Chapter 7 #2
He could feel himself getting hard. In broad daylight, on a public fucking mountain.
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.
They stopped again near a weathered old cairn—some relic from a surveyor, maybe. The sun had gone west, throwing everything into gold and shadow. The wind died here, the mountain holding its breath.
Cole let the group take a short break while he double checked the packs. He could feel Riley’s gaze on him, cool and unblinking.
“Everything okay?” Riley asked, low and private, once the others had scattered.
Cole kept his eyes down. “Why wouldn’t it be?”
Riley smiled, not buying it for a second. “You’re doing a good job. You know that?”
Cole’s throat tightened. He nodded, once, not trusting his voice.
Riley let the silence linger, then said, “If you ever want to talk, I’m not the worst listener.”
Cole gave him a look. Riley’s eyes were as clear as glass—no threat, no mockery, just a standing offer.
“I appreciate it,” Cole said, unsure what Riley’s angle is.
Riley’s gaze lingered a second longer, then he walked off.
Cole waited until the sun was almost gone before he let himself look at Ethan again. The man was at the edge of the ledge, staring into the infinity of mountain and air, unaware—or pretending not to be aware—of the scrutiny.
Cole imagined walking up behind him, wrapping his arms around his waist, pressing into him, whispering filth into his ear. He wanted to grab Ethan’s hair, drag him down to his knees, unzip and shove his cock deep inside in Ethan’s wet, warm mouth.
He shut the thought down with force, and went back to tending the horses, his hands shaking, shame like battery acid in his veins.
After their short break, the group made the last push to the very top of the ridge before beginning their descent. They reached the top together, the horses blowing hard, the air thin enough to make every word a gift.
For a minute, nobody moved. The view was too much—a panorama of peaks running away in every direction, the sky above burning orange and gold, the land below awash in shadows and fire.
Cole called the group to the lip of the ridge, then pointed out some locations — the lake to the west, still glassy in the distance; the run of old logging roads, now just pale scars in the green; the next trail marker, a small pine forest at the base of the mountain they had just traversed.
“It goes much quicker on the descent.” Cole reassured the group.
The group split off while Cole stayed near the edge.
Behind him, Harper straddled a boulder and wolfed trail mix like she was carbo-loading for a war.
Jack was at her side, still trying to spark something, his voice low and urgent.
Riley lurked a few paces back, watching the clouds with a practiced innocence.
Cole saw the shift—Harper shut Jack down with a single look, the kind that said no, not even if you were the last man on earth. Jack wilted, face red, and for a second looked so lost that even Cole felt a twinge of pity.
Riley saw it too. He drifted over, casual, hands in pockets, and said just loud enough for Jack to hear, “Some people don’t know what they’re missing.” The way he said it—soft, almost flirty—turned the moment from pity to a different flavor of tension.
Jack side-eyed Riley, surprised, and for a split second their gazes locked. Jack broke it with a nervous laugh, but the color lingered high on his cheeks.
Cole didn’t miss a beat of it. He saw what Riley was doing—making the play and reminding him that there were always other possibilities. Cole envied the clarity of it, the courage. He wondered what it would be like to go after what you wanted, without fear.
The sun hit the horizon, and the temperature dropped like a stone.
“We should move,” Cole said, louder this time. “We need to start our descent now if we want to make it to the next camp at the base of the mountain before full dark.”
The group mounted up in the growing chill. Harper took the lead, Jack after her. Riley lingered a second, then fell in next, the space between him and Jack now a living thing.
Cole and Ethan took the rear. They rode in silence, the path down easier but slick with shadow. Cole watched Ethan’s back, the shift of his shoulders in the saddle, and let the longing eat at him.