“Perfect,” I muttered, my jaw tightening. “Final boss fight.”
Before I could even formulate an approach—angle of attack, distance to cover, odds of hitting anything in the dark with arms made of overcooked pasta—a voice cut across the water, sharp and clear, carrying the unmistakable authority of someone who meant every single word.
“Turn around and go back where you came from before I shoot you.”
I froze, paddle suspended mid-stroke, dripping above the water. That voice.
I knew that voice.
I knew it the way I knew my own name, from years of family dinners and childhood fights.
No way.
No goddamn way.
“…Callan?” I called out, my voice cracking so badly the name barely made it across the water in one piece.
A beat of silence.
One second. Two.
The figure on the dock shifted, the gun lowering by a fraction.
Then—
“Finn?”
Everything in me just… let go.
“Yeah,” I rasped. “Yeah, it’s me.”
The kayak drifted the last few feet on its own momentum as I stopped paddling entirely, the hull gliding through the dark water with a soft hiss until it bumped against the dock pilings. A gentle, hollow thunk that sounded like the most beautiful thing I’d ever heard.
Callan dropped the gun immediately and moved fast, crossing the dock in three long strides before dropping into a crouch at the edge, one hand already reaching down.
“Jesus Christ—” He grabbed my arm, his grip locking around my forearm like a vice, and hauled me upward with a strength that made my exhausted body seem weightless. “What the hell—how did you—in a kayak?”
“Take the Cat,” I said, shoving the carrier toward him with my free hand before he could finish any of the twelve questions clearly competing for priority in his brain. “Get the cat first.”
He blinked.
Looked at the carrier.
Looked at me.
Looked at the carrier again.
Then barked out a laugh—short, sharp, edged with disbelief—that echoed across the water behind me.
“Of course you saved the cat,” he said, taking the carrier. “Of course you did. You paddled a kayak across the open ocean in the dark, and you brought a cat.”
“Shut up,” I said, my voice rough as I gripped the edge of the dock and tried to pull myself up with arms that had all the structural integrity of wet rope. “Shut up and help me onto this dock before I fall in and drown three feet from shore.”
He set the carrier down, grabbed me with both hands, and hauled me up and over the edge like a sack of potatoes.
The moment my boots hit solid ground, my legs gave out. Both knees buckled simultaneously, every shred of energy draining as my body registered it no longer needed to balance, paddle, steer, or fight. I dropped hard, sitting right where I landed, my back against a dock post. My chest heaved, and my arms, hanging at my sides, trembled in long, rolling waves I couldn’t have stopped if I’d tried. Saltwater dripped from my hair, clothes, and hands. The wood beneath me creaked, groaned, and held. Its unmoving, unwavering, fixed solidity—something that didn’t rock, drift, or threaten to tip—almost made my eyes sting.
“Girls?” I managed, the word a strangled sound.
