Chapter 28
BASH
I’d been useless all day.
Christmas Eve at the Puller house had always been a sacred tradition with Mama’s famous sugar cookies, the fresh pine tree that was decorated with ornaments collected through thirty-three years of marriage, and all the delicious smells coming from the kitchen.
But this year, I couldn’t focus on any of it.
Every few minutes, I found myself checking my phone for possible updates.
“Honey, you’re gonna wear a hole in that kitchen floor if you keep pacing like that,” Mama said, looking up from the cookie dough she was rolling out.
“Sorry, Mama. I’m nervous, I guess.”
She wiped her flour-covered hands on her apron and gave me the kind of look that said she could see straight through my attempt at casual concern. “That boy is giving up everything to come be with you, honey. Everything. His title, his money, his family. You think he’s gonna change his mind now?”
The simple way she said it, like it was obvious that someone would choose love over a royal title, would choose me over all his wealth and privileges, made my chest tight with gratitude.
When I’d told my parents about Eddie’s sacrifice, about what it meant that he was coming here, Mama had nodded like it made perfect sense.
“He needs a family,” she’d said, and my throat had closed up. “I bet he’s missing his own mama something awful and his father isn’t in his corner, so we’ll be his family, Bash. He’ll be welcome here.”
Dad had taken a little longer to come around, but this morning, I’d found him in his workshop, carefully sanding a picture frame. When I’d asked what it was for, he’d grunted and said, “Figured your mama might want somewhere to put a photo of you two.”
It wasn’t wholehearted acceptance, but it was a step. And he hadn’t said a word of protest against Eddie coming to celebrate Christmas with us.
My phone buzzed, and I nearly dropped it in my haste to check the message. It was from Floris—Prince Floris from The Netherlands, who was texting me like we had been friends forever.
Wheels up from London. He’s on his way to you. Flight details attached. You’d better take good care of him, mate. Merry Christmas.
I immediately texted him back.
I swear I will. Hope to meet you soon to thank you for what you did for us. Merry Christmas.
“He’s in the air,” I announced.
Mama clapped her hands together, sending up a small cloud of flour. “Well, it’s about time! I was starting to worry that stuffy family of his would lock him in a tower.”
“Pretty sure they tried,” I said, thinking about the confined-to-quarters situation Floris had described when he’d first reached out to me. “But Floris got him out.”
“I like that Dutch prince already,” Dad said, appearing in the kitchen doorway with wood shavings in his hair. “Takes balls to walk into a goddamn palace and steal away a prince.”
No kidding, I couldn’t believe Floris had been willing to try it… and even less that it had actually worked. He had used their own aversion to scandal against them, and if that wasn’t brilliantly ironic, I didn’t know what was.
When Mama went upstairs to shower, I approached my dad.
“Dad, there’s one thing we haven’t talked about…
” I took a deep breath. “I will probably lose the contract for protecting Eddie, and I don’t know if the Secret Service will have me back once this all becomes public.
I may be out of a job. Mama’s medical bills… ”
“…are not your responsibility, son. They’re mine.”
“But I promised I’d pay them and now…” I made a helpless gesture. “I had to choose Eddie, Dad. I had to.”
He put a hand on my shoulder. “I understand. We’ll figure it out, okay?”
The next few hours passed with agonizing slowness. I helped Mama finish the cookies, tried to focus on Daddy’s attempt to explain his woodworking project, and checked the flight tracker roughly every three minutes.
“We’re going with you,” Mama announced when it was finally time to head to the airport.
“You don’t have to—”
“Basil James, that boy is about to walk off a plane having given up everything he’s ever known to be with you. The least we can do is be there to welcome him home.”
Home. The word hit me harder than I’d expected. Eddie wasn’t coming to visit, but to stay. Maybe not here specifically, but those were details we’d figure out over time. But he was coming home. To me, to us, to the life we were going to build together.
Asheville Regional Airport was a small airport, so it would be easy enough to see his plane arriving.
We parked near the general aviation terminal and waited.
Through the windows, I could see the runway stretching into the darkness, lit by rows of white lights that looked like a path leading straight to our future.
“There,” Dad said, pointing toward the sky where landing lights had appeared, growing larger as they approached. “That’ll be him.”
My heart hammered against my ribs as the sleek private jet touched down and taxied toward the terminal. This was really happening. Eddie had actually done it—walked away from everything to choose love, choose me, choose us.
I headed inside while my parents stayed in the car, offering me the privacy of greeting Eddie by myself. It took longer than I had expected for him to walk through those doors, and I started to panic. What if it was the wrong plane? What if something had gone awry?
Then Eddie stepped into view, and every worry disappeared.
He looked exhausted, rumpled from the long flight.
His hair was a mess, his usually perfect posture slightly slouched with fatigue, and yet he was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen.
He spotted me and his whole face changed, exhaustion replaced by joy so radiant, it was like watching the sun come up.
I was moving before I’d consciously decided to, and we met halfway, crashing into each other.
Eddie’s arms wrapped around me so tightly, I could barely breathe, his face buried against my neck, and I could feel him shaking—whether from cold or emotion, I wasn’t sure.
“I chose you,” he whispered against my ear. “I chose us. I chose love.”
“I know,” I whispered back, holding him as close as physically possible. “Jesus Christ, Eddie, I know. I’m so proud of you, so fucking proud.”
We stood there clinging to each other in the middle of a North Carolina airport tarmac on Christmas Eve, and I had never felt anything more perfect in my entire life.
When we finally managed to let go, both our eyes were a bit misty, and we’d drawn quite some attention. I wrapped my arm around him, taking the small bag he’d brought with my other hand. “Come on, my parents are outside waiting for us.”
“How did they react?”
God, we had so much catching up to do. “Better than I had expected. Mama is on board, but my dad will need a bit more time.”
“We have time,” Eddie said, and he was right. We had all the time now.
My parents got out of the car when they saw us coming, and Eddie straightened himself into his more formal posture. “Mrs. Puller, I hope you don’t mind an unexpected Christmas guest…”
“Oh, honey, no…” Mama pulled him into one of her fierce hugs before he could even finish the sentence. “You don’t need to be formal with us anymore. You’re family now.”
I watched Eddie’s face crumple slightly at the word ‘family’, a painful reminder that he’d lost his own in choosing to come here. Whatever relief and joy he was feeling, there had to be grief mixed in too for what he’d had to give up.
“Welcome back, son,” Dad said gruffly, extending his hand with the kind of awkward formality that meant he was trying his best even if emotions weren’t his strong suit.
Eddie shook his hand gratefully. “Thank you, sir. For welcoming me, for… for everything.”
“Ain’t no thanks necessary,” Dad replied. “You’re Bash’s boy, which makes you our boy too. Simple as that.”
My throat tightened all over again.
The drive back to the house was quiet, Eddie’s hand clasped tightly in mine while he stared out the window. I could practically see him processing the magnitude of what he’d done, what it meant for his future, how different his life was going to be from now on.
“You okay?” I asked quietly.
“I’m perfect,” he said, squeezing my hand. “I’m exactly where I want to be.”
It was after midnight when we got back, and this time, Eddie and I weren’t staying at the motel. I’d made my bed fresh this morning, and he’d be sleeping with me. Where he belonged.
We bid my parents goodnight and headed up to my room. Eddie let out a massive yawn that had me smiling. “You’re exhausted, baby.”
We both froze. Baby. Well, that was new.
Then he smiled at me, and everything inside me heated. “I can’t wait to wake up with you.”
We made our night routine short, just brushing our teeth and stripping down to our underwear, and then he crawled into my narrow full-sized bed with me. “It’s tight,” I said, half-apologizing.
“It’s perfect.”
I held out my arm and Eddie nestled right there, his head on my shoulder and his arm flung around my waist. Before I could even say anything, he closed his eyes and fell asleep.
We woke up late on Christmas morning, practically on top of each other in the small bed. Not that I was complaining. I loved that Eddie was still in my arms, his hair a mess against my shoulder, and I couldn’t remember ever feeling more content.
“Merry Christmas,” I whispered when he stirred.
He stretched out like a cat, then smiled at me. “Merry Christmas.”
I worried about morning breath for a moment, then decided the hell with it and kissed him. We took our time waking up, lazily making out without it going further because I was all too aware of the sounds drifting from my parents downstairs.
When we made it downstairs, having showered and dressed, Mama had strong coffee and fresh cinnamon rolls waiting for us. Bless that woman. “Good morning, boys.”
“Mornin’, Mama.” I kissed her cheeks. “I love you.”
She grinned. “Because of the cinnamon rolls?”
“That, and the coffee.”
“Good morning, Mrs… Ellen,” Eddie said, a little insecure as he stood there in the middle of the kitchen.
“Good morning, honey. Merry Christmas.”
We settled at the breakfast table in the kitchen, chatting with Mama as she was peeling potatoes and cutting green beans for our Christmas dinner. I saw Eddie slowly relax, the tension seeping out of him.
“You okay?” I asked when Mama had left for a moment to talk to my father, who was chopping wood outside.
“I am now.”
“It’ll take some time to process it all,” I said softly. “A lot happened in a short period.”
“It feels different this time, being here.”
“Different how?”
“Last time, I was Prince Gregory, and I had to keep up a certain pretense, like that you and I weren’t friends.
Now I’m Eddie, and I don’t have to pretend anything.
” He looked at me with those beautiful green eyes, and I saw peace there that I’d never seen before.
“I don’t have to hide how I feel about you.
I don’t have to measure every word or worry about appearances or think about what’s expected of me. ”
“You gave up everything,” I said, the weight of his sacrifice hitting me anew.
“I gave up things that were never really mine to begin with. Money I never earned, a title that was inherited, a family that, for the most part, only loved me conditionally. What I got in return is worth infinitely more.” He reached across the table to take my hand.
“I love you, Bash. I’m in love with you, and I don’t have to whisper it or hide it or be afraid of who might overhear. ”
Jesus, my eyes were filling up again. If this was part of being in love, I really needed to get a grip. I could hardly walk around all teary-eyed every time Eddie said something sweet. “Would you prefer to be called Eddie or Greg? ’Cause Floris referred to you as Greg.”
“I like being Eddie with you.”
“Eddie it is.” I leaned in for a kiss. “And I love you too, Eddie. Very much, in fact.”
“I have something for you,” Eddie said when we’d moved to the living room a little while later, handing me a wrapped package. “I literally have nothing now except what I could fit in one bag. But I wanted to give you something.”
I unwrapped it to find a leather-bound journal. On the cover, in Eddie’s careful handwriting, it said:
Our Story: Volume One.
“I thought we could write it down,” he said, looking shy in a way that made my heart clench.
“Our story, I mean. From the beginning. How we met, how we fell in love, everything that led us here. And then we can keep adding to it with all the things we do together, the life we build, the adventures we have.”
I opened the cover to find he’d already written the first entry, dated months ago:
Day One: I met the most beautiful man I’ve ever seen, and he was assigned to protect me. I had no idea he was going to save me instead.
“Jesus, Eddie,” I said, my voice rough with emotion. “This is perfect.”
“Your turn.” He handed me a pen.
So I wrote:
Day One from Bash’s perspective: I was assigned to protect Prince Gregory Edward William Mountbatten-Windsor. I had no idea I would fall head over heels in love with Eddie York because of that.
“I have something for you too,” I said, reaching under the tree for the small box I’d wrapped the night before.
Inside was a simple silver key on a plain chain. Eddie looked at it with confusion until I explained.
“It’s the key to my apartment in DC. I know we probably can’t go back there, and hell, I actually have a roommate so there’s that too, but I wanted you to have it anyway. Because wherever we end up, whatever we do, I want us to have a home together. A real home, where we can be ourselves.”
Eddie’s eyes filled with tears as he lifted the key from the box, holding it like it was made of precious metal instead of simple silver. “Thank you,” he whispered. “For everything. For loving me, for setting me free, for giving me a place to belong.”
“Always,” I promised, pulling him close. “For as long as you’ll have me.”
“That’s going to be a very long time,” Eddie said against my lips right before he kissed me.