Page 23 of Sunrise Arrows

Her drowsy eyes crack open and search my face.

“She has your eyes.”

“Yeah, the same as Ryder and our dad.”

“So she’s not yours?”

“No, baby, she’s not mine,” I confirm.

Tinsley nods her head slowly, her eyes falling back closed as sleep finally claims her.

I hold her there on the bathroom floor for a few minutes longer, soaking in the part of me that’s been missing, trying to fill myself up with her before I leave and tuck her confession away with the rest of my memories.

When I start to drift off as well, I pull back. Standing up, I easily pick her up and carry her upstairs to an open bedroom overlooking the lake. I lay her down in the slated iron bed and pull the fluffy comforter from one side over her body, tucking her in. Before I leave, I bend down and kiss her forehead, offering her one middle of the night confession in exchange for the one she gave me, though she won’t hear mine.

“I only want babies if they’re with you.”

Then, after turning the fan on, I head back downstairs. In the girls’ kitchen, I find bottles of fancy electrolyte water in the fridge and grab two. I also remove two bananas from the bunch hanging from a fruit basket on the counter and quietly open the drawers and cabinets until I find a bottle of non-acetaminophen pain killers mixed in. I run everything back upstairs, dividing it between both their nightstands.

And because I can’t resist, I leave a note for Tinsley on her pillow with my hat before heading out, giving a two finger wave to a camera I spot above the front door.

And though I said I wouldn’t, when I lay down in my own bed, I think about her wish and what it could mean for us before falling asleep.

CHAPTER7

Tinsley

If I don’t leave now, I never will.

A

PS: Keep the hat. You always looked better in my stuff than I did. And in case you forget in the morning, Ellie is my niece.

I re-readArcher’s note and run my fingers over the indentations from the press of the pen.

After waking up the morning following my bar top debut, I found it on my pillow with his ivory colored cowboy hat. Like a giddy teenager, I had squealed and kicked my feet in the comforter, hugging the small scrap of paper to my chest. I then immediately pulled out my journal and taped it on the left side of a blank page and started writing.

Two and a half days later and both pages, plus several more, in the journal are now a mess with my sloppy handwriting. Lyrics flow into things I wish I could tell him and those things drift back to the song I’m creating. Along the margins are doodles of hearts, little strawberries, horseshoes, and his name traced over dozens of times.

I know I’m getting ahead of myself. A drunken night in his arms on the bathroom floor and a note with his hat quoting my words back to me does not equate to a rekindling. There’s ten years of history and growth between us, a hundred unanswered questions and motivations lacking explanation, and a mountain of scars and hurt to traverse through.

All this could simply be an echo of before. But rays of hope are peeking over the horizon and cresting into view.

I want to run toward them and feel the caress of its promised warmth on my face. Spin in their light. Dive head first back into the very thing that broke my heart and kick to the surface in time to see the sunrise.

There’s been a growing call to remember him, to come home. I thought it was so I could purge Archer from my system once and for all. But so much still exists between us. The unignorable magnetic pull. The crackle of chemistry. The reckless fall into one another. The desperate craving for more. More of his words, his touch, of him.

I didn’t do everything I could have before. I fell so far, so fast, and so deeply. It terrified me, and the fear eclipsed everything else. So I ran and ended up irrevocably piercing my own heart. Cried for nights on end when he didn’t come to mend what I had unknowingly broken between us. Took his silence as reason not to reach out myself. Ran again when the self fulfilling prophecy I whispered into existence came true.

I didn’t do everything I could have before.

It won’t be a mistake I repeat.

My left hand feels the press of his words again as my right scribbles across the opposite page, laying down more words. Words that are my new promise to him, to myself.

I get lost in the lyrics and melodies bouncing around inside my head waiting for me to pluck each piece and string them together. I hum. I sing. I pace. I rub at the tattoo along the curve of my breast while I think. Then I write every word and note before doing it all again.

Intermittently, I pause to twirl and dance my way around the charming, shabby chic kitchen of the rental.

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