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Elliot didn’t love living outside of town. His friends and school were a three-mile bike ride away, which wasn’t very pleasant when he had to make the trip a dozen times a day. There were good things about it, though.
He had free roam of the land, and unless he was needed for something, he had about as much freedom as any teenage boy could want.
Well, as much freedom as someone could have while growing up surrounded by the smell of sheep wool around every bend in the trails his father owned.
Still, Elliot mostly enjoyed Denbrook. It was the perfect kind of small town: cheap gas, little mom-and-pop shops, and everybody vaguely knew everybody else.
There was a mall about twenty miles out by the airport, which, in Elliot’s opinion, made the setup perfect. He had his people, he had his town—what more could he want?
And wasn’t that the question?
After living in Denbrook for all sixteen years of his life, Elliot felt like something was missing. Something important.
When Elliot brought this up to one of the older ladies at the shop he’d worked at for the past six years, she immediately started teasing him about having a crush and asked who the lucky girl was.
Elliot had felt a twist of dread and a sharp sickness roil in his gut.
When he got home that night, he had a long talk with his father.
It would take him another year before he fully accepted that he was gay, and an even more embarrassing amount of time to realize he had a crush on Tim.
His childhood friend Tim, who he’d sat beside in school for years.
Tim, who was kind and caring and hopelessly clumsy, but always so apologetic whenever he messed something up.
Tim, who was straight.
Tim, who, upon meeting Elliot’s sister for the first time at Thanksgiving—during the first holiday the whole family spent together when Elliot was seventeen—developed heart eyes so intense he could barely form coherent sentences.
Which was especially unfortunate considering Tim already struggled with coherent sentences on a good day.
Elliot tried not to let it bother him, because as much as he loved Tim, he wanted him to be happy. He wanted his sister to be happy too. If them being together made them happy, then Elliot would suck it up. He would take the high road and be the bigger man.
Which was funny, considering Tim was one of the tallest people in town at six-foot-seven.
So that’s what Elliot did.
He pretended every glance Tim took toward his sister didn’t crack something open inside his chest. He pretended he didn’t want to throw hands with his own sister every time she brushed off Tim’s awkward advances.
He ignored Tim rambling to their friends about how pretty she was.
And slowly but surely, he made himself believe he didn’t love Tim at all. Made himself forget there had ever been any feelings beyond friendship.
He slowly removed himself from Tim’s life.
And what hurt most was how easy it seemed.
Tim barely appeared to notice.
Elliot stopped listening to the town gossip about wedding bells. He stopped entertaining customers at the store whenever they cornered him for details because it was his best friend and his sister—surely he had to know something.
He stopped helping with investigations just because he “noticed things.” He stopped answering calls. Stopped spending time with his friends.
And slowly, Elliot found that his closest companions were his father, murder mystery novels, and sheep—or, as his father called them, the flock.
And as empty as Elliot felt, he accepted the life he had.
He learned even more about the farm than he’d thought possible. Somehow, he found himself listening to his father ramble enthusiastically about how there were over 1,200 breeds of sheep, or how their rectangular pupils gave them nearly 320-degree vision.
And as strange as those things were, Elliot couldn’t help but find joy in learning more about the animals in his and his father’s care.