Running with Rogues

EPILOGUE

Not for the first time, something slimy touched my toes, and I decided it might be best to get back in the boat. A few lazy strokes took me back in that direction, and Liam dipped his paddle into the water to meet me halfway.

"Better than running?" he asked. "Or worse?"

"Worse, obviously. But in a few months, it'll be too cold to swim, so I'll make the most of it."

It proved harder to clamber back into the kayak than I'd been expecting. Partly because I nearly capsized it in the process, and partly because the seat I'd been trying to climb into had been filled with fish in my absence. But I made it, with some help from Liam, and then I sat in the bow, hugging my knees to my chest. Now that I was out of the water, I could feel the wind nipping at my bare skin, and it left a hundred little tooth marks behind.

A towel was wrapped around my shoulders from behind. It was soft and warm, and it smelt like Liam, so I was smiling to myself as I pulled it tighter still around my body. It certainly kept the wind off. If I let my head rest against his shoulder, I could just about see his face — the faint freckles, the curve of his lips, and those adoring dark eyes.

I tipped my head back a little further to kiss the soft place under his jawline, where I knew the skin was a little too sensitive. Before long, I could feel the gentle reverberation of laughter deep in his chest. He wrapped an arm around my waist and squeezed a warning. But if I'd really wanted to tease him, I'd have moved my lips a few inches lower and found his mark.

"We caught a fish," a little voice mumbled before we could get too carried away.

Lilah's daughter was pretty cute. I'd say that for her. And she was gaining confidence with every passing day now that she was going to nursery. I'd been horrified at the idea of children as young as her being subjected to school, but she seemed to like it, and the one time I'd taken her there, I hadn't seen them doing much work, in all honesty. Just a whole lot of playtime. So maybe the flockies weren't as sadistic as I'd imagined.

Today, she was wrapped up in a life jacket and so many layers of clothing that I was surprised she could move. Her mam was a tiny bit overprotective, to say the least. If she had been born a rogue, she would be swimming by now.

"Yeah, you did," I told her. "Now we just need to cook it, mm? Get it nice and hot to kill the germs. I could do with being cooked right now, if I'm being honest. It was warmer in the water than it is up here."

"Wuss," my sister laughed from across the water. She, too, had been swimming, albeit not for very long, so she was in the same boat (not literally). Her t-shirt was soaked through and clinging to her. A few months ago, she would have been shivering like crazy, but she had managed to put on a decent layer of fat since arriving at Silver Lake. It was keeping her warm, it meant she had some weight to spare for the next time she went downhill medically, and if you asked me, she was now looking healthier than she had in a long time.

She had also fallen fiercely in love with the new 'tiger stripes' across her thighs and stomach. She'd asked me if she would get to keep them, even if she lost the weight again, and it had made me think about my own stretch marks a little differently. I remembered one of the camp girls telling me they were ugly and that I should put some cream on them so they wouldn't show as much, and yeah, maybe that had stuck with me more than I'd realised. But a body without any scuffs or marks was a body that hadn't been lived in.

Bryn let his canoe knock against ours. It was enough to make our little passenger giggle and lurch in her seat. I hauled her up onto my lap for safe-keeping, well aware that Lilah would be watching and stressing on the shore.

"This place is wild. I've caught more fish in half an hour than I have in my entire lifetime," Bryn told me, gesturing to his boat. He was indeed surrounded by a lot of silvery scales, but it was most definitely an exaggeration. "Doesn't anyone, like, fish here?"