Cole poured coffee, black and bitter. He took a gulp, slightly burning his tongue. He stared at the line of the ridge, at the ragged silhouette of trees against a sky trying its best to turn blue.
The fire popped and hissed. The world started to move. Riley’s tent shivered, then unzipped, and the man crawled out like a groundhog. Riley blinked at Cole, offered a two-fingered salute, and went about his morning routine without a word.
Next up was Harper, emerging barefoot and already half-dressed, arms and legs bared to the cold like she was immune. She stretched, catlike, then padded over to the fire. “Morning, boss,” she said. Her voice was cracked, but alive.
Cole grunted, poured another cup, and slid it over without looking up. He was aware of Ethan’s tent, silent, the flap zipped, no movement yet.
He poked the fire, watched the embers leap, and tried to build walls in his mind. He thought about logistics: trail mileage, elevation gain, the best place to hit water before the day’shard climb. He thought about the weather, about the horses. Anything to keep from thinking about—
Ethan appeared, squinting into the early light, hair stuck up at impossible angles, face puffy with sleep. The man caught Cole’s eye for a heartbeat—long enough for Cole to sense the question in it, and the memory of last night, of hands and heat and a silence too big to share.
Cole felt his cock twitch, hard and sudden, and pressed his mug to his face, hoping the scald would help.
Ethan sat by the fire, close but not too close, and poured himself coffee. His hands still showed the dressings from yesterday. Cole watched as Ethan winced at the heat of the cup, then cradled it, fingers working along the ceramic, and it was all Cole could do not to picture those same hands wrapped around his cock.
The group was silent as everyone drank their coffee’s and finished waking up. Cole stared into the fire and drifted off into thought. He remembered Melissa's face the night she'd walked out. "You're not even here," she'd said, her voice flat with resignation after three years together. Before her, there was Amber—eight months of trying—who'd asked him point-blank if he was gay. And before that, Kate, who'd cried when he couldn't finish, again. Each relationship worse than the last, each woman sensing the fundamental wrongness he tried desperately to hide.
In his teens and twenties, Cole managed to keep up appearances—dating the rodeo queens his father approved of, making the right noises, going through motions that felt increasingly mechanical. By thirty, the pretense had grown exhausting. Sex became a performance he dreaded, requiring fantasies he couldn't admit to maintain even basic interest. By thirty-five, he'd stopped trying. Told his father he was married to the ranch, to the business. Hershel had nodded, satisfied with the lie. "Good. Women just complicate things," he'd said,clapping Cole's shoulder. "Walker men stand alone. We don't need anyone."
"Walker men don't bend," Hershel had drilled into him since he was old enough to walk. The words followed Cole through every buckle he won, every bone he broke, every time he swallowed tears rather than let them show. "We don't take shit. We don't show weakness. You get up, and you don't make excuses."
Cole had built his entire life around those commands, constructed walls so thick he sometimes forgot what he was walling in. Cole had internalized every word. Spent his entire life burying his true self so deep that sometimes he could almost forget it was there. Almost. But in moments like this, with Ethan just feet away, that buried part of him clawed toward the surface, desperate for air.
Cole's thoughts were interrupted as Jack emerged from his tent, eyes squinting against the morning light. He stretched his limbs with exaggerated motions, a series of groans escaping his lips as he grumbled about the cold, the bland food, and the absence of real pillows. Grabbing a steaming cup of coffee, Jack sauntered over to the fire and joined the group. In an effort to divert his focus from Ethan and redirect it toward something productive, Cole started preparing breakfast for everyone— three eggs cooked to individual preferences, two links of local breakfast sausage sizzling on the pan, and two grilled halves of a tomato, their sweet aroma mingling with the crisp morning air. The meal came together quickly. Cole had prepared this meal a thousand times before.
They ate fast and broke camp faster. The morning routine was like an old hat now: tents collapsed and rolled, bedrolls stuffed, packs cinched tight. The horses were already restless, breath steaming in the chill, hooves crunching the frost off the grass. Cole went down the line checking every bridle, every pack. He lethis hands go automatic, hoping the busywork would bleach the mind clean.
It didn’t. Every time he got near Ethan it made Cole want to force his cock down Ethan’s throat and make him choke and gag on it like the little bitch he is.
He hated how much he wanted it.
Cole saddled up, swung into the leather with a practiced motion, and set himself at the lead. He made sure the others had fallen in before he allowed himself a single look back. He caught Ethan’s eye just for a second, saw something raw and open there, something that threatened to undo all the years of discipline.
He faced forward, set his jaw, and drove them up the trail.
He would not break.
Not today. Not yet.
The trail was a bastard from the first turn and proved no easier than the day prior. It was barely wider than the horses’ hips, switchbacks and loose shale glued to a face of cliff. Below, the world dropped away in a knife-slash of valley, mist still hanging low and blue. Cole kept his gelding’s nose pointed straight, but every twenty yards he checked the line behind. If anyone was going to eat shit on this grade, it’d be now.
He was right to worry, but not for the reasons he expected.
It started at the third switchback. A stray rock—fat, round, probably the size of a softball—snapped loose under the hooves of the first pack horse. The load shifted left, enough to tilt the horse’s center of gravity toward the void.
Cole’s body reacted before his brain did. He was off his own horse and in the air, grabbing at the lead rope, yanking hard enough to torque the pack animal upright. The packhorse froze, trembling, but didn’t tip.
“Hold!” Cole barked.
The line stopped. He scanned for trouble: the next horse down the line was steady. Jack, riding behind it, was white-knuckledbut upright. Ethan—two spots back—had dismounted with real speed, boots skidding as he scrambled up the side to help. For a second, they were face to face, breathing the same cold air, their hands meeting on the animal’s bridle.
Cole’s nerves stuttered. Ethan’s palm was warm, even through the glove. The skin at his wrist, just visible above the cuff, was clean and tight, veins blue as rivers on a map.
“Get it steady,” Cole said, voice sharp. He let Ethan take point on calming the pack horse, then moved to inspect the damage.
The left-side pack had split a seam, gear threatening to dump straight into the ravine. Cole worked the rope and cinched a slipknot, hands moving fast. Ethan steadied the horse, palm to its cheek, and whispered low and soft. Whatever he said worked—the horse stilled, the whites of its eyes receding. Cole watched the way Ethan’s mouth moved, the way he set his jaw, and thought again about that mouth around his cock, those same soft words coaxing him to let go.
He could feel himself getting hard. In broad daylight, on a public fucking mountain.
