Lonesome | Arthur Morgan

Chapter 22

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*Pre-warning for this chapter: Contains scenes of sexual assault and creepy male behaviour*

Lilian awoke to a silent house.
She rose from the sheets and walked to the simple oak vanity table facing the bed. Looking at her puffy eyes, she huffs and relays last night and how silly she had felt. She could not believe Arthur's reaction and his denial, he hadn't even been open to the idea of loving again which lead her to think how she really was more naive than she thought. Their kisses and caresses had now felt wasted. She begun to picture her being the one he could learn to love but knew she was not what he wanted.

Lilian began looking at the trinkets and the items Arthur had collected and placed in the room over the years. Luckily there was hair brush and pins to pull her champagne blonde hair up. She squeezed her cheeks to give some pinkness to them so she did not look so pale and once she was dressed she walked out of the bedroom, ready to feel the awkward tension.

Arthur was not there. However, she heard grunts and thuds coming from outside. Lilian wanders over to the window, seeing Arthur shirtless and hacking at logs with an axe, clearly letting out his frustration. She watches briefly, but moves away as she looks to the stove which has coffee prepared in a pot a top of it.
She pours herself a cup and waits for Arthur to make the first contact as she sheepishly leans against the counter top.

Arthur eventually stops his wood chopping and abruptly throws his axe to the floor, looking to the cabin as he makes his way up the porch. Lilian hears the large thuds on the wooden stairs before seeing Arthur make his way through the front door. The two of them make brief eye contact but look away. Lilian looks into her coffee cup, too nervous to talk as she replays in her mind whether she was in the wrong last night.
"I need to get you back home sooner rather than later. I need to start looking for the gang and I can't do that with you around."
Lilian looks up from her cup. She felt the air leave her lungs as Arthur stabbed at her with what felt like curse.
She did not know what she expected from Arthur but she did not expect this.

Lilian bites into the inside of her mouth. She believed it was no use clawing at Arthur for him to realise he was being irrational so she related to herself not to cry and suck it up.
"Okay." She can only manage as a response as she knocks back the rest of her coffee.

Arthur had expected more of a rise out of Lilian and looked her over as he tried to look for any sign of disappointment. Instead Lilian turns away, leaving her cup in the sink.
"Yeah I need to move on and have things to how they were. You're too much of a liability for me. You'll be safer at home." Would she though? Arthur did not know the answer either really, but his attachment to her was a dangerous game for sure and Dutch had been right about it all along.

Lilian can only nod as she takes herself from the room, greedily yanking the basket from the counter top and leaving towards the woods. Her tears fall as she walks, no cries, just pure stillness as her eyes blink away the streams. Whilst wanting to still be helpful, she forages what she can as she crouches to bushes for berries and nuts, lost and transfixed as carried herself away in thought. Miss Grimshaw and Abigail had taught her what to look for and what she could cook with whilst she was in camp.

Lilian sighed and looked up to the glistening sun that blared through the pines in the trees. Taking in a deep breath, she closed her eyes and alleys the warmth radiate her skin as she creates a plan for herself. She was sick of people choosing her life for her. She was sick of people telling her what was next for her and them planning the next chapter as if the book of her life was already written and published.
How could she go back home now?
She had a taste of what life was when it didn't go to the script and it had been delicious and enlightening.
She had learnt so much and experienced things people wouldn't even dream of. She would have to go back home and be married into her mundane life where she ate from polished silverware and exchanged the appropriate conversations for her gender. The itch of extremely tight corsets and unwanted male attention made her skin crawl and her skin flush red from anger.
She would not have it, Arthur could not drag her back there.
It was her now against everyone else, if Arthur does not want her then she was really alone now. She had a plan to leave here with her horse and never be seen again by the Van Der Linde gang or her old life. She didn't know how she would manage but anything was better than being a pawn in someone else's life.