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Vincent came for me, rushing across the parking lot. “Don’t,” he said. “Turn around. You don’t want to see this.”

“See what?” I said.

“They’re in her backseat,” he said, raising his eyebrows, all of it laden with meaning.

I got it. I didn’t want to get it. “What?”

“He’s knotting her,” he said. “They can’t… detach. Anyway, he’s tending.”

Tending? But that meant that Damian must have…

I lurched towards the car.

Vincent caught me. “Don’t.” His voice cracked. He held onto my arm.

I looked up at the spire of the church and the red leaves of the tree, and the way the clouds were moving in the sky overhead and I pulled myself free from him.

On unsteady legs, I staggered over to the car.

She looked at me, but he didn’t. She was facing me, on her back. He was between her thighs. He was licking her neck, licking the bite mark on her neck, and his head was down. They weren’t wearing clothes.

I looked up at the church again and then down at the car.

Opal held my gaze, expressionless.

I backed away.

“Fuck, Leo,” said Vincent.

I blinked at him, unsteady, and he was there, letting me lean against him. He put his arm around me. He squeezed my shoulder.

The breeze blew in, ruffling the red leaves on the tree, pulling a few of the leaves free. I watched them dance on the wind as they were borne off into the distance. Overhead, the clouds gathered, as gray as the stone of the church.

HE COULDN’T STOP tending. He tended for hours.

Once I was able to stand on my own two feet, Vincent decided that he was driving Opal’s car down the mountain and he was taking her home. He told me to go home.

I did not.

I followed him to Opal’s place.

By the time they had gotten there, they were dressed, and my scent match’s knot was no longer in her pussy.

The knot that had only ever been in me, I remembered thinking. We’d been each other’s one and only. One and only everything, I thought.

How could this have happened?

It was a nightmare, that was the only explanation. This was impossible.

They were dressed, and he wasn’t inside her, but he was still licking her. I watched them get out of the backseat of her car and he licked her. I watched them climb the stairs up to the wraparound porch of that fortress of a house and he licked her.

I came too.

I followed them, feeling hollow inside, feeling like something had reached inside of me with a corer and scooped out all my insides.

Vincent tried to stop me and make me go home, saying that I shouldn’t be there. I think that was how my dad ended up there. I think Vincent called him to come and get me.

I remember sitting in the living room at Opal’s place, and they were across the room from me. She was sitting there, staring off into space, expressionless. He was licking his bite mark.