He wasn’t writing about plans or heists anymore. Not about Dutch. Not even about the gang.

Just you.

Your name never appeared on the page, but your presence—your ghost—was scrawled in graphite and obsession across every inch of it. Sketches of your face, always unfinished, always changing—one with your head tilted back laughing, another with your brows furrowed in that way you got when you were focused. He’d drawn your hands more times than he could count, delicate and rough at once, the hands of someone who could cradle a wild thing or fire a rifle without blinking.

He'd even sketched your horse — twice. Once trotting beside his own, once resting under the trees. The smallest things had become sacred in his eyes.

He stared at a drawing of you sleeping — the curve of your cheek, the slight part in your lips — and traced over the lines again, darkening the shadows under your eyes, as if deepening them would make the memory more real.

“I’m a damn fool,” Arthur muttered under his breath, shutting the journal softly, but not before his fingers lingered on the page, reluctant.

The horse huffed behind him, nudging his shoulder with a warm snort.

Arthur chuckled low. “Don’t look at me like that. I know.”

He leaned back against the saddlebag, pulling his hat over his eyes, but it wasn’t to sleep. It was to think. Or to stop thinking. Neither ever worked.

“You’d like her,” he told his horse softly, voice rough with sleep and longing. “She’s got this way of walkin’ like she’s got a gun in her boot even when she don’t. Head high. Tough as hell. Smiles like she knows you’re lookin’, but won’t let you get too close.”

The mare flicked her ears.

“She talks to her horse like you’re listenin’. Makes me think maybe she’d talk to me like that, if I was lucky. If I wasn’t…”

He reached down and pulled out the journal again. Couldn’t help himself.

This time, he didn’t draw.

He wrote.

She rode out ahead of me today. Didn't look back. Probably didn’t think I noticed. But I always do. Can’t stop.

She says my name like it’s a question, and I wish I had the answer she wants.

I can’t give her this life. I can’t give her what she deserves. But damn me, I want to.

He closed the book, tighter this time. Sat still for a long while, listening to the wind rustle the grass. Thinking about your voice. Your laugh. The way you never asked him for more than he could give — which only made him want to give you everything.

From camp, your voice rang out faintly in the distance. Just a simple greeting to someone — but his head turned instantly, heart leaping like a hound on the scent.

Arthur didn’t answer. He never would. Not directly.

But he watched.

And he loved you quietly — the only way a man like him knew how.