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Rusty shifted his weight in the saddle, adjusting to the ache in his thighs as they moved the herd to the next pasture.

He’d been up far too early, borrowed the key Scott had been given to the local ice arena, and headed out in the pre-dawn light to bag-skate himself to exhaustion.

The feel of the ice under his skates had been grounding.

The workout had kept his mind blank of anything except harder, faster for two hours.

But when it was over, all his problems were still there.

The Rafters had lost, and that totally blew, but what had woken him before dawn and kept him awake was wondering if he should’ve done something different for Cross. Said something else. Insisted on staying on the call longer, since no way Cross was actually going to sleep.

He thought the phone sex had been okay. Way more than okay on his end, of course, but he thought Cross’s expression had lightened.

Like it took his mind off things, for a few minutes.

Cross hadn’t wanted to come, though. A month out from his surgeries, that surely wasn’t just from pain anymore.

So whatever he said about being attracted to Rusty, it didn’t translate to wanting him. Or wanting him enough.

Rusty had googled demisexual, but the results were confusing.

In general, demisexual people supposedly liked sex if they were with the right person, someone they’d grown attracted to over time.

Otherwise, they didn’t like sex or didn’t want it with other people.

Everything he read kept saying individuals varied, though.

It wasn’t a great key to unlock the mystery that was Cross—

“Hey, Rusty. Heads up!”

He looked around in time to spot the heifer trying to make a break past him.

Rusty sent Misty, Scott’s big mare that he was riding, after the escapee and clung to his saddle with aching legs as she swerved and dodged.

When they’d headed the cow back to the herd, Misty shook her head till her bit jangled, as if frustrated with Rusty holding her back.

“Sorry, girl.” He patted her neck and loosened the reins so she could stretch.

“Falling asleep on the job?” Kris asked, jogging up alongside on Congo.

“That loss last night sucked.”

“Yeah. Scott’ll be bummed.”

Rusty coughed, because bummed was a pretty lowkey word for it. But then, Kris was all about the ranch and only cared about hockey because she idolized Will and Will loved Scott. Well, a bit for Rusty’s sake too. She was his best friend. So maybe he could talk to her about things.

He asked, “Do you like sex?” Then backpedaled fast. “Sorry, stupid question, forget I even mentioned it.”

“Yeah, I do.” She grinned. “And let me give the thumbs up for an older, experienced significant other. In case you were wondering. Don’t you like it?”

“Yeah. Hell, yeah, sex is awesome. Well, mostly.” He’d had a few awkward hookups he would just as soon forget.

“So why the question— Hey! Yahh!” Kris urged Congo forward to cut off a trio of cows with calves at heel, sending them back to the herd.

Rusty hoped she’d forgotten the discussion, but once things had settled down, she wandered back his way.

“So about sex?”

“Ew, you know, never mind. It’s like talking about stuff with a sister.” Except he’d have been beaten to a pulp for even saying the word around Mary or Janet. Don’t think about them. “Don’t you have cattle to wrangle?”

“Not half as much fun as making you turn red.” But Kris headed off to do her job.

An hour later, when they had the whole herd safely latched on the far side of the gates, she swung down from Congo and looked up at him. “Come on, grab your lunch and sit with me.”

He dismounted, hiding a wince as his boots hit the ground, and led Misty after Kris and Congo to a quiet clump of trees and rocks.

Behind them, a couple of the other hands took up some kind of argument about music.

Ahead of them, one of the streams that crisscrossed the ranch bubbled over a fallen log.

They untacked and put halters on the horses, leaving them to drink and graze.

As they unpacked bottled water and sandwiches from their saddlebags, Rusty ran through conversation openers in his mind.

Kris led the way over to a couple of boulders and sat, but stuffed food in her mouth rather than interrogating him.

Rusty was happy to do the same. Only when their empty bellies were happier did Kris lean back, rotating her ankles and stretching her shoulders.

“So.” She didn’t look at him, just gazed up at the wide blue sky.

“So?” he asked when the silence dragged out.

“You’ve been wanting to say something all morning. Spit it out.”

“I haven’t.” But when she slanted him a raised-eyebrow look, Rusty had to admit, “Okay, maybe.”

“Go on. We’ve got half an hour before we have to saddle back up.”

“Um.” He cleared his throat, decided on a bit of a roundabout approach.

“Do you know anyone who’s, like, demisexual?

Or asexual or gray-ace, whatever?” There’d been other options on the websites he’d cruised after Cross hung up, but his eyes had crossed somewhere around autochorisexual.

Cross had said demi, only the definitions seemed incomplete.

“Not personally.” Kris chuckled. “Nita reads all these romances—”

“ Nita does?” Nita was Will’s trusted second in command on the ranch, a compact, quiet woman, no-nonsense, and so deeply practical that a romance in her hands was hard to imagine.

“Yeah. She’s told me about a few stories with asexual and demi characters. Not sure I trust romance authors to get it right, though. Why?” She narrowed her gaze. “I thought you were in gay heaven slutting around Eugene when you got there. Meaning slutting in a positive way—yay, sex. Was I wrong?”

“No! I mean, I wouldn’t call it gay heaven. Some of the sex was good, some not so much. But I like sex. A lot. I didn’t mean me. I was just wondering.”

“Cross, then.”

“Hey, I never said that!”

Kris raised her hands. “Sorry, of course not. Okay, so hypothetically, what are you asking?”

He wasn’t sure he wanted to go on, given she said she didn’t know much. He shrugged.

“Look, I won’t joke about it, okay? You can talk to me.”

In the end, the urge to talk to somebody overcame his reluctance. Kris was his best friend. “I just wondered, you know, like, how soon someone who is demisexual decides they want sex after all.”

“I guess it would depend on the person.” Kris tilted her head. “Demisexual’s the one where they need to know a person first and have a connection, before they’re attracted to them, right?”

“Yeah. The definitions online say demi people like sex, once it’s someone they’ve gotten to know and trust.”

“That sounds like what Nita described. There was one where this skier fell for her demisexual teammate and it took half the book before they kissed, because they had to be close friends first. The first woman wasn’t demi, so there was a whole lot of UST.”

“UST?”

Kris laughed. “Unresolved sexual tension. Like, lusting after someone who doesn’t want you back, or not yet. You can tell I’ve been hanging around Nita too much.”

“Speaking of you and UST?” Rusty teased, glad to shift the conversation from his own love life.

“No U about it. Very much resolved.” Kris looked happy. “Although it took a lot longer than I wanted. She had this huge hangup about how she’s ten years older than me and I was just a kid, yada, yada.”

“You too? Cross does that shit all the time. Acting like he’s doing something wrong because he’s ancient and I’m not.”

“Ancient. Do you call him that?”

“Are you kidding? I don’t tease him about his age at all. I swear, he acts like he’s going to run every time the subject comes up.” He sighed. “How did you get Nita to come around?”

“I’m not sure. She started out really big-sisterish.

I tried some seducing, which didn’t work.

Some pining, plus trying to make her jealous which really didn’t work.

In the end, I guess we just spent enough time together that she saw I could hold up my end of a job and a conversation. One day, it just happened, like, boom.”

“I’m happy for you.”

“Thanks. We’re not official.”

“You live together, though.”

“In Will’s old trailer which has two bedrooms, yeah. We lived together for months before the boom . So nothing really changed, as far as the other hands are concerned.”

“You think they know?”

“Probably. We’re not hiding it or anything. Taking it one day at a time. There aren’t any homophobes on the crew, with Will having two boyfriends. Their heads would explode.”

“And you’re happy?”

“I love her.” Kris’s smile transformed her ordinary face. Rusty beat down a flash of jealousy. “She loves me. Everything else will work out.”

He envied her that certainty.

She eyed him up and down. “So what about you and Cross?”

“It’s hard right now. We’re two thousand miles apart, he had a bad injury, had a lot of pain, is in rehab with not much privacy.” The door of Cross’s suite might lock, but there were people all around him.

“And he’s demi?”

“I guess.” Rusty took off his hat, ran a hand over his sweaty hair, and jammed the Stetson back on. “Don’t laugh.”

“I would never.”

“I mean it.”

She held up her hands, eyebrows raised.

“Okay. So we’ve been going out for, like, two months.” If you counted from the first time Cross pretended to be Rusty’s boyfriend, which he did, because there’d been something between them. “And we haven’t had sex.”

“Like, no fucking?”

“Like, no anything. No mouths, no hands except our own.”

“No kissing?”

“We’ve kissed. I like it a lot. I think he does too, but we didn’t get past that.”

“Hm.” Kris eyed him, expression distant like she was thinking. “Maybe you’re just not there yet. Took me more than two months with Nita, and she’s not demi anything. Just concerned about not taking advantage of me.”

“I guess. I hope so. How do I know if I’m pushing him too hard?”

“Guys, I swear. You ask him. There’s this thing called communication.”