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

“Never married? A girlfriend maybe?”


“I had a girlfriend in my twenties. I couldn’t marry her. Didn’t feel right.”


Hank swallowed hard and furrowed his brow.


“You’ve never fallen in love with a man?”


“No…well, maybe.” He ran his thumb across his lip, obviously struggling to explain himself.


But he didn’t need to. I understood. “Was this two years ago?”


“I’m guessing it didn’t end well. But we don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to.” I gave him some space and picked up my jeans from off the floor. I slipped them on and started gathering the plates on the table.


Hank stopped me, putting his hand on my shoulder. “I was on the board for a water plant project out east.”


I dropped everything and sat back. “Go on.”


“I’d been working on this thing for months, and everything was falling into place.” Hank stopped. “I messed up,” he said after a moment. “Almost threw my career away.”


Chapter 30