Chapter 4

Cody

Jesse had a plan and it sounded like it would work. I mean what were my choices. Killing Sue and her lover was not one nor was paying alimony to a cheating wife for the rest of my life while she lived rent free in my house. I was not going to pay child support for a kid that is not mine either.

Jesse knew I always helped on that charity ride and that would fit in with the plan for me to disappear. I halted the ride at the edge of the river telling everyone I would cross first to make sure it was safe. I made the horse rear and I fell into the river. I quickly swam underwater to the deepest part then stayed under until I reached the cave that Jesse and I had discovered when we were kids. I swam inside then surfaced and sat on the rocks. People searched the river, but no one knew about that cave but Jesse and me.

At 9pm the search had been called off for the night and I swam downriver to a bridge. Jesse picked me up and took me to an airport three hundred miles away from our town. I boarded a plane with my passport and flew to South America. Nobody bothered to check the airports or immigration! I was dead in the river as far as anyone who cared thought.

Jesse had given me enough cash to stay in a nice hotel and live until I found what I was looking for. It is a ‘hacienda’. It is three times bigger than my ranch back home. I can run a nice size herd of beef cattle and a few horses. I started my new life when Jesse wired me the $500,000. Life is good and getting better every day since I met my neighbors’ daughter!

Epilogue

Jesse

I am the only person alive who knows Cody did not die in that river. I have kept that secret for over 20 years now, and I plan on keeping it until the day I die. No one will ever know, not even my ‘friend with benefits’ who I married a couple of years ago.

Do I still love Cody? Of course I do! I always will, but it would never have worked out between us, and I knew it. Cody is a real man’s man, that’s why I love him. He’s what every young boy dreams of becoming, and every old man wishes he had been, an American hero, a cowboy. He does not have a gay bone in his body; me on the other hand, I’ve been gay since the day I was born!