I stop my car two miles out of town and climb out to pace up and down, shaking my hands at my sides and trying to pluck up my courage. I've had five hours of driving to think about what I'm going to say to him. All night long when I couldn't sleep. Several hours last night of wine drinking and packing and two very drunk and unhelpful friends who suggested everything from grovelling to serenading him to Jo's plan of just stripping naked in front of him. Why am I friends with them again?
I've almost convinced myself that I was right last night and he's probably already moved on, fallen into the comforting arms of Delly Cartwright and forgotten all about me, when a truck drives by me and stops, backs up to where I am. The window rolls down and speak of the devil, Delly Cartwright leans out and greets me.
"Katniss? Are you back for a visit already?" I should answer, but I'm too busy staring at the massive diamond on her left hand. A man leans forward in the driver seat to speak to me around her.
"Afternoon, Miss Everdeen. I hope there's no hard feelings about me tasing you," Thom Buckley says and I nearly laugh, because he's got lipstick the same exact shade as Delly's mouth smeared all over his neck and cheek. Her mother only sees what she wants to see and not what's really there. Like the fact that Delly was apparently interested in the deputy and not the sheriff.
"No hard feelings, Thom."
"Glad to hear it. How long are you staying this time?"
"No idea," I tell them. They toss hopes that I have a good visit through the window and then drive off, leaving me to climb into my car, feeling slightly braver about what I'm about to do. I pause with one foot in the door and look around me, listen to the woods that line the road as they come back to life. Calm washes over me. This feels oddly right, and it is that feeling of rightness that propels me the rest of the way into town.
It's a Saturday, so I head straight for the bakery. I'll probably catch flack from my mother later for not immediately telling her that I'm back in town...again, but I'm hoping the results will diffuse her anger.
Once my car is parked, I grab my box and march right up to the door. I thought about warning him that I was coming to see him, but Johanna insisted that a surprise attack was best, to prevent him from running or hiding before I got a chance to grovel a little. The part of me that's still not as brave as I could wish, that still thinks he won't want to have anything to do with me, went along with her suggestion.
The windows are open again and I can hear his music. Since the door is propped open as well, I don't bother knocking and head straight in. The walls are up, the lighting is hung, and counters installed - currently covered in tarps to protect them from paint. He's been busy the past month and a half or so. But my eyes are drawn irrevocably to the man standing on a ladder, painting a mural of the mountains at sunrise and blanketed in a layer of fog. One paintbrush in his left hand and another caught in his teeth, his blue eyes staring at me. As I drink him in, he slowly lowers his left hand from the wall and removes the second paintbrush from his mouth.
He looks good. Amazingly so. His eyes are clear and bright, if a little wary, like he hasn't bothered to be upset over my absence, and it only brings my fears tumbling back to the surface. Because I realize now as I'm looking at him that I missed him so much it aches deep inside me. It feels suspiciously like homesickness and homecoming all rolled into one.
"Sorry, ma'am. We're not open yet. And we don't have any coffee," he says in a flat tone. Well, I've come this far. Might as well see it through to the end.
"That's actually what I came to see you about," I say and spin around to set my box on the edge of one of the tarp covered counters. I pull out and set up a small chalkboard with the drink menu I threw together last night while I was running on wine and heartache. Then out comes my binder with my business plans for the first franchise, hasty scribbles written in the margins, adjustments to make it work for a partially constructed location in Twelve Willows, West Virginia.
"I happen to run a coffee shop that is looking to branch out. To franchise. And what goes with cakes better than coffee?" I turn around to face him just as he's stepping off the ladder and shoving his hands in his pockets.
"Sounds like a pretty good pairing to me, but I suppose some people would disagree."
"Then they're scared or blind or maybe both," I say. "I'm going with mostly scared because it's not exactly easy working your whole life for the perfect cup of coffee only to realize it's no good on its own. I mean, some people would put tea with their cakes instead."
Peeta lifts one eyebrow at me and then shakes his head. "Katniss, could you please just get to the point?"
"I get to pick the location of the first Daily Fix franchise. You need a drink menu for your bakery and I happen to have a great one already in place. And I noticed there's nowhere to get a decent coffee around here, so we'd basically have a corner on that market."
"You came all the way back here to make a business deal?" he asks, scrubbing a hand up and down the back of his head, messing up his hair. "Why here? Why not any other podunk town in West Virginia or Pennsylvania that doesn't have a decent coffee place? You'd have no competition there either."
"They don't have what I'm looking for in a partnership. You do," I blurt out and his eyes go wide. And this is where I stall, because I'm no good at this. "The bakery's coming along nicely. So how's your day job going?"
I almost kick myself for bringing it up, but Peeta shrugs. "Guess you left so soon after we closed the case that you didn't hear the details. Final ruling was that Brigham's death was an accident."
"How is that possible?" I ask, holding my breath because this is something that Madge didn't tell me, and I don't understand why not.
"Too many conflicting stories, no reliable witnesses, no murder weapon, left us with no real suspects."
"Oh," I mumble.
"Did you know they had a sprinkler system put in last year? Right before winter set in and man did Miles Birch give me an earful about how that was a terrible idea. Apparently he told Brigham that several times, but he did it anyways because it was for the mayor. Anyways, turns out there was a brief power surge that day, messed with the clock on the sprinkler system timer. Damn thing went off at one in the morning instead of five. Brigham must've slipped on the wet grass, hit his head on one of their landscaping stones and managed to drag himself across the yard before passing out. Then the blood loss and trauma to his brain eventually killed him."
"Seems a bit far fetched," I say and want to smack myself, because he knows it's far fetched and yet he doesn't seem angry or upset about it and would've had to sign off on changing the initial ruling and replacing it with the lie-filled story without any real evidence to back it up. Risking his job once more to protect Madge. And me. And I wonder if he would've concocted this accident storyline even if I'd been open with him and told him the truth about Brigham's death. The speed with which he closed the case makes me think he might have. And it's then that I realize just how wrong I've been about Peeta. What he meant when he told me he couldn't protect us if we didn't trust him. If I didn't trust him.
I'd been operating on the assumption that Peeta would follow the letter of the law, live by the rules, rather than recognizing that the boy who lied about setting fire to a chemistry lab and took a beating from his mother as a consequence to protect me just might've grown into the man who would lie about a murder and risk lawsuits or jail time or the town's distrust and hatred to protect me again. That maybe he only wanted the truth to help him make the lies more convincing, or to know that it was the right thing, if not the legal or honest one, to do. To make sure it was Madge or me he was taking risks to protect rather than some unknown killer. Or just because he wanted me to trust him. Because that's what you do when you love someone.
"No more far-fetched than him dying because of a poisoned strawberry pie," he says and his lips twitch in the first signs of a smile.
"She's happy, Peeta. She's happy and she's free. Isn't that what we both wanted?" I ask and he nods.
"We probably could've put together a good case for self-defense, but the people of Twelve Willows made it clear. This is one mystery we didn't want to see solved."
"Are you okay with that? You're not worried about losing your job?"
"No one's come forward demanding I step down so far, not even the new mayor. Although I don't think I'll run for reelection. It would feel...dishonest. I still have this, though," he says, looking around the bakery, which brings us back to my proposal.
"So, about my franchise idea," I say and Peeta shakes his head.
"Thanks, but it's not a good idea, Katniss. I'm not looking to get burned again."
"Well maybe you shouldn't drink your coffee that fast. Sometimes you have to give it time to cool down a little and figure out what it wants," I blurt out and now his lips really are trying not to smile. He takes a single step towards me.
"Fair point. But how am I supposed to know when it's the right temperature to drink if it isn't honest with me and doesn't give me some sort of sign?" he says and my heart flips over.
"Trust me the way I trust you," I murmur.
"Do you trust me? Because you didn't before. And I know most of what you kept from me was to protect Madge, and that's one of the things that I love about you. That you'd do literally anything to protect the ones you love. So it wasn't entirely fair of me to expect you to be completely open with me, but I've been wondering why you couldn't trust that I'd do the same?"
"I do now," I whisper and he takes another step towards me. I could almost touch him if I reached out right now.
"So how does this work? You stick around long enough to see a section of the bakery turned into a Daily Fix, train up some workers, and then disappear to another city to set up a franchise there?"
"Well that depends," I say and decide it's time to take my own step towards him as my pulse picks up a frantic pace.
"On what?"
"If you're still serious about us. Because I am."
"I never stopped being serious about us, Katniss. I was just hurt and confused," he steps again, bringing our toes together and bending his head over mine. I feel a magnetic pull towards him and I have to hold myself back from throwing my arms around him and kissing us both into oblivion. "Did you only come back here to make a business deal?"
"I meant what I said about the business deal, but that was also my excuse to get in the door without you slapping handcuffs on me or tossing me right back out." He ducks his head to hide his smile, but I catch a flash of his dimple. "Honestly, I came back to ask you out on a couple dozen dates. I'm thinking ten."
"Ten dozen dates. Couldn't that be considered a conflict of interest? Dating a business partner?"
"No more than the town sheriff making the leading suspect in a murder investigation fall in love with him," I say. He releases a ragged breath and reaches for me at the same time I finally give in and wrap my arms around his neck.
He rests his forehead on mine and he holds me close for a moment while I just enjoy being engulfed in his arms again, the warmth of his steady embrace and the scent of toasted cinnamon and now paint. Even before he tips my head back to kiss me, I know I've finally come home.