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

“Here you go, guys,” I said to my invisible helpers. “Can you wash these and put them away for me? Thanks.” I dropped the big container loaded with silverware and pots full of burned caramel, the thing landing loudly on the ramp. “I’ll do prepping and inventory.” I scoffed, aware that I was losing my mind. “No? Don’t feel like it?”


I was overwhelmed with work. Of course it didn’t help that I wasn’t sleeping and kept making mistakes in my recipes, the very recipes I’d created myself. Ever since Hank had left four days ago, I’d been dropping egg shells in my cake mixes, burning my caramel sauces, ringing up the wrong items at the cash, and though my customers were kind about it, I was down on myself—losing patience with this catastrophe I’d become. Needed to get my game back on. This café was the only thing I had left. Couldn’t lose this, too.


Chapter 37