“If we get out of here,” Cole said, and his voice broke open, “I’m done hiding. I want the whole world to know how I feel about you.” The words came out of him raw and unshaped, nothing like the careful lies he’d fed the world or himself all of these years.
He waited for the sting of regret, the familiar recoil that always followed any act of naked honesty, but it never arrived. Instead, there was Ethan’s laughter—soft and hoarse and completely, infuriatingly real. The sound seared through him, a little electric miracle in the black, and for a moment Cole stopped caring about the cave or the storm or whether he’d ever see daylight again.
“If we get out,” Ethan whispered, the words trembling between them, “I want you to fuck me every night for the rest of your life.”
The image hit Cole with the force of a tidal wave. The notion of a future—one that wasn’t just a series of obligations andunspoken apologies—but a living, vibrant thing built from want and laughter and happiness. He thought about Ethan in his bed, naked, ready, and wanting. The hunger in his chest was so vast it almost hurt.
“Deal,” Cole said, and his voice broke apart at the edges, the syllable half-laugh, half-sob, but most of all a promise.
For the first time Cole realized that the storm had stopped; the thunder was gone, the earth was still. Maybe it had been for a while and he’d just missed it, too wrapped up in the storm inside his own skull. Now, all he could hear was their breathing—Ethan’s rough and steady, his own ragged and wild—and the tiny, inconsequential noises of two men hoping not to die.
Cole pulled back just enough to see Ethan’s face. Even in the utter dark, Cole could picture it perfectly. “You okay?” Cole asked, voice gone thick.
“Better than ever,” Ethan said, and kissed him again, a simple collision of mouths that made Cole dizzy. “You?”
Cole wanted to say yes, but it felt too small. He wanted to say I love you, but that was a language he didn’t know how to speak yet. So he said, “I want you,” and hoped that Ethan would hear all the rest of it humming underneath.
Ethan did. Cole could feel it in the shape of Ethan’s hands, the way they held him—not just as a lifeline, but as proof. As if by touching enough, or wanting enough, they could bend the world back toward the future they’d imagined in the last five minutes.
For a while, that was enough. They clung to each other as if physical contact could will the air back into the cave, as if tongue and breath and pulse could beat back the encroaching cold. Cole ran his fingers through Ethan’s hair, tangled and filthy as it was, and found himself smiling.
He thought about his father, about the ranch, about all the years he’d spent shrinking himself down to fit some myth of manhood neither of them believed in. He thought about themagazine burning in the fireplace, the years of pretending, the parade of women he’d disappointed. And he felt, for the first time, not shame, but fury—at all the time he’d wasted, at everything he’d been denied. He wanted to live, not just survive. He wanted to be seen.
He pressed his forehead to Ethan’s, both of them sweating and trembling and desperate for just a few more breaths. “If the mountain has to take us,” Cole said, “let it know it’s getting two men who aren’t afraid anymore.”
Ethan let out a beautiful laugh, and for a moment Cole could almost taste the future—the two of them on the ranch, in the hallway, in the kitchen, in the goddamn hayloft if they wanted. No more hiding. No more starving for something he’d never dared to name.
The cave settled around them, silent and thick, and it was impossible to tell how much time passed. Minutes, maybe hours, maybe the final moments of both their lives. Cole drifted in and out, sometimes thinking he heard footsteps or voices from far away, sometimes convinced the mountain had already buried them and what they were living was only the memory of hope and love. He never let go of Ethan, not once.
They stayed like that, wrapped around each other, until a distant voice—small but unmistakable—echoed through the rubble.
It was Harper, yelling their names, over and over. “COLE! ETHAN!”
Ethan pushed up on his elbows, straining to listen, and for a moment neither of them breathed.
Cole tried to yell as loud as he could, but his voice came out croaky, torn up by hours of dust, thirst and fear. “WE’RE HERE! WE’RE ALIVE!” he roared, or tried to, but it sounded more like a bullfrog screaming into a pillow.
Ethan joined in, and together they yelled until the echoes bounced back, until they both had to cough and spit just to clear their throats.
Harper’s voice came again, closer this time, “We’re coming! Don’t fucking die in there!”
A chorus of shouts answered, more than one voice—Jack’s, and Riley’s, and Harper’s again, all stacking up on top of each other, filling the cave with hope.
“We’re coming!” Harper said again but this time it sounded like a promise, her voice edged with steel.
Cole hugged Ethan tightly and let out a half laugh, half sob. “Holy fuck! They’re here!”
He pulled Ethan in and kissed his forehead, then his cheek, then his lips, and for the first time since the cave-in, he thought that they might actually make it out of here alive.
The next hour blended into a fever dream of waiting—of sitting in the dark together, pressed close, every nerve tuned to the crunch of boots and the scrape of hands digging through rock. Sometimes there would be crashes so close Cole thought for sure the whole ceiling would cave in on them and squash them flat.
At one point, a fresh slide above loosed a blizzard of dust and grit, choking the tiny pool of air they’d been sharing. Cole threw himself over Ethan on instinct, taking the brunt of it himself, and afterward they both lay coughing, tears burning their eyes. But the ceiling held.
They didn’t talk, not after that. There wasn’t much to say. They waited, bodies twined and breathing shallow, counting off the seconds in their heads and hoping like hell that the next noise wouldn’t be the last.
As the first sliver of light pierced through the suffocating darkness, Cole couldn’t believe his eyes. For a fleeting moment, he questioned his own senses—was this a cruel trick of his mind?Had the mountain already swallowed him whole, and was this light merely a vision on his journey into the beyond?
But then the crack grew and became a seam and from that seam burst the unmistakable sound of Harper’s voice, close enough to touch. “COLE! ETHAN! HOLY SHIT, CAN YOU HEAR ME?”
