Not His First Choice Chapter 08
After a month in Ridgway, I quit my job at the Denver hotel and moved to the town for good.
I went to a small local inn. The owner was a sixty-year-old woman named Margaret who’d been looking for help.
I told her I’d done four years of operations coordination at a boutique hotel—reservations, housekeeping, all of it.
She put me on a one-week trial on the spot.
A week later, she kept me.
I moved into the little cottage behind the inn. Up at six every morning to help Margaret with breakfast, then cleaning rooms, checking guests in, handling bookings, coordinating with vendors.
Life in the town moved slow. But there was always something to do.
Six months in, Margaret decided to retire and move to Florida to be closer to her daughter.
She knew I had savings—money originally meant for a wedding. She wanted to sell the inn to me.
“You know the business. You love this place,” she said. “I’ll give you the friend price. You can pay the rest in installments.”
The night I signed the paperwork, I sat alone in the yard with a glass of red wine.
That money. Eight years of saving.
Originally meant to marry a man.
In the end, it bought me my own inn.
Eight months later, the inn opened under a new sign.
The days after opening were busier than I’d expected.
But every little chore was mine now. That kind of tired felt solid.
Spring came. The old apricot tree in the yard filled with white blossoms. The whole alley smelled sweet.
One evening a man appeared at the door pulling a suitcase.
He wore an old work jacket. He was thinner than eight months ago. A faint scar sat above his brow.
“I have a reservation.”
Ethan slid his ID across. His voice was quiet.
I stood behind the front desk and looked at him.
“Only a king room left.”
“That’s fine.”
He paid. Took the key. Went upstairs.
Not another word.
He stayed one night. Left first thing the next morning.
On his way out he stopped at the front desk and set a camera down on the counter.
There was a sticky note on it, in his handwriting:
“For taking pictures of everything you always wanted to see.”
I picked it up. Looked at it.
Then put it in a drawer.
A week later I donated it to the community center in town.
Three days after that, an envelope arrived in the inn’s mailbox. No return address.
Inside was a leather notebook, worn white at the spine, corners curled up.
I flipped open the first page. Ethan’s handwriting.
【Day 1: She told me not to contact her. I didn’t. +0】
【Day 47: Started therapy. +0】
【Day 103: Set formal boundaries with Lily. Told her things can’t be like they were. +0】
【Day 365: Wanted to reach out badly. Didn’t. +0】
I kept turning pages.
More entries. All +0.
The entries got shorter. The gaps between them longer.
The last page had only a few lines:
“Nora. I stopped keeping score on myself at the end of the first year. Because I finally understood—doing the right thing shouldn’t come with an expected reward. Just like the way you loved me back then was never supposed to be traded for points.”
“I can’t give those eight years back. I hope, from here on out, you have peace and joy.”
I closed the notebook, set it on the windowsill by the door, and never opened it again.