Page 68 of Sunrise Arrows

“Shortcake, the whole reason I’m here is to be with you. Iwantedto come.”

She rolls her face down pressing one, then two, kisses to my skin, breathing me in. “I appreciate that so much. I just wish—and maybe I sound spoiled for wanting this considering everything I get in the trade off—but I wish we could just be us when we’re here.”

“What do you mean?”

Her hand roams over the rosebud patterned duvet that covers her bed, picking at an imaginary thread. Her room is no longer what it was in that video I saw what feels like a lifetime ago.

Pink gauzy curtains hang over her windows and pool into puddles on the floor. Distressed nightstands with elegant, Victorian lines flank her bed with giant cracked mercury vases filled with peonies and roses on top. Her bed is a curved, upholstered cocoon with gilded edges, and hanging behind it is a massive mirror in the same antique gold.

It feels like a home now, like her: soft and elegant with whispers of country charm.

“I love my life—especially now that I have you in it again—so please don’t think I don’t, because I do. I genuinely love what I do.”

“But?”

A resigned sadness colors her words when she continues. “But there’s so much more than the pretty dresses and the award shows and performing for sold out stadiums that people don’t realize.”

“Like what?”

“Like…” she tosses around, looking for something to illustrate the depth of her melancholy. “Like Paris. I’ve always wanted to go to Paris andseeit, you know? As a tourist. Stroll the Champs-Élysées to the Louvre and get lost inside. Eat my weight in macarons and crêpes and gaze upon Monet’s water lilies. Drink champagne at the top of the Eiffel Tower and watch it light up the night sky from Pont Alexandre III.” She smiles up at me and adds, “Lose an entire day making love to you in the hotel suite.

“This summer will be my sixth time performing there, yet I’ve never done any of those things. There’s never been time. I’m always too busy rehearsing, doing press, sleeping off jet lag or exhaustion from twenty shows in five weeks and twenty more to go, or hustling to the airport so we leave on time for our next stop. I’ve only ever gotten to experience the city through a hotel window.”

“Then I’ll take you and we’ll do it, all of it.”

Tinsley’s laugh is indulgent and hollow as she says my name. “Where in my schedule will you find the time? Not to mention, you would have toflythere.”

“I know.”

“It’s across an ocean,” she stresses.

“I know,” I repeat, tugging on her hair to kiss her. “Leave it to me—and Briar; we’ll make it happen for you.”

“Okay,” she placates, though I know she doesn’t believe it.

Letting it go to the table for now, I ask, “What else?”

“Simple things really. I miss being able to go to the grocery store without needing crowd control. I want to be able to eat a pile of Ames’s buffalo wings and a shortcake from Dream Brulée without guilt or worry of putting on weight, even if it’s just bloating. Go out to dinner and a movie with you and not be swarmed by paparazzi. I just want to do the things we do at home here. I have to be here at least some of the time, and I just want it to be home for us too.”

I reach for my phone and clear out the text messages Hunter has sent from my notifications and unlock it.

“What are you doing?”

“Taking you out, baby. You want to have a normal night, and I’m gonna make it happen,” I answer, searching what’s in the area. Finding a movie theater where we can dine in the screening room, I pull up their showtimes and hand my phone to Tinsley. “Pick a movie, Shortcake. I’ll change and grab you some clothes.”

“Archer, I can’t just go to a movie!”

“Why not? It’s less than three miles from the house, so I know they must get celebrities in there all the time. Only summer sessions are going on at the university nearby so the campus will be a ghost town, and it’s going on seven o’clock on a Tuesday night. Realistically, who is going to be out?”

“I can’t believe I’m even considering this,” she smiles, beginning to scroll through the listed movies.

“If you hurry, we’ll have time to stop in Whole Foods as well,” I tempt.

That does it. Tinsley springs up from the bed, racing past me to the closet as she starts talking about the actor in one of the movies as if she knows him. It’s as she’s shimming into her denim cutoff shorts that it dawns on me, she probably does. And for a moment, more than anything I’ve experienced with her since coming to L.A., hearing her talk about a barbeque at his house last Fourth of July reminds me just how brightly she shines.

I start to second guess if this is a good idea, especially since I plan to slip her out without John, who’s in the gym, accompanying us. But when she looks up beaming with excitement, my Tinsley shining brighter than anything the world gets to see, I push it away.

She makes me reckless in the best ways, and I wouldn’t change how free we make each other feel for anything.

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