Page 35 of The Fire Line

“Huh,” he said, then looked back at the map.

Jay waited. Nothing else came.

Apparently Romy occasionally got to be right, which remained one of her worst qualities.

“We were together five years,” Jay added. “On and off a little longer.”

Why had he said that? Perhaps some self-destructive part of him wanted to make clear that this was not theoretical homosexuality or a misunderstood pronoun.

Harris gave one short nod. “Pretty long time.”

“Yeah.”

He tapped the southern approach. “Road’s washed out there too. East side’s your only reliable way in.”

The conversation returned so efficiently to access roads that Jay almost admired it.

Harris had not been rude or stepped away. He had simply become more intensely himself: practical, closed, and determined to keep the conversation within clearly marked boundaries. That described Harris on most days, but the timing made it difficult not to measure every glance.

Jay had spent enough of his life around men who were perfectly polite until sexuality stopped being theoretical to know that tolerance could come with narrow operating parameters. Nothing Harris had done qualified as hostility. The change was quieter than that, which made it harder to name and easier to doubt.

They confirmed the remaining directions. Then Harris folded the map.

“Need to look at the north trough before lunch.”

Harris turned and headed toward the barn.

Of course. The famous emergency trough.

“Right.”

Maybe Harris had genuinely remembered it. Maybe learning Jay was gay had meant nothing, and Jay was projecting awkwardness onto a man who regarded most personal information as an invasive species.

Or perhaps Harris was perfectly capable of being polite to a gay man and simply preferred not to know too much about the gay part.

That possibility settled less comfortably.

Jay could work with uncomfortable. He had done it before.

His phone buzzed once more.

Miles: Call me. This is stupid.

Jay stared at the message. “You have no idea.”

7

Moth to the Fucking Flame

There was nothing wrong with the north trough.

Harris checked the float anyway, then the valve and the line feeding it. Everything held. The water sat clean and level beneath the rim, exactly where it had been the last time he checked it and exactly where it would probably remain until somebody gave him an actual reason to walk half the length of the ranch to look at it.

He crouched beside the pipe and pressed his thumb against a joint that was visibly dry.

Still dry.

Behind him, a cow tore grass from the edge of the pasture. A tractor worked somewhere beyond the south field, and hammering carried faintly from the guest cabins. Ordinary ranch noise. Ordinary afternoon.