may i stand unshaken [Arthur Morgan × OC]

Chapter 7

1899

The sun's rays filtered through the windows, gently touching my face. I involuntarily winced, wrapping myself more tightly in the blanket. The bed turned out to be the most comfortable place in the whole world, and I didn't want to leave it. Instead, I was dreamily basking in the sun. A warm palm gently touched the bare leg and slowly led up. I smiled involuntarily, trying to pretend that I was still asleep.

– Life on the ranch has relaxed you too much.

That slightly hoarse voice made me let out a quiet chuckle. His kind of southern accent with an admixture of the village dialect periodically forced me to listen more attentively. Sometimes I didn't understand what he was saying. Realizing that I was solved, I stretched sweetly, mumbling something inarticulate, and, without opening my eyes, clung to the man's body next to me, pressing my cheek to his chest. He laughed kindly and, putting his arm around my waist, pulled me closer to him. I threw off the blanket, and the morning sun bathed my back and legs with warmth. Calloused fingers gently fingered the red strands.

– Come on, it's time to wake up.

I muttered something and clung to him more tightly. Big, broad-shouldered. Male fingers touched my face and lifted my chin, leaving a soft kiss on the tip of my nose. I opened one eye. Stared at his beard, which hid a scar on his chin, bluish eyes that sometimes turned gray in a different light, thick brown hair slightly disheveled. He was smiling, squinting. A look full of warmth and affection. I didn't think he could be like that.

– Arthur?

I opened my eyes again. Stared blankly at the sunbeams coming through the window opposite. A crushing heaviness in the chest and an empty bed. Arthur wasn't here. I exhaled slowly to calm the trembling in my hands. Touched my face with palms, pressed fingers on the eye sockets and massaged. There was a smell of coffee and roast meat all over the house. I put my feet down on the wooden floor and looked around. For me the bedroom seemed huge, but for Richie it was small and ordinary. He had to move out of his parents' house and buy a new ranch to live with me. To be more precise, he didn't have to, he wanted it himself. Richard believed that I deserved to be in a house with beds, a private bathroom and a kitchen, and not to sleep in a tent on the ground and wash in the nearest river. The double bed was, as it seemed to me, too huge for the two of us. In the middle there is a large warm carpet. There was a closet in the corner, and against the other wall was a chest of drawers with a long mirror above it and a fresh bouquet of flowers in a vase. I threw a white man's shirt over my shoulders and, stretching my whole body, opened the slightly open door. Behind it was a large living room combined with a kitchen, from which the delicious smell of breakfast emanated. A fire crackled in the fireplace.

– Good morning, – I said, hugging the man from behind.

– Hi, darling, – Richie said with a smile, not looking up from the case. – Breakfast is almost ready.

Leaving a quick kiss on his shoulder, I sat down at a small table in anticipation. It turned out that Richard loved to cook and did it well. We no longer had to hunt to get food, now we just went shopping in the town. By the way, the ranch was located in the middle of the arid desert in the New Austin region, near the border with West Elizabeth. Well, Richard did not choose a very good place to live. Here gangs terrorized the local population even more than anywhere else. Immigrants, Mexicans, Spaniards — for them it was just a dried-up field of looting opportunities. But Richie just wanted to get away from everyone. His parents created their own oil production company, the success of which at one point began to turn into a large profit. They were not bad people, but with their troubles of the rich, which were not passed on to their son. Richard, though he looked like a man with money and behaved accordingly, but had completely different life values.