Page 40 of Scotch on the Rocks

My brows flew up, about to ask what the hell that meant, when Callum’s attention slid from the game to the sideboard. The ring box I usually kept hidden in my junk drawer sat open, the diamond glinting in the fresh band of sunlight filtering through the window. Everything with Callum had left me feeling … muddled and I’d pulled it out last night to torture myself. I must have forgotten to put it away.

The floor tilted. My steps slow and choppy as I rushed to snap the lid shut. I knew it was too late. The pinch of his lips told me he’d already seen the contents.

Neither of us spoke for a long moment. The seconds passing almost audibly when I refused to look at him.

Then he was at my side, his large hand covering mine, skin surprisingly rough as he slipped the box from myfingers and brushed a thumb over the closed lid. “Why do you still have it?”

“To remember—” The words rose up my throat, tangling at the tip of my tongue. “Someone can swear you’re the love of their life a thousand times, that doesn’t make it true.”

He set it back on the sideboard carefully. “Did he cheat on you?”

The question surprised me. Had he and Alistair never spoken about this? “Does it matter?”

“Of course it matters.”

No, he hadn’t cheated. Sometimes I wished he had so I could look back and pinpoint the moment it all went wrong. A reason to rage and scream. A reason to burn his pictures and cut up his clothes. When a person abandons you for the simple reason of not loving you enough, everything becomes very … quiet. A small wound that lingers, festering beneath the surface.

“Will it make you feel better for nearly fucking me?” I don’t know why I said it. To make him feel as shitty as I felt, I supposed.

“Fuck, Juniper, that’s not why I’m—”

But I was done. Done with his prying. Done with how pathetic these memories made me feel. “Can we go now? I want to get this over with.” I fled for the door without waiting for an answer.

“Hold your hand out, let her come to you,” Callum urged from beside me, one arm slung casually over the fence post as though we weren’t staring down a two-thousand-pound monster.

“You can’t expect me to touch that thing?”

Callum shifted the giant bag of barley at his feet, and I swear it licked its lips.Oh, fuck no.

I folded my arms, stepping away. After a lengthy and gruelling hike through a dense forest, my boots squelched so deeply into the mud on the steep hilltop, it soaked through to my socks. “You’re insane for thinking I’d ever agree to this.”

Early October cloaked the sky like a shroud in proud purples and blues, the icy wind tossing the strands of our hair poking from beneath woolly hats with rough fingers. Beads of moisture clung to Callum’s eyelashes like tiny distracting pearls. I didn’t want to know what I looked like. It had been a short tension-filled drive – for me, at least: Callum had steered his oversized truck with admirable ease. Thrumming his fingers on the wheel in time to an old rock song as he sped around sharp bends that usually left me wincing. I’d started to scramble from the car before he could do something ridiculous, like open my door for me, when he flipped open the centre compartment, slipped a black woollen beanie onto my head and said, “You need a hat.” I’d been about to tear the thing straight off, drawing the line at wearing his sweaty old car beanie. Then I noticed the store tag he shoved into his pocket.

He’d bought me a hat.Ten minutes later I was still trying to figure out the punchline.

“Perhaps my nickname was misplaced, harpy. I thought you were made of sterner stuff.”

“I’m a coward for not wanting to catch rabies? You can’t bait me into agreeing.”

He rolled his eyes. An entirely new gesture on the oldest Macabe. “You can’t catch rabies from a cow.”

I threw a hand to where it waited on the other side of the fence. “Look at the crazed glint in its eye. It’s sizing me up.” It hadhorns. I couldn’t be the only person to notice that particular detail.

“Because she’s hungry and you’re taking too long.”

“Then you do it.” We could have done anything on this damn island.Anything. Shell picking on the beach, wild swimming, the options were numerous, and he’d chosen this?

“I have. Dozens of times.” His bare hands came to rest atop his chest. “Why would we drive all the way out here so I, a vet, could feed a cow?”

“Why would we drive all the way out here soanyonecould feed a cow?”

“Because you can’t live on Skye and never hand-feed a cow, it’s like a rite of passage.” He tore the bag of grain open with his bear paw hands and kernels flew like tiny missiles. The beast crept closer.

I jerked, boots sinking further into the mud. “I’ve made it this far.”

He sighed and for the first time he sounded a tiny bit exasperated. “If you really don’t want to do it, we’ll leave.” I didn’t think he was trying to make me feel guilty, but it slithered through me all the same.

I glanced at the cow again. Its russet hair ruffled in the wind, making it shine like burned gold. I could admit – from a distance – it held a certain …charm.

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