Chapter 15 - Ethan
Ethan woke to a taste in his mouth like old pennies and burnt wood. The campsite was already alive—Cole on the far side, rolling and stowing gear with a precision that was almost military. Sunlight came in, mean and unfiltered, bouncing off the fly of every tent.
He fumbled his way out of the bag. The motion made his stomach lurch. His hands shook as he packed, every action slowed by the churn in his head. He’d had less than three hours of real sleep; all of it spent dreaming in circles, memory and regret ricocheting until he was left with nothing but ache.
Cole never once looked up. He cinched a strap, tested a knot, then turned away so hard it looked deliberate.
Ethan caught Riley watching him, a faint sympathy in the angle of Riley’s mouth. Riley bent over the tiny stove, hands working the pour-over coffee in silence. Ethan’s head throbbed; he dug in the bear bag for a protein bar and forced himself to chew.
A new sound—Harper’s laughter—split the hush. She zipped out of her tent, wild hair flaring like a torch. “God, this morning is gorgeous,” she announced, stretching high enough to pop her back. “You guys smell that? It’s pure. Clean. Like the air after a thunderstorm.”
Riley poured coffee into metal mugs, walked one over to Ethan, and handed it to him. No words, just a small squeeze on Ethan’s shoulder, fingers lingering for a half-second. Riley’s face said it all—Give him time.
Ethan drank. The heat was almost too much, but it jumpstarted something in his chest. Across the camp, Cole never stopped moving. He’d re-hobble a horse, then check the girth strap, then double back and repack something in the saddle bag. Ethan wanted to scream.
He forced himself to walk over and close the gap.
“Morning,” Ethan said, trying for normal. “Need a hand with anything?”
Cole didn’t even turn. “All set.” The words were clipped. Final.
Ethan watched the line of his back, the fists of his hands. He waited for a glance, some crack in the armor, but there was nothing. Just the sound of the creek and Cole’s low, deliberate breathing.
“Let me know if that changes,” Ethan said, and hated himself for the attempt.
Cole hunched further into his work, making it clear that there was no room at the table.
Harper and Jack drifted in with bowls of instant oatmeal. Harper set hers down with a thunk, then inhaled it in three bites. She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. “We’re almost to the meadows, right?” She aimed the question at Cole, but he was halfway down the horse line.
Jack elbowed Ethan. “You look like hell, Hayes. Did you party without us?”
Ethan tried to laugh. “Something like that.” He kept his eyes on his oatmeal, the milky grains swimming like dead fish.
Across the fire ring, Harper and Jack launched into a sparring match about what to do when they reached the fabled Glacier Meadows.
Ethan spooned up breakfast, but the food had no taste. He glanced over at Cole, who stood in profile against the pale morning, mouth a hard line. Cole’s hands were never idle; he’d braided the tail of his gelding, then untied it, then started again.
Ethan felt it all crashing around him. He wanted to talk to Cole, to say—what? He didn’t know. He just knew it was his only shot, that he couldn’t let it fester like this.
He set his mug down and walked over again. “Cole,” he said, trying to meet his eyes. “Last night—”
Cole spun, voice cold as January. “Drop it.” His gaze was a hammer, flattening every hope Ethan had that they could recover.
Ethan bit down the urge to keep pushing, to grab Cole by the shirt and force him to listen. But something in the tilt of Cole’s head, the raw fury just under the surface, made him stop. He stepped back. “Okay.”
The rest of camp packed up in a blur.
Ethan was the last to load his duffel, not because he wanted to be, but because every movement took triple the effort. He had to will his arms and legs into action.
When it came time to saddle up, Cole called the group together. His instructions were clipped, professional, nothing like the warmth of the days before.
Cole's voice was all business. "Six hours to Glacier Meadows.
Everything we've been working toward." He adjusted his hat, eyes fixed somewhere above their heads.
"Trail's dry, should be no trouble if you don't fuck around.
Stay single file. Watch the overhangs. When we reach the meadows—" his voice caught almost imperceptibly "—you'll see why this is the crown jewel of the whole pack trip.
If you need to piss, call out and fall back. "
Harper gave a half-salute. “You’re the boss, Walker.”
Cole ignored her. He mounted up, took the lead, and was halfway up the switchback before anyone else had even mounted.
Riley helped Ethan with his stirrup, voice low. “You okay?”
“Not even close,” Ethan said. “But thanks.”
They rode out single file. Ethan could feel the gap between him and the rest of the world—a thing that had always existed, but now was a chasm. Cole was ahead, a line of tension from head to toe, every inch screaming don’t fucking touch me.
Harper and Jack were a two-person comedy show, with Riley often playing the role of their reluctant audience.
Ethan was an afterthought, a shadow glued to the tail of the group.
He tried, once, to meet Cole’s eyes in a stretch of easy trail. But Cole looked straight past him, jaw clenched so hard the muscle jumped at the hinge.
Ethan let the silence eat him. He rode with his head down, counting the hoofbeats, listening to the slap of leather and the faraway caws of jays.
The only warmth in the whole morning came from Riley, who would ride back now and then to offer water or a dumb story or just a look that said, “I see you. You’re not invisible. I’m here for you.”
But it was cold comfort. All that mattered was up ahead, and up ahead wanted nothing more to do with him.
When they broke for a short break, Ethan tied his horse and wandered to the edge of the clearing, far from the others.
He thought about the night before, Riley’s warm, wet mouth, the taste of Jack’s cock, the way it had felt to lose control, to belong for a split-second to something new and lawless.
He felt no remorse for the act itself; instead, it was the void left behind that gnawed at him—the connection with Cole, whatever it had been, now vanished like mist dissipating under the morning sun.
He turned back to watch Cole, who was staring at the horizon, hands folded on the pommel of his saddle.
Ethan looked, one last time, hoping to catch a flicker of the old warmth, the old possibility.
But there was nothing.
Only blue sky, and the cold, empty trail ahead.
With a sharp command from Cole, the group remounted and resumed the trail. The break had been short and the tension lingered like a thick fog.
The trail cut west, sharp and exposed, with only stunted pines and heat-blasted rock to mark the passage of time.
Cole set a hard pace, never once glancing back, his silhouette always a horse-length ahead of the group.
Ethan rode in silence, his own mount sensing the mood and moving slow, as if it, too, wanted to hang back and avoid the confrontation.
Riley sidled up alongside him for a moment, then fell in step, their horses' flanks brushing as the switchback narrowed.
"He's not mad at you," Riley whispered, soft as a secret. "He just… doesn't know how to forgive himself yet."
Ethan laughed, bitter. "That's not how it looks from here."
Riley shrugged. "Trust me. I've seen worse. Men like that—they want to burn it out of themselves, not anyone else."
Ahead, Harper pointed out a trickle of a waterfall, her voice echoing back as if calling from another dimension. "Isn't that wild? That's glacial melt. Hundreds of years in the making. We're drinking time."
By noon the light was hard and white, shadows collapsed to nothing. The landscape went flat, dry, all brittle grass and dust. They broke at a ridge to eat lunch, the view expanding to miles of alpine basin, the ridges stacked like old bones in the blue haze.
Ethan unwrapped his sandwich and chewed it slowly, watching Cole from the corner of his eye. Cole had moved off by himself, sitting on a deadfall and staring down into the valley. His hat was pulled low; his hands were a knot in his lap.
Riley chewed an energy bar, then wiped his mouth. "Let it breathe," he said under his breath. "Sometimes that’s all you can do."
Jack tossed his lunch wrapper into the fire pit, then stretched, arms wide.
Ethan finished his food and packed up early, the act of motion easier than sitting still.
They set off again.
Ethan rode last, every footfall a drumbeat of what he’d lost. The air felt thinner. He let his mind wander, tried to lose himself in the rhythm, but every thought came back to the same hollow ache.
Hours passed. The scenery changed—less rock, more open grass, then the first hints of wildflowers as they approached the alpine zone.
Even at this elevation life was bursting through with pale pinks and yellows dusting the trail.
It should have been a miracle. Instead, Ethan only saw the distance growing with every step.
Conversation dried up. By dusk, nobody spoke at all. Only the creak of saddle leather, the clatter of hooves, the sound of Cole whistling for the pack train when they lagged.
They camped that night on a rise above the basin, a wide flat bowl that would, in the morning, reveal the glacier meadows in their full, impossible color.
Cole gave out chores, voice clipped but polite. He handed out freeze-dried rations, set the tents in order, then retreated to the farthest edge of camp. His silhouette stood against the falling sun, tall and alone, like he was holding up the sky all by himself.
Riley gave Ethan a last look before heading to his tent. "Tomorrow," Riley said, "it’ll get better. It always does."
Ethan nodded, not believing a word.
He stayed up long after the others had gone, staring into the coals. He thought about Cole, and about himself, and about all the ways a man could ruin something just by wanting it too much. He wanted to sleep, but his body felt wound tight, every nerve sparking with the things he hadn’t said.
He finally gave up and crawled into his tent. He closed his eyes and tried to remember what it had felt like to want something without being afraid.