Page 119 of The Accidental Innkeeper

I’d told myself I was protecting her. I knew she was already dealing with enough already with the inn, the repairs, the pressure, the way she carried everything like it was hers alone to manage.

What I hadn’t admitted was that leaving had been easier than trusting myself to stay without breaking my own rules.

I didn’t start things I couldn’t finish or get involved where I couldn’t commit. I didn’t make promises I wasn’t sure I could keep. Those rules had served me well. Built my life. Kept it clean and orderly and predictable.

They’d also kept me alone.

New York hadn’t asked me for guarantees. She hadn’t asked me to stay forever or fix her life or be something I wasn’t. She’d just looked at me like she saw me, like she trusted me to show up honestly.

And I’d decided she didn’t get a say.

The road curved gently, familiar landmarks sliding into place—the diner, the hardware store, the stretch where the trees opened up and the air changed, salt sneaking in even with the windows closed.

I kept going.

I had to tell her why I left. What I was afraid of. What I wanted, and what I didn’t know how to promise yet.

And then I had to let her decide.

I drove past the turnoff without taking it, letting the decision wait another mile. I let myself sit in it, the discomfort, the crack in the rules I’d lived by for years.

I’d built my life on rules for a reason. They’d kept everything intact and orderly.

But for the first time, the rule didn’t feel like protection. It felt like avoidance.

Maybe restraint wasn’t respect if it took someone else’s choice away. Maybe finishing something didn’t always mean walking away clean.

I gripped the wheel, my jaw tight, focused on the road ahead of me.

I fucked up. I realized that now.

I should have stayed.

25

SARAH

“Yes, three nights,” I said into the receiver. “Ocean views. Absolutely. See you tomorrow.”

I hung up and entered the Schneiders as the guests for room 304 in my laptop, using the new booking app I’d found online for small businesses like me. It was infinitely better than keeping everything handwritten in a ledger. I wrote like a five-year-old with sticky fingers and poor impulse control. No one could read my handwriting, not even me… especially not me.

Technology had saved us all.

I took a sip of coffee, appreciating the bitter bite. Dottie made a mean coffee, possibly a confrontational one. It didn’t ask how you were feeling. It demanded productivity, and I liked it.

I was still riding the quiet afterglow of the dinner Dottie, Helen, Lola, and Becca had thrown for me last night. I was also deeply grateful that I’d remembered to alternate wine with water, which meant I could function like a normal, responsible adult today instead of moving through the morning one slow blink at a time.

Progress.

I took another sip of coffee and leaned against the front desk, listening to the hum of the inn, footsteps upstairs, the distant sound of a door closing, the quiet rhythm of a place that was, for once, doing exactly what it was supposed to do.

Busy. Calm. Functioning.

I smiled to myself. This was a good day to run an inn.

The front door opened, the bell giving a polite jingle, and a couple stepped inside.

They hovered just inside the threshold, like they weren’t sure if they were allowed to fully commit to being here. Mid-fifties, neatly dressed, vaguely coastal in that “we own windbreakers” way. They leaned toward each other, murmured something, and then looked at me.