The morning after the Bellwether Hotel awarded me its five-year breakfast contract, I woke before dawn to make Owen's favorite: crisp-edged hash browns, soft scrambled eggs, and the sourdough toast he liked almost burnt. I thought the contract meant everything we had sacrificed together had finally paid off. I thought the least I could do was make him feel as cherished as I felt lucky. Then Owen sat down at my kitchen table, looked at the little paper announcement I'd tucked beside his coffee, and told me he wanted to end our relationship. I tried to turn the news into a problem I could solve, the way I'd turned every hard season into another thing to carry for both of us. But Owen wasn't asking me to try harder. He was asking me to hear what I'd never wanted to hear. If I stopped treating love like a debt I had to repay, would I still know how to choose him?