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

Behind the counter, I rang up the day’s total on the cash register and then started counting bills. I hadn’t slept well last night and my mind was on Donnie and the effects my words might have had on him. I kept miscounting and having to start again. Impatient with myself, I slapped bills down, sighing at every mistake I made.


When the phone rang on the wall behind me, I jumped, startled out of my muddled thoughts. I picked up the receiver, holding the phone between my shoulder and chin, still trying to count the money. “Hello, Frontier.”


“Chris,” Drika said in a panicked tone, “lock the doors and slip out back.”


“What?” But I was already stepping away to the kitchen door. “What’s going on—”


“Aleid found condoms in Donnie’s room and the letters he wrote you!” Now she was shouting. I’d never heard her this upset. “Liliana says he’s on his way to you right now. Get the hell out of there, Christensen!”


Chapter 51