The walk back to the cabin is a masterclass in awkward silence. The heat of the kiss is still burning on my lips, but Silas is walking three paces ahead of me, his shoulders so stiff they look like they were carved from granite. Every time he catches a whiff of my scent on the breeze, he winces as if I’ve physically struck him.
"Silas, you're going to give yourself a hernia if you keep walking like a robot," I say, tripping over a tree root for the fifth time.
He stops abruptly and turns around. The golden fire in his eyes has been replaced by a cold, devastating gray. "We need to address what happened back there. In the woods. The... lapse in judgment."
"A lapse in judgment?" I repeat, crossing my arms. "That was a bit more than a lapse, Silas. You nearly fused our DNA together."
"It
