Traveler trilogy Book 2, updates every Friday!
Five years after killing Levi Cornwall, Arthur Morgan is happy. He has a wife who loves him, an honest job he enjoys, and two beautiful children named Sadie and Hiram. All of it is turned on its head, h...
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Arthur couldn't sleep. He lay by himself in the room in Smithfield's, waiting with bated breath for Tori's return. All of the previous night and all day today, he'd been restless and unable to sit still. If he sat still for too long, the worry began to eat at him, convincing him Tori would no longer want to be married to a man whose heart had once been as black as his. If she came back and hated him for what he'd once been, he didn't know what he'd do. Without Tori, he was a broken man. A man with nothing. There were his children, he supposed, but they were also Tori's children, and in time she would tell them of the man their father truly was.
Either that or Tori would be foolish enough to continue in the bizarre belief that the Arthur Morgan who'd committed so many atrocities in the old days was a different man than the one she had married. In some respects it was true - he had changed and tried to do better, sure - but in others, he was still just the same. He still had a temper, for example, and many of his thoughts and desires and preferences were the same. He was still a natural with a gun, and a man who preferred the back of a horse over the wheel of a car. A man who shunned items like cell phones and computers.
He rolled over onto his side and stared out the window of the tiny room. The moon was full, and it cast a cold, silver light over his face and over the snowy tops of the mountains in the distance. The vastness of the world outside the glass made him feel alone. So alone. He sighed and turned onto his back, unable to stare at the world any longer.
Just when he thought the lonesome feeling would never go away, the door creaked open, and Arthur saw Tori's silhouette highlighted against the warm light from the brightly flickering oil lamps inside the hallway. As he watched, she closed the door behind her and began removing her dress without a single word.
"Want some help?" Arthur asked, his heart pounding so hard that his chest sounded like the beating of a drum. "I know you hate them buttons in the back."
Tori still said nothing, only nodded. Her face was agonizingly neutral, so he had no idea what she might have been thinking. Still, he said nothing for fear of provoking her. It wasn't until she'd taken down her hair and climbed into bed next to him, wearing nothing but her shift, that she spoke.
"You took my ring," she said at last, wrapping her arms around his body and pulling him to her so she could rest her head on his chest.
Arthur's fingers gently ran themselves through her long, silky hair, and he sighed deeply. "I didn't figure on that. I'm sorry, Tori. Maybe we'll get it back somehow. It ain't got any real value, after all, so I doubt I wanted to sell it. I probably just thought it looked kinda cool."
"I think you did too," she admitted. "It was like the other day. You looked at me like you had no idea who I was. You held a gun into my face as well. I was so scared of you for a moment."
"I told you, Tori. I ain't a good man. No matter what I did for John, I never really was. It only took me bein' back here to see that."
"Hush," Tori said gently, taking his face in her hands to kiss him softly on the lips. "You're too hard on yourself, Arthur. What I saw last night was proof of that. I remember you killing when you had to, and sparing my life because you refused to shoot a lady. The mask you hid behind broke when I told you I was pregnant."
