up my neck, making it the only warm part of my body at the moment. The rest of me is starting to shake. From the cold. From the man suddenly yelling at me, calling me for all intents and purposes an idiot.

Calling me out for doing a stupid thing.

And being right.

“This isn’t New York.” Zaiah swipes away the water dripping down his beard. “Mistakes have consequences. Not paying attention has consequences. You gotta get off your phone because real life is happening here.”

A cloud billows up from his face as he finishes his rumbling words, and with them, he shuts his mouth as if afraid to say anything more. He looks away. Thunder in his eyes.

Clearly a hundred more things he wants to say.

“I know.” I take in a shaky breath through my nose. Exhale. “I know that.”

He’s right.

But of course he’s right.

He’s right for insinuating I spend too much time on my phone. I know this about myself.

If he wants to know, I hate this about myself too.

But I can’t escape it. This is the life I have chosen. Being on call to the public, prostituting myself out, divulging every word and thought to both everyone and no one in particular. This is what I do. This is my job.