I let myself get sucked under and begin to count inside my head to stay calm. There's another sixty seconds according to the watch on my wrist and relaxing I let the tide take me out. A few bubbles leave my nose and I know I can do a minute. I've run, and thrown up, and tread water, I can do this.

With thirty seconds left it all goes to hell.

Because when my chest begins to burn and I close my eyes I'm not here anymore.

Instead I'm sixteen and being drug along the ocean floor unexpectedly ripped away from the world above water and from the life I knew in general. Because on that afternoon the sea had a mind of its own. Working with fate, or Poseidon, or Mother Nature it waited to select a soul meant to die.

Turns out the odds were not exactly in my favor.

I tell myself to calm down and I keep trying to count but my heart pounds angrily against my ribs insistent and determined to beat bloody from my body in panic. But I can't come out of it. The flashback hits and it hits hard.

Being dragged, pulled, and held down. That is what I remember.

My legs were like lead and salt stung my eyes and when in panic I tried to fill my lungs ocean rushed in. I couldn't breathe and oh how it burned until I thought my chest would burst.

The harder I tried and clawed and opened my mouth to scream more water poured down my throat, filling my head with an almost euphoric high.

That part was worse than the pain of my nails in the sand and the anguish of kicking and getting nowhere. Because as I ran out of air my body felt peace.

But my mind was frozen in panic.

Those final seconds as I drifted down the sun cut through bubbles. I could see the light shimmer fragmented by the water and the white clouds in the sky above it. I couldn't help but think it was truly beautiful.

Then my body quit fighting while I was trapped inside it…every second knowing that I was about to die.

I thought of Prim and how she was laying on the sand. How minutes before she had smiled at me with a ring of chocolate around her mouth and more dripping from the ice cream cone in her fingers.

I wished I had hugged her one last time.

The thought of my mother burying someone else she loved made my stomach hurt and I wondered if I would see my daddy again. If there really was somewhere else to go after this.

Memories of school flashed through my head and of Madge and her soft smile. I hoped she would find someone else to sit with at lunch. Someone who could appreciate her careful laugh and who would watch old musicals with her until the sun came up in her family's living room.

This lead to thoughts of Peeta.

Peeta her older brother who I practically grew up alongside and whose smile makes his eye crinkle in the corners and seemed to be the only human being able to charm a laugh from my chest when my father died. I think of the how much that meant over the years.

The years he made us both miserable and flicked the braids off my shoulders and chased us across their back yard playing freeze tag.

Or the way he looked this afternoon gold and gleaming watching from his tower. How he teased me standing there perfect and shirtless and how my cheeks had blushed a brighter red then the new shorts he wore.

I thought of why these past few months Peeta Mellark's smile has made my heart fall into my stomach and the empty ache of my chest nearly unbearable.

Because he saw me as a second little sister while I dreamed of him kissing me goodnight wondering what it would take to make him see me.

As my body settled onto the sand and the waves rolled above me I realized I would never know.

My eyes started to close and it began to feel good.

So when I saw him through the water I think I smiled. Because his eyes put the ocean to shame and if heaven sent me an angel they gave him Peeta's face.

I decided I liked that as I spread my wings to fly away.

Something was beating my chest. It hurt. It hurt and I wanted it to stop.

I was so tired. The peace was going away and pain was creeping in and my mind chased it.

But the lightness of the water was gone and there was no current towards angels or my father left to follow.

My lungs were on fire and I was still trapped in my body and someone was hurting me.

Then I heard Peeta's voice screaming my name. Cursing my name. Begging my name and yelling at me.

No I didn't want the pain I wanted the water. I wanted to fly. Please.

"Fuck Katniss!"

No please.

"Come on god dammit!"

Let me go. Let me go Peeta.

"No! No Katniss I can't do this! Fucking fight! Fucking fight Katniss!"

I tried to go.

I was ready and I almost felt my father take my fingers when suddenly water rushed from my lungs like an inferno and air rushed back in like broken glass.

I gasped. My eyes flew open and all I could see was blue.

Blue sky.

Blue eyes.

Peeta's eyes and spiked eyelashes wet with desperate tears and saltwater.

As I drug air in and felt Prim crash into my bruised chest I watched his face crumple and his head shake.

He wrapped his arms around both my sister and I and mumbled into my hair, "Fuck you. Fuck you Katniss."

"Katniss! Katniss what are you doing?!"

Peeta drags me up with his arm around my waist and with an angry tug he pulls me through the surf and doesn't let go until we are both on the shore the sand wet and stiff beneath my feet.

"What the hell was that?"

Pushing my wet hair out of my eyes I narrow them at him.

Judging by the look he gives me back he really doesn't give a shit.

"You had thirty seconds left and you panicked!" Water clings to his lips and runs down his nose as he angrily pinches the bridge of it. I watch a bead drip from the hair above his ear and travel along a vein in his neck and down over his shoulder.

It mesmerizes me even as I try to catch my breath and let embarrassed anger build a stone wall in my chest. Brick by brick I stack it until my voice drips with disdain he doesn't deserve and hatred that I know is actually a joke.

But my spine straightens as I look at him. "I didn't panic."

He scoffs. "Oh you fucking panicked. You only have two weeks till the test Katniss."

"Oh my god seriously Peeta! Do you really think I don't know that? Do you honestly think I could ever forget the damn test? I couldn't forget it when you ran literally on my ass for three miles every morning for the last two months. Or when you tell me I'm slow every other afternoon when we swim to the pier and back. Or like now when you get in my face and basically tell me this is a lost cause!"

Turning away from him I dig the swimsuit out of my ass not giving a shit about dignity as I try to march dramatically through the sand. That doesn't exactly work and within a few steps I feel his fingers cold from the ocean wrap around my forearm and spin me around.

He pulls me hard enough that my hair whips around and I actually fall into his chest with my arms pinned between us, my palms flat against his skin.

Normally his eyes look like the blue of where the ocean meets the horizon. Never have I seen a more stunning color but right now they are a shade darker. His jaw is clenched tight and he lets a hot breath leave his nose and I am so close it hits my cheek. For some reason it makes the skin on my arm pebble.

"You wanted this Katniss. You've talked about it for three years and I didn't have to be here. In fact I don't have to come back. But I've never said you are a lost cause. I believe you can do this. But I promise you it won't work if you can't get out of your head."

"I'm not in m…"

"Shut up." My mouth falls closed but he keeps talking. "You think I don't know you? I can see it in your eyes. You broke out of the water just now and you were sixteen again."

For just a second the panic is back and it really pisses me off so I bite my words as I glare at him. "I almost died Peeta. Kind of affects a person."

His fingers tighten for a second on my arms and his nostrils flare but he doesn't say anything.

When he does his voice is tight and low and I can feel it deep in my belly. "You think I could ever forget that? I was there too Katniss. I remember every minute of it. I was supposed to protect you. You almost died because of me."

His mouth comes closer with every word he says, "I found you. I had to drag you through the water counting every damn second knowing that as they passed it might be too late. I laid you pale and still on the sand and it was my ear that could hear your heart growing faint. I have never been so scared in my entire life. So don't you believe for a second that you were the only one affected that day. You don't get to fucking say that."

My heart is racing for some reason and I can feel his as it beats from his sternum into mine we are so close. I blink at him as he searches my face. I don't know what he is looking for but his intensity makes it impossible to look away.

The sun brings out freckles across his nose and cheeks every summer. It makes his hair streak and his eyelashes that tangle when he blinks almost white against the soft gold shade of his skin.

He's always been beautiful. I have to remind myself to forget it but it is impossible when his face is this close.

I don't know where the words come from but they fall from my lips anyway. "Why?"

I whisper, "Why were you so affected Peeta?"

There is a heat here that's never existed before and something in his eyes that I swear I've longed to see for years. I watch his throat roll as he swallows and his tongue pink as candy licks his chapped lips.

"I care about you Katniss. I always have."

I watch him. His eyes drift from mine and then to my lips and back up as his fingers become soft upon my arms. I feel his thumbs making small circles beneath my elbow and my stomach clenches.

When I lick my lips while watching his mouth a small sound leaves his chest and my eyes flash to his and fuck he has never looked at me this way.

Never looking away I ask, "Is that all?"

I lean forward a little as he stares at me. He blinks and I begin to rise up onto my toes as he pulls me slowly up his chest.

Our skin is wet and slick and cold.

Just as my eyes begin to drift closed and I can feel the heat of his mouth he whispers, "You're like my sister Katniss."

It's like he just shoved me off of him into the ocean behind us as I blink and stiffen and wrench out of his grasp.

His face falls and he starts to say something as he steps forward and reaches for me. "Katniss…?"

Humiliated I just shake my head and raise my hand to shut him up. "No. Oh my god I am done. I'm done. Thanks for all your help but I can go from here."

I turn to leave and after a few paces turn around to walk backwards. He has his hands on his head and a desperate look in his eyes that for a second lifts to hope when he sees me.

Backing away I say, "You're not my brother Peeta. You never have been."

His head and his shoulders falling are the last thing I see as I jog my way up the beach.

The breeze picks up and salt and sulfur blow over me as I slam the car door shut. It's loud in the parking lot full of cars. It seems we are late to arrive.

Every Friday there is a bonfire at the beach and normally I look forward to it.

But the crew that gets together has spread and grown and just happens to include Peeta. The four year age difference between Madge and I and his friends has kind of fallen away this last year since we turned nineteen.

Considering our fight three days before I was really not in the mood to be around him.

I made violent threats and played every stubborn card in my deck but as my best friend Madge was not hearing a word of it. My scowl is apparently not nearly as threatening as I have believed.

We both kick off our flips flops and I tug the hem of my old red sundress to my legs against the wind rolling in off the ocean.

You would think I would be threatened by the never ending blue of froth and foam. But the opposite has proven true. I feel like we are old friends. I respect and am likewise fascinated with its power.

A week after the incident as people called it I drove to the beach just as the sun rose. I needed to go back, to go in. Peeta just so happened to already be posted and I thought he was going to have a heart attack when he saw me wading in.

He stopped me by taking my hand. When I told him that it was something I had to do I watched conflict and fear cross his face. Then resolve and my favorite of his, compassion settle with a clench of his jaw and a squeeze of his fingers.

I remember looking down at them and enjoying the way they looked twisted with mine and when I met those blue eyes he said, "Together?"

I grinned at him. "Together."

The memory makes my stomach warm and my chest ache a little as we approach our crowd of friends about two hundred yards past the nearest lifeguard tower. I look up at it as we pass and that yearning churns in my belly. I want it. Since that day I feel like I was meant to stand up there.

There's a bonfire going and lawn chairs circle it along with coolers and someone's ancient boom box circa 1997 blaring music nearly two decades older.

Madge bails immediately to find Gale and I just smile at her when she shrugs at me backing away through the small crowd.

I grab water from amongst what looks to be the entire beer aisle of Panem Grocery in the largest igloo before snagging a lawn chair and watching the fire lick its way across the brush and driftwood stacked inside a circle of cinderblocks.

The oranges bleed into reds and it makes me think of sunsets, which only makes me think of him.

Just like that his voice carries across the sand. Just a simple roll of laughter I know as well as my own and as if brushed apart by invisible hands the crowd parts enough for me to see him. Of course he's shirtless. He always is at these things I'm just not normally pissed off and can appreciate the view.

A view it certainly is.

The ocean does wonderful things to Peeta Mellark's hair. It streaks it the color of honey in some places and white in others and the salt and humidity in the air makes it wave and lay unruly across his head. He always looks like he just woke up and the effect is adorable. This works for him with his boyish wide smiles and the dimple that flashes in his left cheek just beneath all his freckles.

That dimple has had the power to make me blush just about every day of my life for the last four years.

He has ridiculous bone structure and his body is just gross. By gross I mean his shoulders are broad as hell and his chest is sculpted. His stomach literally across the beach from me right now actually ripples and rolls when he talks, and laughs, and moves… each ab a reflection of the miles he cuts through the ocean behind him.

I watch him bring a beer to his lips and as if he can feel my gaze on him he turns and our eyes meet beyond the flickering fire. It casts shadows across his cheeks and jaw as it sets and he just inclines his head slightly before looking away and draining the drink in his hand.

I ignore the flip of my stomach when instead of coming to greet me he turns and actually walks as far away as possible to talk to a group of people gathered by the surf.

I make it about two and a half hours before I have had enough of people. They aren't actually my strong suit in the first place so once I make sure Madge has a sober ride home I turn and leave. I make my way slowly through the sand with my flips flops hanging by my fingertips.

When I reach the tower the drone of voices is drowned out by the crash of waves as the tide becomes my favorite music. I take a deep breath of salt and sea and back my way up the ramp to lean against the weathered wood overlooking the ocean. The moon is full and silver in the sky and I see it reflected as if sitting on top of the water. The night makes it look black and silky.

I let out a soft sigh as the tension of the week seems to be drawn away with each crash upon the sand.

Then a voice just a foot behind me says, "It's beautiful isn't it?"

I jump slightly as I spin around pinning my back to the railing.

Peeta sits leaning against the locked door of the bungalow that makes up the tower with his legs stretched out in front of him and what looks to be an almost empty six pack at his hip. He smirks at me as I try to catch my breath. He's not exactly known for being able to sneak up on anyone.

As my face falls his smirk grows to a grin. "Fuck I love when you scowl at me like that."

If possible this comment just makes me scowl harder.

His head falls back against the wood as he brings the dark glass to his mouth. I watch his lips move and his throat bob as he swallows. He just watches me back.

His blue eyes are a little hazy but the buzz he seems to have only makes them shine even brighter in the moonlight. He tugs a little at his hair and the combination is endearing as hell.

"What are you doing here?" My voice is softer than I expect.

Pulling the beer away with a small pop he laughs softly squinting up at me, "Well sweetheart technically I work here. So I guess I should really be asking you that question."

Crossing my arms over my chest I nearly want to smack him for calling me sweetheart but he just keeps grinning up at me.

He points with his bottle over my shoulder when he asks, "You really love it don't you?"

Looking I watch the waves. Whether they shine black like now, or shimmer green and blue I do. I love it.

I just nod.

When I look back at him I take a moment before I whisper, "When my dad died something broke in my mom. But something else happened in me. Whatever was in there was sharp and angry. I could feel it building like all the time. I guess I know what it feels like to have a calm looking surface when really a storm is hiding underneath."

Taking a deep breath I shrug, "That day I learned that…having that inside me doesn't make me broken. It makes me strong I guess. So yeah. I love it."

I blush a little when he stares at me as my words are carried away a good thirty seconds before he says anything at all.

When he does it isn't what I was expecting. "I hated it."

He looks out as the waves crash and not at me.

Shaking his head rage crosses his face. "That day made me hate it so much I didn't know what to do with it. I was so angry. So sick and furious that it almost took you away. I literally felt like I was losing my mind."

My hair blows in front of my face as I swallow when he looks up at me so intensely that a fire begins to burn in my belly. "I don't know what I would have done Katniss. If you had died I… I mean there wouldn't be anything…"

Letting his head hang forward he shakes it and begins to peel the label from his beer.

I watch him close his eyes. "What I said to you the other morning. I didn't mean it. It's just something I tell myself over and over again every time you're close…I know you're not my sister Katniss. I've never thought of you that way."

He sighs. "I mean it was always in different ways but you've pretty much enchanted me since you first came to our house. When you were five and your eyes made me think of the silver surfer."

This makes me laugh softly and he opens one eye as he smiles back at me. "Or when you were nine… I loved listening to you sing. You and Madge used to jump rope when I'd play basketball and sometimes I'd pretend to tie my shoe just to listen. I mean it was mostly little things but I just know that from that first day, every day that you were around was better."

"It got a little confusing later on. Because you got older and I didn't understand what I felt. It stopped being about having you around and having fun. Still these thoughts would pop into my head and I couldn't get them out. I mean when you were fourteen I was horrified that I wanted to punch that kid that took you to your eighth grade dance. The one with the chin acne and the lisp. I mean I was eighteen and in my head it was because you were like my sister. This made sense when I saw him looking at your ass. What confused the hell out of me was why seeing him hold your hand made my stomach hurt."

My palms are sweating and I can hardly keep up with what he is telling me.

Looking up at me he sets his jaw. "I knew you weren't my sister Katniss when that summer. THE summer when you were sixteen and I came home from school my heart fucking stopped when I saw you walk up in your swimsuit. It was that green thing with the strings and oh my god you were gorgeous and gold skin and I made some dumbass joke to piss you off so I could leave because I thought I was going to throw up. I was twenty and I knew it was wrong and I thought something was seriously fucked up in my head. But I couldn't stop watching you. I was always watching you…and hell every time I did I would catch you watching me back. I went crazy that summer. You drove me so god damn crazy. Then you nearly drowned and right in front of me and I just couldn't lose you. Katniss that stupid day I realized that wrong or not I was fucking gone over you. I have been ever since. I probably always will be and it's probably wrong but I just can't care anymore."

He lets his head fall back against the wall again and his eyes shine with frustrated tears. My heart actually hurts it is pounding so hard as I take a step closer until I put one foot between his knees and look down at him, my toes brushing his leg.

The breeze blows the hem of my dress and it nearly brushes his face but he catches it in his fingertips. He twists the red fabric before he lifts it slightly and runs the back of his nails up and down my calf stopping at the back of my bare knee. He watches his hand move intently staring at the way it makes my legs shake.

Leaning forward he rests his forehead there the beads of sweat from his hairline running onto my skin. I shiver when I feel the heat of his breath as his whispers words against me. "I'm tired Katniss. I am so tired of wanting you and doing nothing."

My head falls back as his lips brush a soft kiss to the edge of my thigh. My arms hang at my sides, hands clenching and unclenching and then finally anchoring in his hair as I pull his head up to look at me.

His lips are wet and his hair feels like satin between my fingers as I look into his eyes. "Then stop. Please do something."

I hold my breath and watch his pupils fatten and his chest lift and fall as he takes deep shuddering breaths that leave his open mouth.

Then with a shake of his head and a deep groan both of his hands fly up and his fingers twist into the skirt of my dress as he pulls me down over him, against him, and my thighs fall open as my mouth falls under his.

He doesn't go slow or soft. He kisses me hard. He bruises my lips with his mouth and the words that incoherently tumble from it. Within seconds his tongue is chasing mine and I can taste the malt of beer and the salt of sweat.

I dig my fingers into his shoulders and his hands pull frantically at my hair and I moan loud when he yanks my head back to bite along my neck. His teeth and his tongue nip and soothe my jaw and up behind my ear and when his lips brush there he starts to whisper things in between his kisses.

I bite back and suck his bottom lip between both of mine and swallow every desperate greedy sound he makes until I can feel them beating beneath my ribs with my heart. He curses when I roll my hips against his and his hands draw up my skirt so his palms can run along my thighs. I feel his callouses and taste the sweat of his collarbone as his fingers brush the edge of my panties making me release a sigh of hot air into his mouth.

"Fuck Katniss." He pulls me so my breasts flatten against his bare chest and drags his lips wet and open along my shoulder dragging the faded strap of my dress down my arm far enough to nudge one breast free with his nose.

His mouth is hot and wet as it closes around it and it makes my back arch so fast it hurts. When he uses his teeth I pull his hair and thrust forward against him each roll of my hips making me delirious. I can feel him. He's big and hard right where I am wet and it feels unbelievable.

With a grunt he releases my breast, the skin at the tip and his mouth are shining wet in the moonlight as he wraps his hands under my ass before stumbling to his feet with me in his arms. I keep kissing him and that with the alcohol in his system makes him fall back slightly against the wall and I laugh as he curses and smiles beneath my lips hoisting me up and moving again.

He digs a key from his pocket and after three tries and some seriously creative profanity he nudges the door to the tower open and we fall through it to crash onto a small medical bed against the wall. Peeta tugs the front of my dress down completely and groans when I am bare to his eyes and his hands.

He licks and sucks until I am nearly incoherent and when I don't know how much more I can take his hands drag up my skirt until it bunches at my waist with his fingers falling under the elastic of my panties and dragging them down my legs as he settles on his knees in front of me.

I can't breathe and Peeta is just staring at me licking his lips and running his hands up and down my thighs like he's not sure what to do.

Finally he kisses my knee and looks up at me.

Those lashes are so damn long.

"Is this okay?" His voice is choked and it almost makes me smile as I nod.

He nods back but still doesn't move yet just leans up a little higher and kisses my thigh which by now is trembling beneath his lips. I feel them move against my skin when he whispers, "I want to taste you."

He says it like it is a question.

My hair is tangled and strands of it stick to my mouth and my breasts shake as I try to breathe with him between my legs. Just seeing him there, those blue eyes wide watching me, and his lips swollen from being on mine makes me so dizzy I might cry.

My answer comes out part choked needy laugh, part desperate plea. "Yes. God yes please."

He's moved so slow I expect him to finish kissing his way up my leg but instead he surges forward and his mouth is suddenly there groaning into my body as his lips open around me.

I'm wet and his tongue is slick and warm and he wastes no time as it dips inside of me. His arms push my legs open and my toes curl into the air as my hands find his hair.

When I pull he curses against me and the vibration of it makes my mouth fall open and my head fall back. He tastes me and nips with his teeth making me thrust against his face. I can't seem to help it.

When he pushes two fingers inside me I arch off the table just as he sucks my clit between his warm wet lips.

I can't stop writhing. Words that make no fucking sense are falling out of my mouth as my hips roll. I scratch at his scalp as he looks up watching me when with a final curl of his fingers and draw of his mouth I come hard.

It makes tears leave my eyes and even though my mouth is wide open all sound is trapped in my chest beneath the quaking beat of my heart as my body clenches and bears down on his fingers and against his tongue.

I'm a trembling mess as he kisses his way down my legs before slipping my panties past my feet and pulling them up. With a glazed lethargic smile I watch him tuck my breasts beneath my dress and secure the straps over my shoulders. His hair is a mess from my fingers and his mouth is pink and slightly shining with me and when he catches me staring at him his grin is so white in the dark room it is nearly blinding.

I smile back and after he kisses me again and wraps his arms around me I lay on his chest with his fingers drawing circles up and down my spine.

Leaning forward his lips meet my shoulder, then my neck, and when they reach my ear he whispers, "Definitely don't think of you like a sister."

It is so gross and ridiculous I can't help but feel the warm heat of laughter climb from my stomach up my throat only to leave my lips which he swiftly kisses away before I lay back and drag him on top of me.

We spend the rest of the night doing all kinds of things that I am pretty sure would be illegal if we were related.

Two weeks later he's there to drag me out of the ocean again. This time to spin me in a circle and press a kiss of congratulations to my mouth. He tastes like sunshine and salt.

Later that night we sit together watching the sky catch fire as the ocean burns in his favorite colors.

I lean back against his chest watching the waves crash violent and beautiful against the sand and take a moment to be so grateful that I didn't get to fly away so many years ago.

I'm grateful for the feel of his pulse beating into my back and his warm breath against my neck and grateful for the hands that are clasped in mine and anchored over my heart.

Grateful for the day they kept it beating.

Because Peeta couldn't let me go.