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“I didn’t realize—”
“We,” Lancelot corrected.
Hugo shot his friend a sad smile. At least he wasn’t the only one who’d be returning home feeling as if he’d lost a piece of himself.
“It is strange and wonderful how much a mind, a soul, can change in only a few days. And you have done that. You have changed me, made me a better man than I was.” Hugo smiled as he said, “It didn’t take you more than a matter of minutes to win our hearts.”
She blinked a couple of times and sniffed.
“I’m sorry. I’ve made you cry.” That certainly hadn’t been his intention.
She shook her head as if to ward off his apology. “No. They’re happy tears. Well, happy and sad. I’m afraid I’ve fallen as well.”
They were silent. None of them wanting to say the hardest part.
In the end, it was Lancelot who found the courage first. “Hugo and I made promises when we joined the Masters’ Admiralty. We don’t have the choice, the freedom to be with you, or to even stay here.”
She looked over her shoulder at Lancelot. “I know. We were fools to believe we could control anything as vexatious or volatile as the heart. Our heads and bodies will always be ruled by it, despite our laughable attempts to deny. I don’t regret a minute of it.”
Lancelot raised a doubtful eyebrow, which caused Sylvia to giggle and reword her assertion.
“Except, of course, the part where I got kidnapped. And got my hand smashed when I escaped. And almost drowning. I could have done without those few very uncomfortable minutes where Walt reset the bones in my hand. But apart from that, zero regrets.”
By the time she’d finished her list, all three of them were laughing.
“Thanks for the clarification,” Lancelot said, placing another quick kiss on her cheek.
They lay quietly for a few minutes. Long enough that Hugo wondered if the others had fallen asleep.
Lancelot broke the silence when he said, “Behave, Sylvie.”
Hugo lifted his head from the pillow curiously.
“She keeps pressing her ass against me.”
“You have too many clothes on,” she complained.
Hugo grinned. “She’s not wrong.”
Lancelot growled. “Am I the only one with an ounce of self-control in this bed?” His hand flew to Sylvia’s hips, holding her in place. “Dammit, love. I mean it.”
“Thought you had self-control. That hard-on seems to tell a different story,” she teased.
“You’re hurt. There’s no way—”
Sylvia cut Lancelot off. “Tonight might be all we have left.”
Dropping a bomb in the middle of the room would have packed less of a punch than those words.
“Merde,” Hugo murmured. “Sylvia.”
“Please. If this is all we get, if this is our last night together, I want to make it count.”
Lancelot looked at him, his expression grim.
They’d be brutes to take her after everything she’d suffered in the past twenty-four hours, but like her, Hugo couldn’t bear the thought of leaving without…
Her.
