Page 15 of Sunrise Arrows

“Yes, ma’am.”

“I’m Briar Davenport. Tinsley’s manager and best friend,” she informs. “I’m sure I don’t have to say this considering in ten years nothing has come up about your time together, but I wouldn’t be doing my job if I didn’t.

“Those pictures aren’t to be sold or her location leaked. She’s on vacation and specifically chose this… town—” she almost chokes on the word, “—because of its remote location and the belief that the people here would leave her be.

“You’re not going to make that into a problem for her, are you?”

I try not to take offense. I know she’s not only doing her job and looking out for her friend. Hell, if anyone in this world needed peace just to be, it’s Tinsley. But to remind me not to say anything is laughable. And I do just that, the sound sharp, short, and not at all humorous.

“In case it slipped your attention, Miss Davenport, I’m not the one out there singin’ about the night my ex and I lost our virginity. As for the people of Berry Falls, you’ll find she’s right; they can be very discreet. This whole town knows me and my family and by extension that I once dated Tinsley. And yet as you said, nothing has ever come out about it. Nothing she hasn’t put out for the world to hear, that is. So you don’t have to worry about them, and you definitely don’t have to worry about me. I don’t kiss and tell.”

CHAPTER5

Tinsley

In the fourdays we’ve been here, Mikey and John have turned the quaint, blue painted lake house Briar rented into an impenetrable fortress. They’ve installed enough cameras and motion activated functions to rival the President’s private home. It’s not just in and around the house they’ve covered either. Their setup stretches down to the dock and out onto the lake about 500 yards in each direction so we have warning if anyone or anything comes down this way. There are even features on the security system to alert us of drones flying overhead.

The excess of high tech security is one of the compromises I had to make in order for them to also take a vacation. One that isn’t with me. That and a crash course in evasive driving for Briar.

I tried explaining to them we’re in a small town in East Tennessee, not some remote war zone with IEDs and insurgents. But they’re overprotective and I think having a small crisis of duty about leaving me alone.

Since we met eight years ago when I got mobbed leaving the grocery store and they rescued me—best unintentional job interview anyone has ever had—I hardly go anywhere without them. Even when I’m home in Bel-Air, one, if not both, of them is with me, each of them having their own permanent suite across the hall from my own.

I never complain about my situation. It comes with the territory and I’m well aware of the danger that comes with my celebrity—not just to me but those around me, even innocent bystanders. But after living this way for eight years, I desperately want to recapture some semblance of normalcy. Which is where Berry Falls comes in.

It’s the last place I can remember feeling completely at peace. It’s the only place that has ever felt like a true home. Not even where I grew up along the Ohio River in a small, overly affluent town outside of Louisville, Kentucky felt as warm and welcoming as Berry Falls.

As dual surgeons, my parents were always busy. Still are. At most I see them once a year—if I’m on tour, I’ll take about a three day detour from Nashville back home—and hear from them maybe once every three weeks. But only if I’m the one who calls. If I don’t, it could be as long as six or eight weeks before I get so much as an email.

Their demanding careers were how I ended up in the small Tennessee town alone for the first time. I had just graduated high school, and neither of them had been able to attend. After eighteen years of missed sporting events, recitals, talent shows, and canceled vacations, it wasn’t a shock or disappointment to me. It was simply reality.

It was also reality that while we had planned a family vacation to Berry Lake to finally use the condo they purchased when they got pregnant with me, I knew that if I went, my parents would probably not follow through on the promise to come when their schedules allowed it. I hadn’t cared one bit though. At that point in my life, I had already signed with my label and had a date set to return to L.A. in August to record my first album and knew it wouldn’t be long before I would be just as busy and career oriented as they were. But from Memorial Day weekend to August first, I was free and wanted to make memories. So I went home from my graduation and instead of going to parties, I spent the night packing my suitcases with the intention to leave for L.A. straight from Berry Falls, and I made the drive first thing the following morning.

Those ten weeks were the happiest of my life. Not that I haven’t been happy this last decade or that I’m not grateful for the incredible blessing I’ve been given with my success. But all of that is a different kind of happiness. One that highlights a glaring reminder of what Archer showed me.

Home isn’t a place, it’s a person.

And for a time, he was my person.

At least until I fucked it all up by leaving the way I did.

I’m not sure what I thought would come from my being here. It’s not as if I had some silly little daydream of running into Archer and us falling right back into that summer. At least, I didn’t think I did. Not until I saw him and the world tunneled in until there was only him, and all I felt was the furious thumping of my heart.

For a moment, I was filled with what if. The pain of my broken heart was gone. The nights of checking my phone for missed calls or texts only to cry myself to sleep when, once again, there was nothing from him were forgotten. Years of carefully crafted walls to block him from my mind so I could carry on crumbled.

He was here and so was I, at the very place we first met. His words an echo of the last time I had bumped into him. Every piece had fallen back into place.

In that moment, I believed we could fall back into one another. That we would. That maybe I wasn’t the only one still in love and regretting the foolish decisions made ten years ago.

But there's that beautiful little girl who looks just like him. Ellie, short for Eleanor. Named for his mama, something we had stayed up late one night in his bed talking about, naming the babies we would one day try to make together.

Every hope and what if that quickly swelled inside me deflated when I heard her talk about her daddy. Of course Archer moved on and found someone who is more deserving of his love and to have those babies with. Someone not stupid enough to run away from him but instead run to him.

And since then, I’ve been truly pathetic, mourning my loss of him all over again. Hair in an unbrushed top knot, not a stitch of makeup on, eating strawberry ice cream out of the container and drinking a sparkling strawberry rosé straight from the bottle while binge watchingHart of Dixie, pathetic.

“Okay, this ends now!” Briar firmly declares, throwing the curtains open. The dramatic effect is a little lost as dusk is settling over and we’re shadowed by the trees. She turns around so she’s framed in the window, hands on her hips, and says, “It’s been four days which is three too many.”

“But—”

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