(Note: I’m referring to “the first one” as Cracking Eggs the first in the series and my planned sequel as “the second one.”)
Yes you have a good point. I don’t like all sad doom and gloom endings. I think I’ll have my characters even if they are apart they move on with their lives. Just separately.
Winston will get the life he ultimately deserves and wants, to be happy with his family in England, have a child and cook to his hearts content. It ultimately works out for Winston because in the first story his only living blood relative, his brother Jack, resented him and the two never talked. By the second one, Jack misses Winston and says it feels empty without him. Winston moves back to England with an adoptive daughter who he and Eric try to make it work but in the end Eric and Winston can’t find a way to make their romantic relationship work.
Speaking of Eric, he had a lot of crap happening to him. He was in student debt, couldn’t afford to pay for a place to live, his father left, his mother was disabled but she insisted he’d go to college anyway, he found money in the probably most shady places and became basically an American slave for the British egg washers who are a criminal organization. He was tortured by them and forced to stay in England. If he was ever caught escaping, he’d get tortured as a warning. If he failed a mission, if he was helped, his helper was killed. As a result, Eric has scars all over his body from this experience. He has a sad and pretty shady history but it is justified why he feels so angry and hurt. But in the second one he takes his pain as anger on others.
He’s a pretty complicated guy, but in the end, Winston wants Eric to learn how to move on and it requires that he has to leave. They love each other but Winston, not being a criminal in the first place and seeing Eric’s true nature and not blindly following him because of his attractiveness, he decides to leave him to keep his family and his adopted daughter safe.
I would make it bittersweet because we know it’s going to end well for Winston but we could decide if Eric’s story ends in misery in the cycle he was trapped in for years or him learning to let go of the past and get on with his life.
That’s all I have. Thank you. It’s a complicated situation.