Page 36 of The Fire Line

Navarro had an ex-boyfriend.

A man named Miles.

Harris stood and looked across the pasture.

Nothing had changed. Navarro had liked men yesterday; Harris simply had not known it. Same ranch. Same documentary. Same aggravating man asking questions beside the truck and appearing wherever Harris least wanted another person standing.

Same Harris.

Knowing about a road did not build it. Knowing a gate could open did not require anybody to touch the latch. Harris had spent most of his life knowing perfectly well there were things about himself he had no intention of examining too closely, and the arrangement had worked fine.

Five years had lodged somewhere it did not belong.

That part was harder to dismiss.

Navarro had not mentioned somebody he had slept with once or twice. He had shared an apartment, a routine, a whole section of his adult life with another man. Somewhere in New York was a person who knew which side of the bed Navarro slept on, what he was like before enough coffee made him conversational, what he ate when he was sick, what made him angry enough to stop joking. Five years meant holidays and bad moods and grocery lists. It meant knowing where somebody kept the spare key.

None of Harris’s business.

He checked the valve again.

Jesus Christ.

Before that afternoon, Harris had kept Navarro somewhere simple in his mind: attractive, irritating, irrelevant. The first part had not required much management because it had nowhere to go. Harris could notice the line of his shoulders in a T-shirt or the way his hair curled at the back of his neck after a long day and file the information alongside any number of other things he had no intention of doing anything about.

Now there was a possibility where there had not been one before.

Not a likelihood. Certainly not an invitation. Navarro liking men did not mean he liked Harris, and even if he did, it did not mean Harris intended to act on it.

Nothing had changed.

But possibility had entered anyway, and Harris could not figure out how to drive it back out.

Eventually he left the perfectly functional trough alone and walked back toward the main buildings. By the time he reached the barn, he had decided the subject required no further thought.

Unfortunately, Navarro spent the days that followed supplying evidence that made that position harder to maintain.

The first piece arrived Thursday morning, when a yearling hit the gate at the wrong angle just after eight.

Harris heard the chain snap before he saw it. Metal struck wood, the gate swung hard against the post, and five cattle pushed through at once. One of the ranch hands shouted from the far side of the pen, but Harris was already running.

The animals broke downhill toward the central road. Two stayed together while the others spread, one angling toward the barn and another drifting toward the open lane where a production truck sat parked.

Navarro stood beside it with a camera case open at his feet.

Harris pointed. “Block the road!”

Navarro moved without asking for the rest of the plan. He climbed into the truck, reversed clear of the fence line, then pulled broadside across the lane. One of the yearlings broke toward the rear bumper just as he got out.

“Hold.”

Navarro stopped immediately.

The animal lifted its head. Harris came in from the opposite side, widening his stance and closing the space without crowding hard enough to make it bolt. Ahead of them, a ranch hand ran for the pasture gate and hauled it open.

The last yearling stalled near the truck, weight shifting back as it considered turning downhill. Harris saw the decision coming.

“Left.”