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

“Yeah?” I asked, anyway, my heart banging under his hand.


Hank’s promise hung between us like dust in the sunlight. 10


Behind the Frontier’s front counter, I opened the milk carton I’d left out yesterday morning before I’d rushed to the hospital. I took a whiff of the warm milk and poured it down the sink, then glanced back at Hank. “Do you mind pulling the shades down for me?”


We’d spent the morning in bed together, and then of course, I’d started fidgeting and worrying. Had I locked the café’s back door or left any of the gas ovens on yesterday? Hank had insisted we drive up here to check up on everything. It was refreshing to be understood. Lewis had never taken anything I ever did seriously. He’d thought owning a bakery was cuteand fun


Chapter 22