Epilogue: Eighteen Years Later

Enola's POV

"Good morning, Enola. You're looking quite ravishing today."

I sigh and lift my head towards the heavens where I have been bent over the trashcans out back of my family's Bakery. Aspen Hawthorne – by all rights my legal cousin – has been telling me in one form or another how sexy I look since he first developed an endocrine system roughly a decade ago.

I finally will my eyes to level with his. "Hello, Aspen," I huff in a dry deadpan.

Aspen grins at me and procures some fresh game – squirrel – a guilty pleasure of my father's – from his bag. Mother has usually been the one to bring squirrel home, up until recently, as she has begun to take over more and more aspects of the Bakery's operations. I think the woman who raised me enjoys the more domesticity entering her life and welcomes it, though she does go into the woods to hunt from time to time. It was just useful for her to train Aspen in the ways of hunting so he could bring in more of the meat.

Smoothing down my skirts, I lift an eyebrow. "That'll be two loaves for the lot?" I try to keep my tone all-business like whenever Aspen comes round. It makes for a decent mask for how unnerving he is.

And handsome. Though I will never speak this aloud. We might not share blood in the technical sense, but by district law, helped along by virtue of my parents' marriage, we are still family. And I do not flirt with family.

Clearly, no one told Aspen that.

I distract myself by slipping into the rear hall and procuring the two loaves, hoping to get this done as fast and as easy as possible. Aspen grants me a disarming smile – damn him! – and pockets both loaves.

"Well, if that's all you came to say, then have a good day. My best to your parents…" I turn to flounce back inside, the skirts of my frock swishing at my ankles, only for Aspen to appear almost from nowhere and lean against the heavy metal door so I can't open it.

"What? No witty, slightly passive-aggressive banter?"

"Hmm, I'm surprised you would describe it as that," I demur, tamping down a smirk.

"I do prefer the term flirtatious, which works just as well."

My mouth falls open in shock at his gal. "I do not flirt with you!" I lean into his face and hiss. "Flirting with relatives isn't exactly above board."

"Legal relatives," Aspen qualifies. "We are legal relatives. And according to district law, that is an important distinction."

I round on him, lifting another eyebrow loftily. "In what way?"

"Well, it means I can keep asking you when you're going to marry me, and not have a weight on my conscious."

I let out an awkward little laugh through my agape mouth and shake my head. "Impossible…. You're impossible."

Aspen shrugs boyishly. For he is still a boy, at 21. Snow's Roses, I used to mind this child when his mother, my Aunt Prim, was out on call and Uncle Rory was working down the mines! "I'm also devilishly handsome…"

"Yes, you're a real Finnick Odair…" I mutter dryly.

"… Well established, and confident enough to achieve what I want in life."

I smirk at him. "True, but do you know enough about what you want so that you can then achieve it?"

"I know I want you as my wife, and I am to get you to the Justice Building. A Toasting in the Meadow…"

I shake my head, my heart speeding up ectopically and feeling leery. "I don't do white dresses. And I'm not marriage materials."

"Enola, you're 30…"

"Your point? Because on its face, that seems very ageist of you…"

"Don't trifle with me, cousin," Aspen drawls, his emphasis on the last word quite irreverent. "When are you going to settle down and marry me?"

I've started to open the back loading dock door, but then do an about face, laying a gentle, halting hand on his…. surprisingly well-developed chest. "Darling boy, I'm flattered. Truly. But unless you flunked school, cousins cannot wed…"

"Maybe not blood cousins, but legal cousins are allowed to." Aspen's known I was adopted by my stepmother/mother – his aunt – since he was a little boy. "I know. I borrowed one of your Uncle Rye's law books and looked it up."

I can only stare at him, heat rushing into my cheeks and starting to feel trapped. "You've…. really thought about this, have you?"

Aspen grins saucily. "You have no idea how much…" He starts to lean in, and I nudge him back.

"Don't," I murmur, though it's weak.

"Why not?"

"I'm too old for you," I leap to the next best excuse.

"How? Where? Where is it written?"

"You don't want me…" I shake my head.

"You don't know what I want."

"I know that you're too young to know what you want, and I'm old enough to know better!"

"I'll keep waiting. I'll keep asking until you say Yes."

I scoff. "You're a lovesick fool, Aspen Hawthorne…" I start to turn once again for the door, but stop when I feel hands brace my hips, a man's touch intimately rubbing my hipbones. I let out a gasp of shock, turning my head.

"Aspen, what are you…?"

He cuts me off with a kiss. And gods all damn me, for a moment, I actually melt into it before squirming away. "Don't! …. Please," I whimper.

"For District 13's sake, Enola, just because the word 'alone' is literally in your name doesn't mean you have to be that way for the rest of your life!"

My irises go huge, caught off guard by the passion in his words… and maybe also a little in that kiss. "I…." Tears threaten. "I can't…."

"Enola," Aspen murmurs. "Marry me."

"I…."

"Please." He takes my hand, while with the other, he opens his palm to reveal a ring. I stare at it, stunned. How much must have he saved up for this? How long? I nervously lift my head to gaze into his eyes. Finally, almost in a trance, I sway onto my tiptoes and brush a feather-light kiss over his lips.

"OK. Y-Yes. I – Panem help me, yes!"

I float in a daze back into the Bakery, brain spinning over what I just agreed to. It's Sunday, so the shop is closed, but I hear giggling coming from up the back stairs. Ascending up towards my parents' bedroom, I see their door slightly ajar. Mother is in nothing but her underthings and a simple skirt. Said skirt is now hiked up over her hips as my father kisses her hot and heavy and ruts against her, bracing her against her vanity. I shrink against the wall and surreptitiously observe as Mother finally draws away from the kiss.

"We have to get dressed. Primmy's having us over for dinner tonight…" She pauses as her husband comes up behind her and begins to draw circles along her hipbones, in an almost mirror image of how Aspen touched me down on the back loading dock. Mother turns to Daddy, eyes lidded and bewildered, as though his ardor never ceases to amaze her after nearly twenty years of marriage.

"Peeta, what are you….?"

He silences her with a kiss and she swoons into it, looping an arm about his neck before remembering herself. "Honey, we can't! There's no time…"

"Yes, there is. Just for one shag. Now strip!" Daddy hisses lustily.

Mother arches a matronly eyebrow at him. Then, slowly, she unclips her skirt and lets it fall to the ground. Her underwear follows, shimmying out of it before she steps out of both. Reaching behind her, she unclasps her fall and discards, before striking a provocative pose against the vanity. Her one eyebrow is still nearly in her hairline.

"Disappointed?" she asks.

"No. As gorgeous as ever." My father takes her in his arms. "All woman."

Now is the time to beat a hasty retreat, slipping back towards my room as I hear the sounds of fucking begin. They'd better finish and get a hold of themselves quickly – we're due at Uncle Rory and Aunt Prim's in an hour.

That night at dinner is quiet and subdued far more than is usual as it dawns on me just what transpired between me and Aspen today. Even more maddening, Aspen is acting as though there is no such giant elephant in the room.

I inwardly smirk even as I stew at his temerity. Well, two can play at this game. "Everyone, I have an announcement to make."

My parents, aunt and uncle and…. fiancé all turn to me with interest. There is a twinkle to Aspen's eye, the bastard. Like he knows what's coming. Well, perhaps he does, perhaps he doesn't. He may be the one who wore me down, but now we have to announce to the rest of the family.

"This morning, Aspen asked me to marry him, and I said Yes."

Dead quiet for a moment. Auntie Prim seems unsure whether to be aghast or thrilled, though the latter is valiantly fighting to win out. I am sure it will once we explain to her the lack of legal ramifications. It is my stepmother/adoptive mother who looks like she has steam coming out of her ears:

"Why you low-down, no-good little rascal…." Her voice has more growl than a bear mutt.

"Mother!" I cry.

Aspen can only grin shakily. "Well, what's the matter, aren't you going to give me your blessing?"

To my relief, Daddy starts to laugh, and reaches across the table to shake Aspen's hand. I feel my body start to deflate a little.

Mother's tension is easing, though she is trying to remain cool and correct. "Well, if we are on the subject of shattering family news, I have an announcement of my own:" Taking a deep breath, she turns to her husband and states quite solemnly: "I'm pregnant."

I nearly fall out of my chair. Both of my parents are only just 50, and they've been happily married for twenty years. But I had always understood that having their own flesh-and-blood child was not something my mother wanted.

Apparently, things change.

Daddy looks flabbergasted for a moment, but then his face breaks into a beaming smile and he nearly tackles his wife to the floor to kiss her breathless.

"Congratulations. I love you…."

Aspen and I are married a year later, signing our marriage license in the Justice Building before throwing a big reception in the Meadow, the way my parents did when they Toasted the bread two decades ago. Dancing in the arms of my husband, I look out at the faces of all the people who love me. Mother and Daddy are dancing sultrily close, dancing cheek to cheek, before the former draws away with a besotted smile and crosses to the edge of the dance floor and accepts my three-month old baby brother from Aunt Prim's arms. As Aspen twirls me about, I catch on the wind the loving murmurs from the woman who raised me, who loves me, who loves my father:

"Were you having a nightmare? I get those sometimes too. So does Daddy. But we'll tell you how we survive it. We make lists in our heads of all the good things that have happened to us, or that we've seen someone do. It's like a game. We play it over and over. It gets a little tedious after all these years…. But there are much worse Games to play."

I smile softly, which quickly turns into a laugh as Aspen dips me and kisses me audaciously, right on the mouth. Watching out of the corner of my eye as Mother drifts into Daddy and kisses him, their baby nestled between them, I let my eyes flutter shut and I return my own husband's kiss.