It was part of Cody. He said to her the other day that he wasn’t sure if he would have all of these things if it weren’t for the terrible things he’d gone through.
But that meant that this was his reward.
The evidence that all the things that he’d lived through were worth it. As somebody who really needed to believe that the hard stuff she’d been through was worth it, too, she felt that for him. Deeply.
It made the opening of the resort feel so consequential.
But it was interesting how much she felt it for him.
She couldn’t pretend that she was neutral where he was concerned.
In fact, instead of providing the rest of the information that her lawyer needed so that she could get those divorce papers served to Aiden, she took a minute to make a doctor appointment online so that she could go get testing and make sure that she had a clean bill of health.
She was kind of embarrassed she had that realization in bed with Cody. But where else was it going to come up?
She hadn’t really thought about safe sex in terms of not getting STDs, because Aiden was the only man she’d been with. And…
She hadn’t known what she hadn’t known. She’d trusted him. She hadn’t asked questions.
She had just wanted everything to be perfect, so badly, that was what she was realizing. She had ignored so many obvious red flags in the name of keeping her own peace. In the name of preserving a fiction that she found comforting. One that she felt like she was owed because of how difficult her life had been otherwise.
She had taken a normal man and turned him into Prince Charming. Had taken a regular marriage with all kinds of its own regular issues and called it a fairytale. Maybe that had kept her from engaging with the things that she needed to.
She felt like she was realistic. But that was one area of her life where she hadn’t been.
She had simply decided that everything was going to work out because she had felt like she had to have something work out. Like it was some sort of cosmic balance for her to have a good marriage after the childhood she’d had.
She had been so stupid. So very stupid.
But at least now she was dealing with it.
It was almost orgasmic how smooth the first day went. Dining service was a well-oiled machine, and they hadpatronage from guests and non-guests alike, with Lila and Laney receiving rave reviews from everyone who went in there. It was a long day, but Marlowe wasn’t unhappy about it. It was work that she felt passionately about.
She had always liked hospitality. But she only just realized at the end of the day, after the first official day of the Painted Ridge Resort being open, that she liked it because it allowed her to give other people a perfect day. And escape from whatever their life was normally.
And she could actually make it nice.
When she had been a kid, she had tried to take care of her dad, but there had been no way to make things better than they were. She only had the raw material she had.
But at a bed-and-breakfast, at a resort, all that effort could turn into something beautiful.
And that was something she really appreciated.
It was such a busy couple of days that she barely saw Cody, though they did text each other. And after the third day of being open, he sneaked into her room, and the two of them stayed up half the night, this time with a full box of condoms on hand.
She didn’t start her shift until a little bit later, and he had ranch work starting early, but they met in the middle so that they could grab coffee at Juniper and Sage.
“Cara is going to have commentary,” she said.
“I am not worried about Cara’s commentary if you’re not.”
“No. I’m more worried about having to go a morning without having a sweet treat.”
“We can’t have that.”
It felt like a very couple thing to do, to get ready together, and to head out the back door of the resort – not the front door – they were trying to be a little bit sneaky – and walk tothe bakery. Though they didn’t hold hands, because they weren’t trying to flaunt whatever this was.
She would say that it felt like a relationship, but it didn’t feel like the relationship that she had been in before.
