Damien avoided her for two full days after that night in the study, disappearing entirely into back-to-back meetings, taking his dinners alone in his study instead of at the table they had slowly, quietly grown accustomed to sharing. Silveria told herself firmly that she didn't care. She told herself a great many things that particular week that turned out not to be even remotely true.
When he finally sought her out again, she was sitting in the garden, sketchbook resting open and mostly untouched on her lap, trying and largely failing to lose herself in work instead of replaying, over and over, the way he'd almost kissed her, the way he'd pulled away like she'd burned him.
"We need to talk about what happened," he said, coming to stand a careful, deliberate distance away from the bench.
"Do we?" she asked, not bothering to look up from the blank page in front of her. "Seemed fairly clear to me, actually. It didn't happen. You made absolutely certain of that."
"Silveria."
