He ripped the strap tight and gave a last test pull. “Should hold,” Cole muttered. “But we’ll have to shift the load at the next level spot.”
Ethan nodded, but didn’t move away. They were chest to chest, two breaths apart, and Cole had to close his eyes a second to not do something idiotic.
He stepped back, motioned for Ethan to get mounted. “We good?” he called up the line.
Harper’s voice came clear. “All fine, boss. No casualties yet.”
Jack, behind, made a sound, but didn’t offer a real comment.
Cole mounted up, made a show of checking his stirrups, then led them on.
It was a slow, vertical crawl up the backbone of the ridge. The horses slipped a little, but always righted. Every fifty feet or so,Cole would look back, watch the crew. Harper was solid as stone, riding without fear. Riley was the kind who could look at his phone and steer a horse, all balance and zero drama.
Ethan, though—Ethan looked good. He’d figured out the trick of riding loose, letting the horse handle the math, and Cole could see him relax more with every hour. There was a natural grace there, a hidden athlete, or maybe just a man who was finally letting the world surprise him. Cole liked to watch that.
He liked it too much.
They crested the high pass by noon. The wind up here was feral, slicing the sweat off your body before it could finish soaking the shirt. The trail, now wider, threaded along a sawtooth ridge. Here the sky opened, blue and infinite, and the valley rolled out forever below. The group stopped to rest the horses, eat jerky and nuts, and stare at the view.
Jack, as usual, wasted no time shifting the dynamic. He sidled up to Harper, mouth already winding up. “You know,” he said, “the only thing better than this view is you.” He did it with a little wink, which must have worked at a thousand networking events.
Harper didn’t even turn. “If you want to impress me, try not to fall off your horse.”
Jack grinned, undaunted.
She peeled a strip of jerky with her teeth and shot him a death-glare that would have frozen lava.
Riley, perched nearby, didn’t say a word but let his gaze slide from Harper to Jack, then back again. His eyes were flat, not amused, just quietly watching.
Cole ate his jerky, but couldn’t keep from glancing over at Ethan. The man was sitting on a chunk of granite looking out at the horizon. There was a line of sweat along his temple, a streak of dirt on his forearm. The sight of him—so alive, so real—lit a fuse in Cole’s chest.
He pictured it again. Ethan on his knees in the dirt, mouth opened wide, ready to take.
Cole's hands trembled as he watched Ethan. One moment of weakness—that's all it would take. It’d be so easy to lose everything. One slip. One blowjob in the trees and every hard-earned secret would blow open, like a barn door in a twister. The ranch, his name, his place in this world—gone. The ranch—three generations of Walker men's sweat and blood—would slip through his fingers like water.
His father's weathered face appeared in his mind, that day when he'd caught eighteen-year-old Cole looking too long at Jamie Wilcox. Hershel had dragged him out to the barn by his collar, breath sour with whiskey. "No son of mine turns queer," he'd snarled, voice low and dangerous. "Walker men are men. Walker men are made of stronger stuff. We don't disgrace our blood with that filth. You understand? You follow the path of a Walker and if you don’t then you're no blood of mine."
The memory still made his hands shake, still made something deep in his chest curl up and die. He'd spent decades burying that part of himself, suffocating it beneath layers of performative straightness and stoic silence. But watching Ethan now, something wild and desperate clawed at the walls he'd built. Even now, decades later, Cole could feel the shame burning through him like a brushfire, consuming everything green and hopeful. He hated that voice, hated how it lived inside him, coiled around his spine, whispering threats with every heartbeat. But no matter how far he rode or how high these mountains stretched, he couldn't outrun what Hershel Walker had branded into his soul.
Meanwhile, Jack tried again with Harper. “You ever wonder what it’d be like to just bail? Pick a direction, take the trail, never look back?” He stretched, leaning on his elbows, a move designed to flex every visible muscle.
“Can’t imagine you ever not looking back, Jack,” Harper replied. “Seems like your best view is your own reflection.”
Jack laughed, unoffended.
Riley smiled at Harper.
Jack aimed at Riley, “So what about you? You’ve been quiet all day.”
Riley shrugged, his smile never wavering. “I prefer to watch.”
“Bet you do,” Jack said with a wink.
Cole forced himself to focus. He pulled the notebook from his pocket, checked their progress. Two more hours up, then a diagonal traverse down to the next camp spot.
He stood, called the group to action, and watched as each person fell into their slot.
The afternoon ride was less brutal, the incline easing as they hit the top of the ridge. The horses settled, hooves striking rock and grass. Cole let his mind go slack, just for a minute, and tried to recall the last time he’d felt something this sharp. Not just lust—though that was a monster all its own—but a hunger to connect, to be understood, to touch and be touched without the world punishing it.
