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

I leaned my hand over the chair and rose to my feet. At the sink, I rinsed my hands and wiped my chest, then turned to look at Hank.


Hank picked up his beer, took a swill, and smiled. “You’re gonna get me hooked.”


“Maybe…if I’m lucky.” I stepped closer and slipped my fingers under the open flaps of his shirt. The patch of hair between his pecs was soft, and I leaned my forehead against it, breathing in his scent.


We stood that way for a long time, holding each other in my crazy rooster kitchen.


But after a while, Hank tensed and leaned away from me. I wouldn’t let him leave as easily as I’d done the last time, so I put my hands on his shoulders and tried catching his eye. “No one knows you’re here,” I said, in a soft tone. Well, maybe that wasn’t quite true. But he hadn’t moved an inch. Everything about his body language told me he wanted to stay. “You stay the night. Slip away in the morning.” I tilted my head, giving him a warm look. “At first light.”


Chapter 17