Chapter 26
BASH
The summons came without warning.
I was pretending to review security protocols while anxiously awaiting news of whatever urgent meeting Eddie had been pulled into, when one of the British agents appeared at my shoulder. “Special Agent Puller? You’re needed immediately.”
There was something in his tone—not hostile, exactly, but final in a way that made my gut clench with sudden dread.
I’d been in law enforcement long enough to recognize the sound of a professional dismissal, even when it was dressed up in polite language.
“What’s the situation?” I asked, automatically reaching for my secure phone.
“I’ll need that,” he said, extending his hand. “All communication devices, credentials, and security equipment. Standard protocol.”
Standard protocol my ass. This was a termination, swift and efficient and completely without explanation. Where was Eddie? What had happened in that meeting with his father and the king?
“Where is Prince Gregory?” I asked, handing over my phone and security badge with hands that remained steadier than I felt.
“That’s not your concern anymore, Special Agent Puller.”
The words hit like a physical blow, but I kept my expression neutral. Whatever had gone down in that private study, the consequences were immediate and decisive. I was being removed from the equation with the kind of military efficiency that left no room for argument or appeal.
Twenty minutes later, I was seated in the back of a black sedan, watching Sandringham House disappear in the rearview mirror with a growing sense of unreality.
No explanation had been offered beyond “immediate repatriation required”.
My belongings had been packed with professional speed—nothing missing, nothing damaged, just the complete erasure of my presence from the estate.
The drive to the private airfield passed in tense silence.
I kept expecting someone to provide context, to explain what had triggered this sudden exile, but the British agents maintained professional distance throughout the journey.
They were doing their job, nothing more, and their job apparently included treating me like a security risk to be neutralized rather than a colleague who’d served by their side.
The plane was waiting on the tarmac—not commercial, but a smaller government aircraft that suggested someone with serious authority had arranged this transport. As I was escorted aboard, one of the flight attendants approached with a clipboard.
“Special Agent Puller? We’ll need a US destination for filing the flight plan. Where would you like to go?”
The question caught me off guard. In all the scenarios I’d imagined for how this assignment might end, being asked to choose my own exile destination hadn’t come up.
Cascade Bay wouldn’t make sense without Eddie.
I thought about my apartment in DC, empty and impersonal. What other options did I have?
“North Carolina. Asheville Regional Airport.”
If my world was falling apart, I needed to be somewhere that felt like home. I needed my parents. Besides, I had some things I needed to tell them.
The flight gave me too much time to think, too many hours to replay the events of the past few days and try to understand what had gone wrong.
Eddie had been hopeful that morning, determined to find a way to tell his family about us on his own terms. The fact that I was being expelled without warning suggested that conversation hadn’t gone according to plan.
But I refused to believe—couldn’t let myself believe—that Eddie had thrown me under the bus to save himself.
Whatever had happened in that meeting, whatever pressure had been applied, I knew Eddie well enough to trust that he wouldn’t have betrayed what we’d built together.
The man who’d risked everything just to give us a chance wouldn’t have sold us out to protect his own position.
Which meant he was probably facing consequences as severe as mine, possibly worse. The thought made my chest tight with worry and helpless rage. I’d been trained to protect him, and now when he needed me most, I was being flown three thousand miles away.
By the time we touched down in North Carolina, evening was settling over the familiar mountains, and I felt like I’d lived through several different lifetimes in the space of a single day.
A rental car was waiting—apparently, someone had been thorough in arranging my repatriation—and I drove the familiar roads to my parents’ house on autopilot, my mind still trying to process the magnitude of what had just happened.
My career was over. That much was clear, even without official confirmation.
One didn’t get dismissed from a royal protection detail and quietly reassigned to other duties.
The Secret Service would want a full debriefing, would need to understand exactly what had compromised the assignment, and I’d have to decide how much of the truth to reveal and how much to protect.
I wasn’t sure what the Brits would tell them, but regardless, my early dismissal would send a signal all on its own.
My chances of coming out of this unharmed were close to zero.
But underneath the professional disaster was a more fundamental crisis: I had no idea when or how I’d see Eddie again.
No way to contact him, no means of knowing what he was going through, no ability to offer support or comfort when he was probably facing the worst crisis of his life.
The separation felt like losing a limb—sudden, traumatic, and leaving me fundamentally altered.
My parents’ porch light was on when I pulled into the driveway, the warm yellow glow cutting through the mountain darkness like a beacon.
I sat in the rental car for several minutes, trying to summon the energy to face their questions and concern, knowing that everything was about to change for them too.
When I hauled myself out of the car, the front door opened before I could knock, my mother appearing. She took one look at my face and immediately pulled me into the kind of fierce hug that could temporarily fix almost any crisis.
“Basil,” she said, using my full name the way she only did when she was worried or proud or overwhelmed with emotion. “What’s happened, honey?”
“It’s complicated, Mama,” I managed, the childhood endearment slipping out automatically in her embrace.
“Well, then, we’d better sit down and figure it out together.”
My father appeared from the living room, concern written across his weathered features as he took in my unexpected arrival and obvious distress. “Son? Everything alright?”
“Everything’s pretty much the opposite of alright.”
Twenty minutes later, we were seated around the familiar kitchen table with coffee and leftover pie, the domestic comfort of home making the day’s events feel even more surreal.
My parents waited patiently while I tried to figure out how to begin, how to explain what had happened and everything that had led up to it.
There was only one place to start.
“I need to tell you both something. Something I should’ve told you a long time ago, but I was scared and I didn’t know how, and now everything’s gone to hell and I can’t keep pretending anymore.”
Mama reached across the table to cover my hand with hers. “Whatever it is, we love you. That doesn’t change.”
The simple certainty in her voice almost broke me completely.
I looked at both of them—these people who’d raised me with love and faith and solid values, who’d supported every dream I’d ever had, who deserved honesty even if it cost me everything—and found the courage to speak the truth.
“I’m in love. I’m in love with Eddie. With Prince Gregory. And I lost everything because of it.”
The silence that followed was complete and stretching, broken only by the familiar tick of the kitchen clock and the distant hum of the refrigerator. My mother’s hand tightened around mine, but my father went very still, his coffee cup halfway to his lips.
“In love,” Mama repeated, and I could see her processing not just the words but everything they implied.
“I’m… I’m bisexual. Always have been, but there never was a reason for me to tell you, to come out.
I reckoned I’d find myself a good woman to settle down with and no one needed to know.
Until Eddie.” Both remained silent, so I plodded on.
“I know what it means for my career and probably my future, but I can’t lie about it anymore.
I love him, and he loves me, and we were trying to find a way to make it work when everything fell apart. ”
My father set down his coffee cup with deliberate precision and pushed back from the table. “I need some air,” he said quietly, not meeting my eyes as he headed for the back door.
The sound of the screen door closing behind him felt like a judgment, and I closed my eyes against the sting of tears I’d been holding back all day.
“Give him time,” my mother said softly. “This is a lot to process, and you know your father needs to work through things in his own way.”
“Mama, I know this isn’t what you wanted for me—”
“What I want for you is to be happy and loved and true to yourself. If Eddie makes you happy, if he loves you the way you deserve to be loved, then that’s what matters.”
I stared at her, hardly daring to believe the acceptance I heard in her voice. “You mean that?”
“Basil James Puller,” she said with the kind of maternal authority that brooked no argument, “I have spent twenty-seven years watching you try to be everything to everyone else. Strong for your teammates, professional for your superiors, perfect for this family. If you’ve finally found someone who lets you be yourself, then I’m grateful to him, regardless of who he is or what complications come with loving him. ”
The tears I’d been fighting all day finally won, and I put my head down on the familiar kitchen table and cried like I hadn’t since I was a child. My mother’s hand never left mine, her presence steady and comforting and unconditionally loving.
“You know I liked him,” she said when my tears had finally run dry. “He was so sweet.”
“He is, Mama. He has such a good heart.”
“He’d have to, to win yours.”
“I don’t know how to fight for this, Mama. I don’t even know where he is or what’s happening to him. They took me away, and I have no way to reach him.”
“You’ll figure it out, honey. If you two are meant to be together, you’ll find a way. The kind of love that’s worth giving up a title for isn’t that easily defeated now, is it?”
Through the kitchen window, I could see the light in my father’s workshop, which meant he was processing this news the way he processed most emotional upheavals—by working with his hands and thinking through the implications. It wasn’t rejection, exactly, but it wasn’t acceptance either.
“He’ll come around,” my mother said, following my gaze. “Your father loves you more than his own life, honey. Give him time to understand what this means.”
I nodded, hoping she was right. The day had cost me my career, my security clearance, and probably my future in law enforcement. I couldn’t bear the thought of losing my family’s acceptance too. “His hopes were pinned on me after Glenn…”
She was quiet for a long time, her hand still wrapped around mine. “We did you wrong there,” she finally said, her voice soft. “We should’ve never made you feel like you had to compensate for him no longer being with us. You’re your own man, Bash. You’re so much more than Glenn’s younger brother.”
I hadn’t realized how much I needed to hear those words until she spoke them. They wrapped around me like the hug she’d given me on the front porch. “I wanna make you both proud. I wanna make him proud.”
I didn’t say it out loud, but the unspoken question was there: would Glenn still be proud of me now, knowing I was in love with a man?
“Honey, do you remember David Kuffner?”
I frowned. Where was she going with this? “He was Glenn’s friend from high school, right?”
“He was. Glenn was best man at his wedding, six years ago.” I must’ve made a confused face, because she added, “You were overseas, then. Syria, I think.”
“Okay…”
“He married a man, honey. David married Remy Pastore.”
My eyes grew big. “Remy Pastore is gay?”
He was a classmate of mine and had been captain of the football team.
She frowned. “I think he’s like you, actually. Bisexual, because he was engaged to a woman before. But that’s not important. He’s with Dave now, and they have two kids, twins.”
My head was reeling. How had I not known this? If Glenn had been best man at David’s wedding, that meant he’d been okay with it. More than okay. He’d been fine with it to the point where he, a United States Marine, was happy to be David’s best man.
Tears burned in my eyes all over again, a weight I hadn’t even realized was still on my shoulders lifting. Glenn would’ve been okay with it, with me being bi and being in love with Eddie. “Thank you, Mama, for telling me that. I had no idea.”
She squeezed my hand one last time, then let go. “Now you get some rest, and tomorrow, you start figuring out how to get in touch with Eddie because he’s probably as miserable as you are right now.”
As I lay in my childhood bedroom that night, staring at the ceiling and listening to the familiar sounds of the house settling around me, I thought of Eddie.
Somewhere, probably three thousand miles away, he was facing his own consequences for what we’d shared.
But I refused to believe this was the end of our story.
We’d found each other once against impossible odds. We’d find each other again.
We had to.