Page 43 of Sunrise Arrows

In the room, I set her on her feet and adjust the lights to come on in a soft glow, the moon’s light not nearly enough for me to see every part of her that I’ve been forced to live without. I follow behind her as she walks around the room, taking everything in. At my nightstand, she traces the titles on the stack of books I’ve pulled from the shelves downstairs to read. Her fingers map the intricate details of an antique picture frame she bought and left behind. She picks it up and examines the ripped piece of paper it protects that has lyrics scrawled all around it. She glances at me, her face maddeningly unreadable before setting it back down and traveling to my dresser.

The top is free of clutter, only a tray where I put my watch after taking it off for the evening sitting on top. In the corner of the mirror—fitted between the glass and the wood frame—is one of the only pictures I ever took of Tinsley.

I used to think that because I can recall details as clearly as any picture at the drop of a hat, that taking them was redundant. But then she left, and amongst the mountain of my regrets was having not taken hundreds a day like she had or covetously recording countless videos like she did so I could hear her voice again speaking only to me.

The picture was taken the day after our first date. I hadn’t been able to wait to see her again, and as soon as I had gotten home, I called and asked if she wanted to spend the day out on the ranch with me, promising she didn’t need to be there at sunrise, but she was. Strawberry frappé in hand and sleep still in her eyes, beaming up at me and wasting no time in kissing me in place of saying good morning.

In it, she’s sitting on my old tailgate—my Vanderbilt hat on her head, my denim shirt over her lace trimmed tank top to protect her delicate skin that wasn’t yet used to being outdoors from sunup to sundown from burning, jean shorts, and pink cowboy boots—the sun acting like a halo around her, and writing on a scrap of paper she tore from my ledger. It’s the same piece that’s framed beside my bed. On that page is her first draft of the lyrics that would become “Reckless.”

She’d given it to me for safe keeping.

Not wanting her to lose a single line of what I knew would be brilliance, I took her to town that afternoon and spent over an hour with her in the store before she settled on the journal whose pages would become filled with the lyrics that told our story. And after the words were transferred over, she shyly gave it back to me and told me when she finished it, it would be my song.

Tinsley’s face is still blank when she looks at me again, her fingers hovering over the picture. Her eyes glance to the frame then back to the picture before returning to me.

It frustrates me that I can’t read her. That right now, in this place I had built for us, she’s wearing a mask and preventing me from seeing her.

She slowly turns in the room, taking it all in. When she stops, she’s facing the wall of windows, looking through our reflection out onto the lake.

I come up behind her, my hand finding her hip and pulling her back into me as I start to curl around her.

“Say somethin’, baby,” I whisper. “Let me in and show me what you’re thinkin’.”

She meets my eyes in the glass, her arm coming up and around the back of my neck as she leans into me, and murmurs, “I don’t know how I ever doubted you, and I can never apologize enough for having done it,” confusing the hell out of me. “Can you ever forgive me?”

“There’s nothing to forgive, Tinsley. You’re here now, and that’s all that matters to me.”

Slowly, I pull the tie of her dress that she hastily redid before we left the field. I kiss the curve of her neck as it falls forward, revealing herself to me again. In the glass, I watch my fingers find the outer curve of her breast and begin to reverently trace the arrow with my name.

There would be days where I’d wonder if I was as much of a fool as Hunter called me. I would wonder if he was right, that I was merely hung up on Tinsley because she was my first. If maybe I was wasting my life by loving her. In the end it never mattered to me; logic and reason didn’t matter. I loved her and I knew I would wait.

It’s a steady devotion that’s come full circle having her here in my arms, with my name tattooed on her skin, knowing that for every day I loved and waited for her, she loved me right back.

I follow the feathered lines and the script of each letter coming up to the head, goosebumps passing down Tinsley’s body with each touch. At the tip, I continue to relearn the shape of her, trailing my finger under and around the inside of her breast. My lips travel along her shoulder, going right to the edge before making their way back in and up her neck where I tongue the cords of stretching muscle and tendon as she opens up for me.

I continue to circle the firm swell of her tit, the rosy tip darkening with every pass and puckering into a taut peak. Her breath turns short with anticipation, and when the rough pad of my finger grazes her eager flesh, a relieved, whimpering moan vibrates between us and she turns slack in my arms, surrendering to what’s coming.

She arches her back, ass pushing into my dick and her sweet tits pushing further into my hand. In the glass, her eyes are glazed and her lips parted.

“I took what you gave me; now it’s your turn,” I murmur, my voice sounding slow and thick even to my own ears while I fight the urge to lift her dress and rub myself along the crevice of her ass.

I play with her for a moment longer, drawing out the anticipation of pulling her apart one thread at a time. But she’s a devious thing who knows just how tightly wrapped I am around her finger.

“Archer, please,” she begs. “I’m ruining my panties.”

“Fuuuck,” I draw out.

I pinch and roll her nipple between my fingers one last time before letting her go. Hands on either side of her waist, I start to push her dress down. At her hips, gravity finishes the job for me and it falls to the ground.

Fingers hooked in the white lace of her thong, I drag the material down her thighs, groaning when I see the wet spot her pussy has left behind.

“This all for me, baby?”

She steps out of her panties and kicks her boots somewhere off to the side and replies, “It always has been.”

I kiss my way up the back of her thighs, stopping to nip at the muscle of her ass. At the base of her spine, I interchange between kissing and mapping the upward slope of her back with my tongue until I’m standing again.

Banding an arm between her tits, one hand coming up to rest around her throat and the other low on her hips, spreading to cover her smooth mound, I pull her naked body back into mine and kiss the top of her head before fitting her under my chin.

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