Chapter 20 - Cole #2
He expected Ethan to say something, to joke or sympathize, but Ethan just stayed there, quiet and solid, his hand squeezing Cole’s tight. It made the words easier to say, so he kept going.
“It got easier to pretend, after a while. I dated girls. Fucked a few. Never felt real and it never went well.” Cole swallowed, the story tumbling out faster.
“I did what I was told. Built up the ranch, made everyone proud. Even made myself believe I was happy, but I never really let myself want anything.” He grimaced.
“I guess I learned my lesson real well—want what you’re supposed to want, hate what you’re supposed to hate.
Build the ranch, make the family proud, put everybody else first.” Cole paused, running his tongue over his cracked lips.
“It fucked me up. Still does, most days.”
There was a long silence, broken only by the slow, even sound of Ethan’s breathing.
Then Ethan’s hand moved, fingers tracing the line of Cole’s jaw, thumb stroking the stubble. “I knew the second I met you,” Cole said, voice wobbling, “that you were gonna fuck me up. And I wanted it anyway. I wanted it more than anything. I wanted you. ”
Ethan pulled him in, chest to chest, heart to heart. “I want you too. I knew it from the first moment I saw you. I want all of you.”
“I’m sorry,” Cole said, not because it was what Ethan wanted to hear, but because it was all he had left to give.
“I’m sorry for making everything so goddamn hard.
I don’t want to die in here. Not without telling you—” The words caught, raw and jagged, but he forced them out.
“You’re the first person who ever made me feel like I could be more than what they told me to be. ”
The words ripped Cole apart. He sobbed once—an ugly, wet noise that echoed off the walls—and then he was holding on for dear life, arms tight around Ethan’s back, face pressed to Ethan’s neck. He tasted the salt of tears and the sharp, raw smell of sweat and rain.
“I don’t want to die in here,” Cole whispered. “Not without ever having really lived.”
Ethan’s mouth found Cole’s cheek, then the line of his ear. “Then don’t,” he said, breath hot and close. “If this is it, then let’s go out being who we really are. Together. No more hiding.”
Cole let the need take over. He turned his face, searching for Ethan’s lips in the dark, and when they met, it was tender, desperate, and more honest than anything Cole had ever known.
The kiss was slow at first, then urgent, then slow again, like they were both afraid it would be both the first and the last one and determined to make it count.
Cole’s fingers found Ethan’s hair, tangled and wet, and pulled him closer.
Ethan’s hands slid under Cole’s shirt, palms hot against the bare skin of his back.
Cole shuddered, goosebumps flaring everywhere Ethan touched.
“You’re shaking,” Ethan whispered.
“I’m scared,” Cole admitted, and the words felt like a relief.
“Me too.” Ethan kissed Cole again, softer this time, like a promise.
The fear didn’t disappear, but it changed shape. It was no longer a thing that threatened to eat Cole alive; it was a wild, urgent energy, a need to claim as much living as they could before the darkness ran out.
They pressed together, foreheads touching, lips brushing, hands finding purchase wherever they could. Cole could feel every inch of Ethan, the racing pulse under his skin, the tremble in his fingers, the warmth that radiated from him even now, even here.
“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 and unspoken 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 the magazine 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?”
“YES!” They yelled back.
There was scuffling from above, a frantic scrabble, and then a hand—a real, actual hand, caked with mud and blood—poked through the opening. It reached, fumbled, grabbed at the air.
“Grab on!” Harper’s voice commanded, no-nonsense, choked with what might have been tears or just rage at the world.
Cole didn’t need to be told twice.
Cole made sure that Ethan went first as he maneuvered Ethan up toward the breach, ignoring the way his own arms and legs screamed. He practically shoved Ethan through the opening, catching a flash of Ethan’s wild, mud-streaked face as he was dragged up by unseen hands.
Cole pushed himself through the jagged rock and mud, feeling his shirt tear and skin scrape away in raw patches.
As he neared the exit, the rush of fresh air beckoned him, but his momentum faltered; he was stuck.
The opening had been just wide enough for Ethan, but it was a tight squeeze for Cole’s broad shoulders, the result of years spent building strength on the ranch.
Panic began to claw at him as he scratched and clawed, every muscle knotted and burning with effort.
Just when despair threatened to take hold, Harper’s hand reappeared, reaching through the chaos. “Come on, Walker, let’s go!”
Cole seized her hand, gritting his teeth against the pain.
He pushed with everything he had while she pulled with equal urgency, the tension nearly yanking his wrist from its socket.
He heard a loud pop followed by the sharp sting of skin tearing against the unforgiving stone.
Then, with one final surge, he burst free into the light.
He tumbled into a heap in the open air and blinding sunlight.
Jack grabbed both Ethan and Cole and pulled them up and into a bear hug that nearly cracked their ribs. Riley joined in and wrapped his arms around them, laughing and crying as tears streamed down his face.
Harper wiped at her eyes, “You stubborn fucks.” She breathed in relief as she joined in on the group hug, squeezing them all as tightly as she could muster.
The storm had passed. The sky above was endless blue and sunny skies. The air was crisp and refreshing. The world looked new, unfamiliar, as if it had been rebuilt from the ground up while they’d been trapped below.
Cole blinked, wiped at his eyes, and realized he was crying, too—silent, hot tears that left his face wet and muddy and raw.
Cole and Ethan stood, side by side, battered but alive. Riley snapped a picture of them, mud-soaked and grinning like idiots, and for once Cole didn’t care. He didn’t care if the whole town or even the whole world saw it. He finally wanted to be seen for who he truly was.
Cole turned to Ethan, their gazes locking for a heartbeat, an unspoken understanding passing between them and then Cole acted on the impulse that had ignited inside of him the instant he laid eyes on Ethan.
He pulled him close, wrapped his arms around Ethan and lifted him off the ground and kissed him right there in front of everyone.
. This wasn’t a gentle, hidden kiss; it was bold and passionate, a declaration made in the bright daylight, with their friends as witnesses.
When Ethan kissed him back with equal fervor, Cole felt a profound shift within himself—a long-buried piece of his soul that had been shackled since childhood suddenly breaking free.
They stood there, entwined, hands clasped tightly, bodies radiating warmth and connection, until Riley let out a sharp whistle, prompting Jack and Harper to break into laughter.
“About time,” Harper called out, already turning to navigate the muddy slope, her voice commanding. “Let’s get moving. We need to find somewhere to set up camp, rest, and thank our lucky stars.”
Riley and Jack followed her.
Ethan and Cole didn’t say anything. They didn’t need to. They followed along, hand in hand, and Cole had the biggest smile on his face, a smile that he couldn’t get rid even if he wanted to, a smile of pure happiness, and for the first time in his life, Cole Walker felt free.