Two years ago, Chris and his boyfriend left the city to settle in a small town at the US-Canada border. Eager to start a new life, Chris bought the Frontier Café, but a year later, his boyfriend dumped him, leaving Chris the only openly gay man in town. Nowadays he's resigned to a life of romantic solitude.<br><br>Hank spent the last years traveling through the country for his job as a water plant engineer. Deeply closeted, he's careful about the men he meets. Like the rivers he studies, he runs fast through the land.<br><br>In town only for a few weeks, Hank is intent on getting the job done and returning home out west to take care of his father. But Chris’s warm manner and decadent desserts are no match for Hank’s defense mechanisms. For the first time in his life, he finds himself wanting to go with the flow.

No River Wide Enough

Hank stepped back to the door but paused in the doorway. “What is it?”


Then the question came to me like a revelation. “If I wasn’t me, I mean, if I was just some other man—another gayman. Would you have come to my house anyway?”


Hank searched my eyes with his. “I’m not sure I understand what you mean.”


“Well, was tonight about meeting a need or—”


“Chris, it was more than just scratching an itch.” Hank ran a quick hand over his face. “I didn’t have to come here. I could have kept it under control. I’ve been keeping it under control for two years.”


“Two years?” I breathed, walking up to him. “Why so long?”


“Don’t ask me that. It’s so complicated and ugly. Look, please, I can’t afford for anyone to know that I was here. Do you understand? It’s come to that. I messed up two years ago and now my job is on the line. “


He’d messed up? What did he mean by that? But I knew better than to ask.


Chapter 13