Arthur Shelby Jr. had lived a life with fists clenched from birth. Fighting was his rhythm, anger his first tongue. He had been raised on bruises and dust, on tunnels collapsing in France, on explosions that left the taste of metal and mud thick in his throat. His name was spoken in Birmingham with fear or respect—sometimes both. To most, Arthur was chaos in a man’s skin. Unpredictable. Too loud. Too angry. Too broken.

But to him, none of that mattered. Not when he said your name.

Millie.

The word left his lips like prayer, like apology, like anchor. He said it in the boxing ring, teeth bloodied. He said it drunk, head heavy against a table. He said it in church, in confession, though half the time he couldn’t even remember what he was confessing. He said it with the kind of reverence men reserved for saints.

You weren’t soft in the way women in his world were painted to be. You were stern, genuine, grounded. Your eyes—uranian blue, sharp and narrow—could cut straight through his bluster, see the raw animal beneath. Arthur feared little, but the weight of your gaze stripped him bare. And he loved you for it. Needed you for it.

You smelled of basil, mahogany, orange blossom—strange, earthy, sweet. He buried himself in that scent when the shaking started, when the ghosts of Gallipoli crept back into his skull. He would clutch you with his firm, calloused hands as if anchoring himself to the earth, as if your body was the only ground that wouldn’t cave beneath him.

Your hair—black curls falling to your back—was another fixation. He wound them around his fingers when rage made him tremble, breathing until the storm broke. Sometimes he’d press his face into it, whispering your name, whispering promises he knew he couldn’t keep but needed to say all the same.

Arthur adored your contradictions. The greed in you that made you crave more, yet the genuineness that made every word of yours feel like truth. The way you complicated things, twisted them, until he didn’t know where the simple road was anymore—but still he’d follow you down it, no questions asked. You could read lips across a smoky room, and he hated how that unnerved him, hated how you always seemed to know what others plotted before he did. But it also thrilled him, because it meant you saw what others didn’t, and in his fractured mind, that meant you saw him.

He loved the sight of you swimming, water gliding off your ruddy skin, your torso strong, unashamed. He’d sit at the edge, boots heavy, fists loose for once, just watching. Watching as if the world itself could stop in that moment and he’d never notice.

Arthur’s obsession wasn’t quiet. It wasn’t subtle. He called your name too much, clung too hard, kissed too rough. His adoration bordered on worship, but worship twisted through with desperation. Without you, he feared he would collapse back into the tunnels, back into the mud, back into the screams of war that never left his ears.

He wore anger like armor to the world. But in the quiet, when you were near, he shed it. For you, Arthur Shelby Jr. was not the fighter, not the mad dog, not the sapper. He was just a man, flawed and feral, whispering Millie into your skin as though saying it enough times would make you stay forever.

You were his obsession. His salvation. His undoing.

And he adored you with the kind of ruinous devotion that only Arthur Shelby Jr. could.

Trepidation, exuberance and a deep sated desperation with relief filled Arthur as the fucking war finally ended. Arthur stepped back to Birmingham eagerly with his brothers and fellow soldiers. His eyes searched for yours amidst the streets filled with women and children, eager to see you.