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Vincent sighed. He shut the manuscript and pushed it at me. “So, that’s what she calls it? An affair?”

“No one has called it that,” I said. “But Damian said that she wasn’t faithful to him, and that thing with you was prolonged. But you said it was a long time ago.”

“It was,” he said. “It stopped. A long time ago.”

I narrowed my eyes at him. “She’s telling you her wishes on her deathbed, though? Even though it had stopped?”

He nodded firmly. “Yes. She and Damian eventually did get close. I mean, look at little Henry as proof of that. They had a long, rough number of years—”

“During which you were having sex with her.”

“No,” he said. “Not…” He wouldn’t meet my gaze. “I don’t know. It was very off and on.”

I was not sure how I felt about that. It wasn’t so much that I didn’t like Vincent and Opal having an on-again, off-again thing, because they had always been like that with each other. I obviously didn’t care about Damian’s feelings getting hurt. So, it didn’t make sense for me to care.

I did not care.

I decided to talk about the origins of it, not how long it dragged on. “When did that even start, Vincent? I can’t remember. But you were four years older than us, and we were very young at the beginning, so there are points in time where…”

“Where I shouldn’t have been messing with her? Yeah, totally,” said Vincent. “I think she wanted someone to feel sorry for her, and she didn’t know how to ask for that.” He shook his head. “No, no, not feel sorry for her. I think she wanted someone to understand that she was young and fragile. And she tried to show people that by throwing herself into situations that might break her. But I think it backfired. No one ever noticed how fragile she was. People thought she was unbreakable instead.”

I thought about that. I had always felt Opal was stronger than me, fearless, more experienced, everything that I personally was not. “When did it start?” I said. “How old was she?”

He thought about it. “The first time she and I fucked, you mean?”

“The first time you did anything with her.”

“It wasn’t like that with us. It wasn’t like some love story where we worked up to things. She came onto me. She snuck me into her bedroom. I think she wanted to get caught, wanted her dad to find us, but he didn’t pay much attention to whatever she was doing. I think her dad thought she was pointless now that you were in the picture, and you were going to marry Damian.”

It was getting harder not to feel sorry for Opal. “You’re not telling me how old she was.”

“Uh, she was fifteen. I was nineteen,” he said. “Too old to be messing with someone that young, for sure. Could have been prosecuted. Age of consent in this state is seventeen.”

“You know this,” I said.

He took a bite of his sandwich. He didn’t look proud of himself or anything, but he wasn’t beating himself up about it either. He chewed, considering. “She and I were both trying to get attention by behaving badly,” he said. “We had that in common. I was messed up over the death of my parents, and I was jealous as all fuck of Damian.”

“I thought you didn’t want to be the cyning.”

“Oh, I didn’t. And I still don’t. And I’m not jealous of him anymore, but at the time, it felt as if everyone was paying attention to him and everyone thought he was so great. No one even looked at me. I was an afterthought. So, acting out, it was a way to get people to notice me. It wasn’t the kind of noticing I wanted, but it was better than nothing. Opal and I, we were on the same page with this kind of shit. So, the fact I was older, the fact she was younger, it made it better for both of us.”

“That’s fucked up.”

“Totally.” He nodded. “I did a lot of fucked up stuff when I was younger.” He eyed me. “I like to think I’m better now, but being here, back in Riverside, it’s like I can feel the call of it, the siren song of the forbidden, wanting to drag me down the river and rake me over the rapids.”

I felt that call here, too, but it wasn’t the call of the forbidden, it was just… Damian.

“It happened sometimes after she was married because of that same thing,” he said. “Because she was starved for attention, and he was never going to give it to her, you know what I mean?” Vincent tossed his sandwich down, shaking his head, agitated. “I mean, that’s the thing about my brother. I grew up with you girls, both you and Opal, and I watched Damian take both of you—vibrant and beautiful young women—and turn you both dull and pained and listless.”

I grimaced. “Thanks. Listless?”

“Okay, maybe you’re better now,” said Vincent. “But right afterwards…” He picked his sandwich up again. “He broke you.” His mouth twisted. “I hated him for that.”

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

WHEN I FOUND out Damian had bitten Opal, Vincent was there.

You would have thought that I would have felt it or something, that there should have been this moment where something inside me snapped or broke or severed because my scent match had bitten another omega.