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.
27
EDDIE
Bash was gone, but so was my phone, along with my laptop and any other means of communication with the outside world. I searched my guest room, but I knew the second I’d stepped inside and discovered my laptop missing from the antique desk. They’d been brutally efficient, as usual.
I straightened my shoulders and stepped back outside.
“Where is Special Agent Puller?” I asked the British security officer who’d replaced him outside my door.
“Agent Puller has been reassigned, Your Highness,” came the crisp, professional response that told me absolutely nothing while making it clear that further questions wouldn’t be welcome.
Reassigned. As if the man I loved was a piece of equipment that could be simply moved from one post to another when it became inconvenient.
“And might I enquire where my phone is? My laptop?”
The man at least had the decency to look a little perturbed at that. “Those were removed on your father’s orders, Your Highness.”
“And I assume I’m not supposed to buy new ones?”
He looked away. “You’re to be confined to your room for now, Your Highness.”
I was a true prisoner now, then.
I spent the next hour pacing my room, my mind racing through possibilities and scenarios. Where had they taken him? Back to Washington? To some other assignment? Had he been dismissed entirely? The not knowing was perhaps the cruelest part of my punishment. I could accept losing my title, my money, my place in the family, but being cut off from any information about Bash felt like torture.
A soft knock on my door interrupted my spiraling thoughts.
“Come in,” I called, hoping irrationally that it might be Bash, that this was all some elaborate misunderstanding.
