Page 56 of The Outlaw and the Heir

"You know your mother hates it when you don't sleep," he had told me, but there was no judgment or anger in his voice, just a statement of fact.

"I know," I had said softly, rubbing my eyes. "I can't sleep. I can never sleep."

"Why?"

"I don't know. I don't like sleeping. I want to be up. And I keep thinking about...things."

"What sort of things?"

"All kinds of things, everything I can think about, I suppose."

"Ah, I do the same thing."

"You do?"

"Yes. And sometimes I can't make it stop. I get up, and I work. But first, I try a little trick."

"What?"

"I track the time."

"How?"

And that was when he explained how to do what I’d been doing for the past few hours. It hadn't been easy for an eight-year-old to master, but I had been determined to learn. Not because I thought it would help me but because it was something my father liked to do, and I wanted to be just like my dad and be able to do everything he had done. Little did the boyhood version of me know, but the adult version of me would come to be grateful for that skill.

Now, though, it wasn't a way to get me to sleep but to keep calm as I waited until the right moment. Impulsivity was a quick way to the grave if you didn't get it under control. Restlessness was a cousin of impulsivity, and it paved the way toward it. It also deserved to be reined in before it got the better of you. So, I learned to tamp it down, leash it, and ensure it didn't get the better of me.

I listened to the sounds, adding them up in my mind, and knowing it was around the same time of night I went for my walks. The only difference was that I had a destination in mind, eager to get an answer to the question I had posed to Ambrose. It forced me to be cautious. Otherwise, it would get the better of me, and I'd find myself leaving early and risk getting caught.

I had left a few times before at night. I could slip out of my bunk without worrying about waking my bunkmates. For the first few weeks, the two of them had slept so lightly that evenmoving in my bunk woke them up. It seemed they had, if only in the deepest part of their mind, decided they were no longer in imminent danger and had started sleeping more deeply with every passing week. Now, I could move freely around the cabin without worrying as I pulled on my clothes and boots before heading outside.

One reason I enjoyed my nightly walks so much was that the air was manageable and didn't feel like someone had angered the sun. There was even a decent breeze out, a wind that blew steadily and carried the cool air, which was definitely an improvement over the stuffy air of the cabin since they hadn't bothered to remove the padlocks on our windows. From our door but not our windows. Whether that was an oversight on their part, a test, or just a way for them to twist the screws was up for debate as far as I was concerned.

I knew how to get to Ambrose's cabin, though I’d always avoided going near it until tonight. There was somethingtootempting about going near the cabin, and I was wary of that feeling. The last thing I needed was to risk getting tempted to...watch him. The fact that temptation might even be possible made me wary about Ambrose as it was, so I didn't want to make it worse.

Which was why, even though I was confident there was no one around to see me this late at night, I took my time before wandering toward his cabin. I needed to make sure I was absolutely in control of myself before reaching his door. Not that I didn't anticipate losing control once I got there, or at least that was the goal, but the moments leading up to it required control.

Well, there was also a small stop I had to make on the way.

My first stop brought me to one of the main storage sheds. Thankfully, I’d memorized the location of what I was looking for because it was nearly impossible to see despite the moonlight. I had to resort to feeling around until I found the container,dropping the bottle into my vest pocket. Was it technically stealing? Probably, but somehow, I thought that if Ambrose took me up on my offer, he wouldn't complain much about borrowing something that belonged to the ranch.

I closed the door behind me, took a deep breath, and finally approached where I knew Ambrose's cabin was. I was about halfway there when I froze, hearing a sound that stuck out among the normal sounds of sleeping workers.

"Please tell me that's you, Walter," I said in a low voice when I heard it draw closer.

His laugh rolled out of the dark, gentle but playful too. "Out again?"

"I could say the same thing to you," I shot back as he emerged from the shadows with a smile.

"Well, I'm not gonna get in trouble if I go for a little stroll," he said, though he didn't sound bothered by my possible rule-breaking.

"If they didn't want me to have a walk when I can't sleep, then maybe they shouldn't have removed the padlock from our door," I said with a shrug. "Or maybe they did that to trap me, and they're just waiting to see if I go too far so they can punish me further."

"Do you think?"

"It's something your boss would do."

"True, Mr. Isaiah is a shrewd one, and he's willin' to give people enough rope to hang themselves with."

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