Page 38 of Sunrise Arrows

I look up at the ceiling and hold out the shirt, explaining, “The door was open, and I assumed?—”

“No, I mean yes,” she stumbles, not taking the shirt. “I just… hold on.”

She has the cutest little hopping run as she heads into the attached bathroom. When she comes out a second later, however, she’s still not dressed. At least not all the way. She’s stepped into her costume—a white dress with little cutouts along her ribs and hundreds of crystals sewn into the top and falling like raindrops onto the very full and very short skirt—and is tightly holding the front to herself.

Stopping in front of the vanity’s mirror, she slowly turns around and murmurs, “Zip me up?” sweeping her hair off her back and over her shoulder.

I step up behind her, my phone pulled out, and unlock it, bringing up the notes app. “Write it down before you forget it, baby,” I whisper, not wanting her to lose whatever words are pouring from her heart.

“Thank you,” she smiles in the mirror, her fingers flying over the screen as the words leave her in a deluge.

Hand on her hip and my eyes on her in the mirror, I murmur, “Always,” slowly lowering my lips to her bare shoulder and watching goosebumps ripple down her body when I kiss her.

A soft hum vibrates from her throat, and her neck gently stretches open, offering itself to me. I place another kiss closer to the curve of her neck and another on her pulse. Distantly, I hear my phone thud against the rug, but I’m too consumed by her.

Her head rolls back onto my chest, and my hand reaches around her hip to press her into me. My lips find her jaw, and in the mirror, her half-lidded eyes meet mine.

She’s so small against me. My body is both wider and taller than hers to the point that to wrap her up in me, I have to curl and bend around her.

My name is a breathy whisper on her parted lips. One arm releases its hold on her dress and lays over top of where I hold her. Our fingers lace together and she repeats my name, squeezing my hand.

Tinsley’s eyes are glazed as if she’s dreaming and fall closed as she turns her head more and tilts her mouth up to mine.

“I don’t want to ruin your makeup, Shortcake,” I murmur, transfixed by the shiver I see rolling down her body and the sigh I feel passing from her to me.

I used to be so easily captivated by how Tinsley responded to my touch. My experience before her was minimal. Back then, almost every touch and exchange we shared was as new for me as it was for her. But I never felt like I was stumbling my way through the dark. It was as if she had been coded just for me. The one person on this earth who could quiet the constant stream of thought and anxiousness in my mind.

A few years after she left—when I finally began to let go of my hope for her return and started to realize I had made a mistake in not going after her to at the very least get answers, if not win her back—I had tried to find that feeling again. But it didn’t take long for me to gather the data needed to back up my theory that what we had was something I’d only experience once in my life.

For me, it’s her or no one.

“It can be fixed,” she pleads. “I need to kiss you.”

My protest was already weak, so she doesn’t need to do much to convince me. Kissing her again is all I’ve been thinking about.

I spin her around and lift her by her hips onto the vanity. Tinsley’s quick to open her legs and lock them around me, pulling us flush together. My fingers find their way into her hair, my other hand still resting on her hip as I grip the soft curve through the many layers of her dress. This close, she releases her hold on her dress, using where I’m pressed against her to keep it up, and cups the back of my head.

Our mouths are like magnets coming together and not easily separated. A field of electricity races through my blood and is set on fire the moment my tongue touches hers. The vibrancy of it all reminds me just how dull my life has been in her absence.

A desperate whimper passes between us and it’s not until I feel and hear Tinsley moan against me, melting into me as she kisses me more urgently, that I realize it came from me. The sound spirals her further down into me and us until the world is quiet and still except for ardent noises passing between us as we get lost in the storm.

When we pull apart, her lips are swollen and her lipstick and gloss smudged to hell. Her skin is flushed and glowing, and her chest rapidly rises with the struggle to catch her breath. And her hair—it’s completely untamed, with my fingers still buried amongst her waves, refusing to let go.

She’s never been more beautiful to me, and it has my words running free as I demand more than ask, “Go out with me tonight.”

And to my utter shock, she nods her head, smiling as she responds, “Pick me up at six, Superman.”

CHAPTER12

Tinsley

“What do you think?”I ask, coming out of the bathroom, my arms open to the side as I slowly turn, showing off my pink dress.

Briar gets up from the bed and grabs my hands when I make a full circle. “Perfect. Very sweet, very sexy, 100 percent irresistible.”

I can’t help the wide smile that stretches across my face or the squeal that comes with it. I take a quick breath to try and quell my excitement but it bubbles right back up, making Briar laugh as I jump and shimmy like I’m a teenage girl again going on her first date.

“I’ve never seen you like this!”

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