He had found happily ever after. Who knows. Maybe they could too.
Sean Acker squeezed Baz’s good shoulder. “We’re going to stay in town for Christmas at the Barrington Hills house. Will you come?”
“No Christmas parties,” his mom said. “I promise. So you can bring Elijah.”
Baz ran a hand through his hair nervously. Still politicking me. Yep, this is my family all right. “We’ll come, sure. But I’ll be bringing a fiancé, not a boyfriend.”
He’d hoped they’d be excited for him, but it was still a relief to watch their faces light up, to hear his mother squeal, a splashy society wedding exploding in her imagination. “That’s wonderful. Have you already asked him? How did you do it? Please tell me someone took video.”
“I haven’t asked yet, no, and it’s not going to be videotaped. I was going to take him out to the lake sometime. He wouldn’t want anything big and flashy for a proposal, and no audience. We’ve talked about it, though—not in so many words, but we’ve made it clear we’re permanent, and pretty much our friends are tired of waiting for an announcement.” Everyone except Aaron and Giles, who grumbled about why were people in such a damn rush to get married.
“All right. But I expect the two of you to do karaoke at our New Year’s gala.”
He laughed and kissed her cheek. “Sure thing.”
She kissed him back and told him to call her the moment the engagement was official. And she promised she would be answering her phone, not an assistant.
They went home to Chicago, and Baz launched himself into his last days with his Ambassador brothers. He understood now they wouldn’t be the last moments at all—the last official moments, yes, but he’d be jamming with Ambassadors past and present for the rest of his life. He wasn’t moving out of the White House, though he would continue to have a daily commute into Saint Paul to volunteer at Halcyon. He’d met with Oliver Thompson, who had also heard about Baz’s gala speech, and was impressed. There were good odds Baz would have a legitimate position at Thompson’s charitable foundation before the summer.
The Christmas With Timothy concerts, which came after graduation, were rough. The last one on Sunday was mostly him choking his way through the notes.
It was okay, though. It was bittersweet, but it was still sweet. One part of his life was ending, and another part beginning. As he squeezed Elijah’s hand before disappearing with the Ambassadors to sing “Goodbye, Cruel World” and receive his sending home, he reminded himself he wouldn’t be facing this next chapter alone.
He was still wiped as fuck when he trekked home with Elijah to the White House. Somehow they ended up trudging through the snow just the two of them. It felt right to finish it with only Elijah by his side. If he weren’t so tired, he’d suggest they go out to the lake so he could relieve himself of the ring he kept carrying around in his pocket.
“You doing okay?” Elijah asked as they rounded the corner to their street.
Baz nodded, pulling him closer. “Yeah. Endings are hard, but important. You have to have an end, so you can have another beginning.”
“You should put that on a pillow.”
Baz tweaked his nose. “I’ll go on CafePress and put it on a mug. With me grinning at you beside it. You can drink out of it while you finish your memoir.” Fuck, he was totally doing that and rushing it for Christmas.
Elijah punched him lightly in the stomach, but when they stepped onto the porch of the darkened house, Elijah gave Baz a grin, making him look like a cat with a canary in his claws. “You know, I figured something out the other day.”
Baz was down for some nails in his back. “What’s that?”
“I always make fun of Kelly and Walter for their sappy Mickey Mouse-company moments.” Elijah opened the door to the house, pausing with his hand on the light. “Then I realized. Studio Ghibli is based in Japan, but in the United States it’s distributed by Disney.”
He flipped on the light and revealed a living room full of Salvo, Ambassadors, Walter, Kelly, Marius, Damien, Brian—basically everybody.
Damien hummed a note, and they started to sing.
Soft and slow, and after a few bars, Baz recognized the tune as “Paradise” by Coldplay. Even Walter and Kelly sang. In the corner, Susan Meeks had her camera rolling, and she was nothing but grin.
As Elijah led Baz to a chair and took off his glasses, Brian flipped the lights to a muted version of the one they’d used for the LGBT event and the singers hit the first verse. The opening had been rewritten to something similar but notably different than what Coldplay sang.
“When you were just a boy, you lost hold of your joy.”
The rest of the verse was the same, mostly—they sang at Baz how he couldn’t reach happiness, so he’d dreamed of it instead. The second verse, though, departed from the original entirely.
“Then you met another boy, who also lost hold of his joy. But he didn’t know how to dream, so he hid away in the streets. He had no paradise.”
Baz’s breath caught, and he blinked as Elijah stood in front of him, looking a little nervous. He hadn’t sung with them yet, but after the series of la-la-las, he sang along with the others, exchanging their “him” for “me”.
“You showed me how to escape the lonely nights. You say, ‘Hold on, hold on, I know together we will rise.’”
Baz gave up, letting the tears well up as Elijah sang to him—words Baz knew his boyfriend had rewritten. Lyrics cheesy as hell. So fucking perfect, zinging right into Baz’s heart.
“You taught me paradise.”
By the time the song finished, Baz was weeping like an idiot.
Elijah had got on his knees. With a ring, and as the last note rang away, he popped the question. “Sebastian Percival Acker, will you marry me?”
“Yes, you jerk. I was going to ask you tomorrow at the lake,” he said, his voice breaking, partly on a sob, partly on a laugh.
“I know, but it wouldn’t have been right for you. You want a little bit of show. And yeah, maybe I like it quieter, but when you’re part of the performance, I don’t mind the stage.” Elijah kissed away his tears. “I know where you keep your heart, Sebastian.”
Baz dragged Elijah off his knees and onto his lap. “Yes.” He pressed the flat of his hand over the fluttering organ inside Elijah’s chest. “It’s right here.”
About the Author
Heidi Cullinan has always loved a good love story, provided it has a happy ending. She enjoys writing across many genres but loves above all to write happy, romantic endings for LGBT characters because there just aren’t enough of those stories out there. When Heidi isn’t writing, she enjoys cooking, reading, knitting, listening to music, and watching television with her husband and ten-year-old daughter. Heidi is a vocal advocate for LGBT rights and is proud to be from the first Midwestern state with full marriage equality. Find out more about Heidi, including her social networks, at www.heidicullinan.com.
Look for these titles by Heidi Cullinan
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Clockwork Heart
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Normal is just a setting on the dryer.
The Roosevelt, Book 1
High school graduate Jeremey Samson is looking forward to burying his head under the covers and sleepin
g until it’s time to leave for college. Then a tornado named Emmet Washington enters his life. The double major in math and computer science is handsome, forward, wicked smart, interested in dating Jeremey—and he’s autistic.
But Jeremey doesn’t judge him for that. He’s too busy judging himself, as are his parents, who don’t believe in things like clinical depression. When his untreated illness reaches a critical breaking point, Emmet is the white knight who rescues him and brings him along as a roommate to The Roosevelt, a quirky new assisted living facility nearby.
As Jeremey finds his feet at The Roosevelt, Emmet slowly begins to believe he can be loved for the man he is behind the autism. But before he can trust enough to fall head over heels, he must trust his own conviction that friendship is a healing force, and love can overcome any obstacle.
Warning: Contains characters obsessed with trains and counting, positive representations of autism and mental illness, a very dark moment, and Elwood Blues.
Love doesn’t come with a syllabus.
Love Lessons, Book 1
Kelly Davidson has waited what seems like forever to graduate high school and get out of his small-minded, small town. But when he arrives at Hope University, he quickly realizes finding his Prince Charming isn’t so easy. Everyone here is already out. In fact, Kelly could be the only virgin on campus.
Worst of all, he’s landed the charming, handsome, gay campus Casanova as a roommate, whose bed might as well be equipped with a revolving door.
Walter Lucas doesn’t believe in storybook love. Everyone is better off having as much fun as possible with as many people as possible…except his shy, sad little sack of a roommate is seriously screwing up his world view.
As Walter sets out to lure Kelly out of his shell, staying just friends is harder than he anticipated. He discovers love is a crash course in determination. To make the grade, he’ll have to finally show up for class…and overcome his own private fear that love was never meant to last.
Warning: This story contains lingering glances, milder than usual sexual content for this author, and a steamy dance-floor kiss. Story has no dairy or egg content, but may contain almonds.
Sometimes you have to play love by ear.
Love Lessons, Book 2
Aaron Seavers is a pathetic mess, and he knows it. He lives in terror of incurring his father’s wrath and disappointing his mother, and he can’t stop dithering about where to go to college—with fall term only weeks away.
Ditched by a friend at a miserable summer farewell party, all he can do is get drunk in the laundry room and regret he was ever born. Until a geeky-cute classmate lifts his spirits, leaving him confident of two things: his sexual orientation, and where he’s headed to school.
Giles Mulder can’t wait to get the hell out of Oak Grove, Minnesota, and off to college, where he plans to play his violin and figure out what he wants to be when he grows up. But when Aaron appears on campus, memories of hometown hazing threaten what he’d hoped would be his haven.
As the semester wears on, their attraction crescendos from double-cautious to a rich, swelling chord. But if more than one set of controlling parents have their way, the music of their love could come to a shattering end.
Warning: Contains showmances, bad parenting, Walter Lucas, and a cappella.
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This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locale or organizations is entirely coincidental.
Samhain Publishing, Ltd.
11821 Mason Montgomery Road Suite 4B
Cincinnati OH 45249
Lonely Hearts
Copyright © 2015 by Heidi Cullinan
ISBN: 978-1-61922-669-2
Edited by Sasha Knight
Cover by Kanaxa
All Rights Are Reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
First Samhain Publishing, Ltd. electronic publication: August 2015
www.samhainpublishing.com
Lonely Hearts Page 35