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

Roy kept on painting, blowing smoke out of his sun burned nose, but he was obviously moved, too.


“Do you want some coffee or something?” I asked in a thick voice. In the door, I held Troy against my chest and gave Roy a long look. He was a handsome guy in an unpolished way. Had clever brown eyes.


“Sure, yeah, that’d be nice.” Roy finally met my eyes and nodded slowly. “Thanks.”


I held out my free hand. “I’m Chris, by the way. We never really properly met.”


Roy stared down at my hand and then wiped his own hand on his work shirt. He grabbed my hand and shook it hard. “I’m sorry I didn’t come by sooner or—”


“Don’t worry about it. No hard feelings here.”


He held my eyes with his warm stare. “Yeah, well, Shirley’s crazy about you.” He chuckled softly. “Sure glad you’re gay, man.”


Surprised and delighted by his humor, I laughed wholeheartedly, holding Troy tight, and those hateful words on my house lost all of their meaning or importance.


Chapter 54