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

After they’d stepped out and Hank had helped his father into the car, he ran back up to me. “Forgot something,” he called out to his dad. He walked past me and into the house, then motioned for me to come back in. When I had, he grabbed my face and kissed me. “You’re unbelievable. He fucking likesyou.” He bolted out and ran back to the car. “I’ll see you in an hour!”


Elated but a bit confused at the evening’s events, I watched the Clift men drive away, knowing my part in their complicated story had begun tonight.


Later that evening, Hank and I sat in bed together. “No,” Hank said, gently pushing my hand away. “No more.”


Chapter 67