Page 65 of Against All Odds

She hesitated, then stepped aside, letting me in.

The living room smelled faintly of lavender like she did. It felt intimate, like stepping into a piece of her soul, and I hated how I wasn’t welcomed here any longer.

“I’m sorry,” I started, turning to face her. “For everything. For how I treated you. For what I said. I was wrong. About all of it.”

She crossed her arms, her expression cold. She tilted her head as if waiting for me to say everything I wanted to.

“I let Alexa get in my head,” I admitted. “I didn’t see what she was doing—not to you, not to Juno, not to us, not to the Wildflower. And I hurt you because of it. I don’t know how to fix this, but I want to try.”

She nodded as if listening intently to what I was saying.

“I’m so sorry, Bambi.”

She flinched at my use of the nickname I’d given her.

“I really am. Give me a chance to make this right. Please.”

She smiled weakly. “Are you done?”

I nodded like a fool.

“I have no forgiveness left in my heart to give to anyone, least of all you.”

I opened my mouth to respond, but she kept talking, not waiting to see if I was even listening.

“I trusted you, and you broke it. You broke me.”

“I know and?—”

She raised a hand to silence me. “You said you were done talking. Are you?”

“Yes.”

“You know, all these years, despite all the bad stuff that happened in Aspen, I stayed. But this time…after what you did, how you hurt me, I’m finally leaving. I’m going to go away, find a new place to start over, learn from my mistakes.”

“Sable,” I managed to say, my throat tight, “you mean more to me than I can even explain. I know I messed up, but please don’t leave your home.”

She shook her head, her eyes glittering with unshed tears. “This place is not home. I have no home.”

I had done this to her. Guilt was a heavy burden.

“I fell in love with you,” she admitted, and I wanted to tell her I did, too, but I knew she wouldn’t believe me. Not now. I wouldn’t believe me if I were her. “And you shattered me. You finally did what no one else could do, not your wife, not Natasha, not Jack. Now, if you don’t mind, seeing you hurts me. So, please endeavor not to be around me again. Since I am leaving, it’s something you’re going to have to do only for a short time.”

She walked away, not even bothering to ask me to get out of her home.

I heard her lock her bedroom.

I stood in her living room, feeling lonelier than I ever had in my life.

CHAPTER 22

sable

“She sure gets around, doesn’t she? First Jack, now Heath.”

Well, hell.

A girl couldn’t shop without having people gossip about her loud enough so she could hear them. People needed to get a life, and I needed to get some armor so cruel remarks didn’t touch me. But that was a pipe dream. Iwasaffected. I always had been. In the past, the humiliation hadn’t been quite so red hot as it felt now. What Heath had done had decimated me—my reserves were low, almost non-existent. I could’ve used Instacart to get my groceries, but I wanted to be braver than that, which was why I’d chosen Monday night—in time for football when everyone would be glued to a television screen—to buy food.

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