Something inside me settled at the sight, and I couldn’t help but stop at her pen and reach out for that soft nose. Arran panted happily as I leaned over the fence, lifting her head for me to scratch behind her ears. “Hiya, girl,” I whispered, wishing the sight of an adorable Highland calf was enough to banish the miserable thoughts from my mind. But nothing would fully erase Lena’s words or the reality that she was upstairs right now, packing her things.
Well, good.
What the hell did I care?
As I stared down at Arran, lost in my thoughts, I didn’t even notice Callum arrive with a bucket of feed until he dropped it by my feet with athunk. He was kitted up in a rain jacket and wellies.
“Hope this blows through quickly, or they’ll have to wrap the festival up early,” he said. He cocked his head, his bushy eyebrows knotted. “Speaking of, I thought you’d be down there all day. What’re you doing back already?”
I grunted. “Lena wasn’t feeling well. Jo insisted that I bring her home.”
“Aye, Jo’s always insisting on something,” Callum said. “Is Lena okay?”
“She’s fine,” I muttered.
“Then why do you look like you just sat yourself down on a thistle?”
“Lena and I got into a fight,” I said, watching Arran stick her head between the slats of her fence, trying to get to the bucket. Callum chuckled and topped up her feed trough, then put the bucket down again, leaned against the fence, and sighed.
“I’m not the type to pry,” he said. “A couple’s business is their business. But you seem like you’re bursting to tell someone. And I reckon I might be a better choice than Arran here since I might have a decent piece of advice or two.”
I bit my cheek, trying to decide if I really wanted to talk about it. I’d obviously stalked all the way out here for a reason, and it wasn’t to vent my troubles to Arran. Maybe some subconscious part of me had been seeking Callum out given the advice he’d offered me earlier about fucking Jasper. And I wasn’t in the mood to dump my feelings on Locke or Alistair, who’d dragged themselves all the way up here to enjoy the festival. I turned to him. “Jo thought Lena was pregnant. She threw up at the festival and?—”
Callum’s eyes widened.
“Anyway, she’s not,” I hurried to say. Callum didn’t seem the type to spread rumors, but better safe than sorry. “In fact,it turns out…” I swallowed hard. “Lena actually can’t have children.”
“Oh,” Callum said softly. “I’m sorry to hear that.”
“So was I,” I admitted. Because as angry as I was over how it had all played out, I could still see that it bothered Lena, who loved children. “But apparently she didn’t think it important to tell me that little tidbit despite the fact we’re married.”
“Hold on now,” Callum said, raising his hand. “That’s not why you married her though. You married her to satisfy the terms of the will. That’s what you told me.”
“I did,” I agreed.
“And there was nothing in there about you needing to have a child,” he said slowly, giving me space to correct him, “so there would have been no expectation for her to need to tell you.”
“Sure, at first. But then…things between us changed. Or I thought they had. And there were so many moments where she could have told me about her past, once it started to become clear that it might have an impact on our future.” The frustration flared inside me. It felt like opening an oven to a flash of heat. “But she chose not to say anything.”
Callum went quiet as he leaned against the fence next to me, hands folded.
“You think I’m an asshole,” I said.
“Didn’t say that.”
“You’re thinking it,” I said. I could feel the words even if he wasn’t saying them.
“I think you were surprised,” he said, which was true. “But did you ever stop to think it would be a hard subject to bring up when she was still trying to figure out where the two of you stood with each other?”
“I think that’s been pretty damn clear for weeks,” I muttered.
“Is it? You ended things with her as soon as you found out, right? Do you not want Lena anymore because of her inability to have children?”
“Of course that isn’t the problem! My issue is with the lie!”
“How can she have lied about something you never asked about?”
“The fact that she never told me is enough!” I’d once stood in here, looked Callum in the eye, and told him there were no secrets between me and Lena. Now I felt like an idiot because as it turned out, she was keeping a pretty massive secret. “She purposely chose to keep that information from me.”
