Page 59 of Against All Odds

He was right. I didn’t know what I was doing.

His words stung, all of them.

But what hurt the most was that it was all true.

I was blaming Alexa when it was I who didn’t know how to run a business. Why did I think I could just work in a bank for years and then run a bar? That was arrogant of me, and the universe was teaching me a lesson. I’d also thought I could keep a man like Heath. Well, that blew up in my face, didn’t it?

I’d been called names and treated poorly my wholelife, but never by a person I trusted. That Heath saw me in the same light as the others once he got to know me better told me all I wanted to know about myself. I was what they all said I was.

Maybe I could cut my losses. Give the bar back to Ben. Maybe get some money out of it and leave Aspen. Move to Boulder. Or maybe Texas. Or…somewhere else where they didn’t know me, and I could start fresh. I’d keep to myself in this new place, make no friends, and just…be. Safe.

I couldn’t believe after everything I’d shared with Heath, he thought it was right for him to treat me the way he had in public, loudly, so everyone could hear him dump me, tell me I was a failure, tell me that I deserved the condemnation of the people of Aspen.

He wouldn’t even give me a chance to explain, to tell him that I was protecting Juno, not hurting her.

I was looking forward to seeing Heath and Juno at the farmer’s market. I liked Juno. She was a good kid, and we got along well.

But Juno was with Alexa, and I decided to wait until her mother left before approaching her. Alas, Juno didn’t seem to care about that and ran up to me by the candle stall and gave me a quick hug. “Sable! We’re coming for trivia night, my girls and I, next week, and we’re gonna win.”

“Juno.” Alexa marched up to her daughter. “You can’t just wander off.” She gave me a once over, and I smiled at her and nodded. No way was I going to make a scene in front of Juno. She didn’t deserve that.

“Mama, I’m fifteen.” Juno looked amused.

“And be careful of associating with trash like this because you’ll turn out as one, too,” Alexa snapped.

Juno and I were shocked. A few people heard Alexa, and I could feel eyes on us.

“Well, I’ll leave you to your, ah….” My hands shook as I gripped my purse strap on my shoulder. “Have a nice day and?—"

“First, you stole my husband, and now you want my daughter?” Alexa wasn’t giving up. She was spoiled. She thought she could behave any way she wanted with no consequences. This was, unfortunately, true. No one would support me. I knew that.

“Mama,” Juno gasped in shock. “Stop it.”

“And you?” She sneered at her daughter. “Do you have no loyalty? No integrity? You should be ashamed of yourself. You’re my daughter.”

Juno’s eyes filled with tears.

Enough was fucking enough.

“Stop it, Alexa.”

“You don’t get to tell me how to talk to my daughter.” She thrust out her chest, and all her beauty disappeared under bitterness and meanness.

I felt sorry for her but not enough to let her take a bite out of Juno for being decent to me. “I guess it would’ve been too much to ask for you to be a decent person. You’re sabotaging my business, and now this.”

“How dare you say that?” Alexa screeched.

I was about to speak when Juno put a hand on my shoulder. “Sable, please.”

No way. I wasn’t going to let this woman, mother or not, talk to her daughter like that.

“No, Juno, it isn’t right.”

She nodded, accepting that I was defending her, telling me tacitly that she wanted me to. If Alexa behaved like this with Juno in public, I wasn’t sure what the hell was happening behind closed doors. She dropped her hand away from me—and that was when Heath joined the party.

Like everyone else in my life, he didn’t ask what had happened; he assumed the worst aboutme.

His words were like ice: piercing, cold, debilitating.

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