Page 6 of Sunrise Arrows

Free of the bottleneck of paparazzi, Mikey asks, “Where to, ladies?”

“Hotel Bel-Air,” Briar answers, her phone already to her ear. “Booking us in now. Then after, I’m calling Will with the bad news about needing him to fly us to BFE, Tennessee tomorrow.”

“It’s not that bad,” I argue.

“Bad enough you haven’t been—Hello? Hi, I’d like to…”

I tune Briar out as she makes our reservation, rubbing at the tattoo along the outer curve of my left breast that’s become like a talisman since I got it nine years ago after I went back to Berry Falls.

The day I drove out there while on a tour stop in Nashville is the only time I’ve been back. Archer had just graduated Vanderbilt, and I wanted to see him again. See if all those plans we made were still as close to his heart as they were to mine.

It hadn’t gone well. I never even saw him. Or rather, he never saw me.

The road that eventually led me to where I am now in my career started that day. People love when my heart is broken. Little do they know, it never healed.

CHAPTER2

Archer

April in Berry Fallsis mild. The sun is high, the skies are clear, and the weather is progressively getting warmer. Humidity has yet to thicken the air, and everything smells fresh and new. The grass is lush and green again, trees are blooming from flowers to leaves, and the fields of strawberries the farmers plant each season are beginning to fruit and ripen as the days grow longer.

It’s a slow, gradual start to summer when everyone is a buzz with the harvest and tourists slowly begin to descend upon us for lake season. But out here on Emerald Lake Ranch, surrounded by the best of Berry Lake’s shore, there’s never a slow period or easy entry into any season.

Our 1,000 acre ranch has been in my family for over 225 years. Our ancestors settled this part of Tennessee when it was ceded to the federal government in 1790 and founded what eventually became Berry Falls. And in all that time, we’ve done one thing: breed and train horses. We started with work and military horses in the ranch’s earliest outfit, but as times changed and needs evolved, we got into the business of race horses.

My older brother, Ryder, handles breaking and training in all its capacity, from prepping horses to be racers to transitioning them into riding horses once their careers are over.

Hunter, my twin, handles everything to do with breeding and the care of foals and weanlings.

Our mom—who married into the Hayes name—has been working as a veterinarian here since finishing school, which is how she met our dad. She came for her dream job and found love at first sight. At least that’s how they always told the story.

In addition to floating wherever I’m needed on any given day, I handle everything to do with finance and accounting for the roughly two billion dollar net worth ranch. At least, it is when the market is having a favorable day.

Historically, April is one of our busiest months. Between the last of the foals being born from the previous breeding season, managing the current breeding season, Triple Crown and summer racing gearing up, training the new yearlings we’ve produced or acquired, the ranch is non-stop, sunup to sun down. And to top it all off, tax season has just wrapped up. No matter how much prep and organization I do throughout the year, April has a way of creeping up and steamrolling me. I could sleep for a week and not put a dent in what I owe my body.

But I love it. There’s never been anywhere else I’d rather be than out here surrounded by my family’s ever growing legacy.

Almost never.

For one brief summer ten years ago, the only place I loved more than my family’s ranch was wherever Tinsley Jacobs was.

I was home from Vanderbilt when she rolled into Berry Falls over the Memorial Day weekend for a summer's long vacation. From the moment I met her while waiting for our coffee orders at Berry Station, I was a goner. A certified fool in love, wrapped around her finger, and following her wherever her heart desired.

That brief flirtation led to me getting her number and taking her to dinner that night. And that turned into us spending every minute of every day we could together. Boating on the lake, driving through the endless back roads, dancing in the fields under star covered skies. She was the beginning and end of every one of my thoughts. The one I thought I couldn’t live without.

Going into it all, I knew better. Summer love was never designed to last. I had a year of school left, and she had just graduated high school with the world waiting to fall at her feet. Still, I wanted forever with her. Firmly believed that while her dreams and my obligations had us stretching in two entirely different directions, we could make it work. And I thought she had believed in it too. Had seen the same future I did. One where we were together. I had been so confident in it, I had been ready to propose to her.

All I had with her was that one perfect, beautiful summer. Ten weeks where I was hers and she belonged only to me. But she was always meant for more than this town—for more than me. Even then she belonged to the world. They just didn’t know it yet. But I did.

I never doubted for a moment that her dreams would not only come true but surpass her wildest imagination. I just thought I’d get to be with her when it happened.

They say time heals all wounds. But whoever said that is a bold-faced liar. That, or the person who broke their heart never went on to become a global pop sensation with household name recognition. Because Tinsley Jacobs is exactly that.

She’s not just a phantom of my memory I refuse to let go of, though she is that too. She’s every bit the star I knew she would become with her songs all over the radio world wide and her concerts selling out to tens of thousands every night. Even if I wanted to escape her, forget her existence, I couldn’t. Especially not now as her newest album,Summer Haze, is dominating damn near every radio station. An album she wrote at my side with my hand on her thigh ten years ago, singing and playing the songs on her guitar for me and me alone.

Over the years, with each one of her records, there’s been hints of our past shared. A chart topping single on each one that came from the journal she never left home without. The very one that had my name and hers linked together on the front in her messy, loopy script. Photos of me and of us tucked inside its pages. Our initials doodled in the margins from when her mind would be stuck on a line of lyrics and she would drift off to thinking of me until it sorted itself out.

Each of those songs is a reminder that slams into me when they play through the speakers of my truck. A reminder that we were once each other’s everything. That the things she sings about are memories I still remember as vividly as if they were yesterday. That I was wrong. That I can live without Tinsley Jacobs. I just do it with a broken heart.

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