217 days:

And yet

"So was it really the two braids or what?" I ask him lazily, reaching over Peeta's knee to grab the last apple out of the basket. He gives me an indulgent look and flips it to me, then leans back on his arms, his legs outstretched in front of him, our shoes in a careless pile next to his hip.

"Was what the two braids?" he asks me. "Since when do you wear more than one?"

I look at the lake for a long moment, chewing, and when a heron swoops down to grab a fish before taking off into the sky that is hazy with the early morning fog, I chunk the apple into the weeds. We are still sitting in the dark; it's too early for breakfast.

"Is that really when you first realized you loved me?" I tease, wrapping my arms around my knees, my stomach awkwardly balancing as the baby kicks in protest. "When you saw the braids? I know you said it was the singing, but I know what that sounds like. There's no way that's what did it."

Peeta stares at me, open-mouthed, and then snorts with laughter and shakes his head.

"You really pick your moments," he says dryly, and I give him a careless shrug.

"I never really asked you," I tell him. "What you said for the cameras and what you really meant."

"I meant it all," he says earnestly. "The braids were nice, sure, but I told you: I heard you sing and I was a goner."

I give him a long look, and the sparkle in his eyes wears down to a dull shine as he sits up and takes my hands in his.

"Do you really want to know?" he asks me seriously, and I tilt my head and appraise him.

"Maybe not," I say. "You just went really strange on me."

"It's up to you," he says. "I'll tell you if you want."

I look back at the water for a long moment, at the haze that is floating over it like an ethereal layer of frosting, and then sigh.

"Why not?" I say. "Enlighten me."

His mouth twitches for a split second, and he closes his eyes and pressed his palms against them, sucking in a deep breath.

"I think I loved the idea of you at first," he says, his eyes still covered. "I didn't know you, but I created this picture of you that was impossible not to love. You could stop birds with your song. You always knew the right answer. You had happy parents who were obviously crazy about each other."

I start to protest this – he is painting my past through very rose-tinted glasses – but then he uncovers his face and reaches for me and I'm suddenly too busy pretending not to notice the tiny quiver of his shoulders. Still not looking at me, he takes my hands in his, his fingers cold, his face uneasy.

"I think I had this noble idea that you and I were like my father and your mother all over again," he says. "That I would love you from afar and sacrifice myself for the greater good when Ga – when some handsome hunter swooped you away."

"Noble," I repeat. "That's noble?"

"You know what my mother told me right before they took us away?" Peeta says in disgust. "Honor before disgrace. That's all I could remember when we were standing by the train on the way home, and you had those ridiculous flowers in your hand, and you said that everything you told me in the arena was a – a game. And knowing that you were going to go back to him as soon as we got home, I felt like I was being validated."

"You let me," I remind him, stung. "You told me it was okay."

"Like I said," he mutters. "And it was. For a little while."

"And?" I ask.

"Then we had to keep up the charade," he says simply. "And I just kept clinging to this idea of you. I didn't know how to differentiate between the truth and the lies as far as what you'd said, but I knew you were the girl who was willing to sacrifice herself for me and that was enough. I had to make that be enough. You would creep into my room and fell asleep in my arms every night on the Victory Tour, but then we got home and you were kissing him and I had to smile for the cameras and let you kiss me too, and pretend that I was the only one."

I can feel all of the blood drain from my face during this grim recital, and he sighs and leans forward to drop a kiss on the tip of my nose, and then holds my whitewashed cheeks tightly in his hands and places another, longer, kiss on my mouth.

"I'm not telling this very well," he says, pulling back and rubbing one wrist against his forehead. "It was okay, Katniss. Really. We found out we were going back for a second round, and it started to get pretty obvious that you wanted him, but you'd settle for me. As long as the cameras were on us, anyway."

"That's not true," I interject. "You say that, but when I thought you were dead – then when I realized that you meant to die – I wanted to die, too. I wasn't going to let you go, Peeta."

I put the tips of my fingers over my heart and then lean over and place my palm above the beat of his.

"You're not leaving me here alone," I remind him, and he gives me a weary smile.

"It's stupid, I know, but I think that once I knew we were going back in, once I figured out that I was really going to have to die to keep you alive and that I was actually okay with it, that was when it stopped being a dream and started being a reality," he says. "That was when I really figured out that somewhere along the line I'd gone ahead and fallen in love with you – clever, and brave, and self-sacrificing, and sometimes kind of funny – and not with who I thought you were."

"And then they erased everything?" I ask flatly, and he gives me a distracted little nod.

"Everything I was finally starting to figure out," he says. "But then it was easier because I could hate you in all forms, dream, reality or otherwise."

We both stay quiet and it's only the sound of the birds on the lake calling to each other, the water lapping gently against the sand.

"And then it started all over," Peeta says finally. "Everything I thought I'd known about you was gone, so I had to take you at face value. And it wasn't easy, at least not at first. You kept disappearing, and avoiding me, and when you did talk to me you were so weird-"

"I was weird?" I snap. "You were the one who needed help remembering how to tie your shoelaces."

"Always a paragon of graciousness," he teases me gently. "It got better, didn't it? You reminded me of some of the things they never touched. We got to work on the book. You loosened up a lot once you had something to fight for instead of something to fight against."

Another beat of silence, and when I look at him again he's gone; those blue eyes dreamy with memory, glassed over with recollection.

"It took a long time, but I finally figured out again that I was in love with the girl brave enough to let someone set her on fire, but so afraid of spiders that at the sight of one she would bolt onto the table and refuse to come down until it was gone. The girl who thinks pie is too sweet, but empties half the sugar bowl into her coffee. The girl who climbs trees and jumps in through second story windows instead of using the stairs."

His eyes take their time coming back into themselves, but when he focuses on me there's a smile curving his lips.

"There was a night when you came down to me when I was painting, and you didn't want to talk, you just sat there hugging your knees to your chest and watching me, and finally you asked me if I ever wanted to do away completely with the color red. I think that was the night that I realized all over again that I was in love with who you are, Katniss, and not with this idea of you that I created when I was five."

"You told me," I say hesitantly, "that you wanted all of your memories back, even the hard ones. That they were all worth it. Why, Peeta? Why wouldn't you want to forget those if you could just have the new ones, the better ones, instead?"

He shakes his head and uses a finger to draw in the sand as he considers.

"Being with you has always been a study of contrasts," he says finally, and before he brushes a hand to scatter the sand I see that he's drawn the stars. "It was worth remembering all of the uncertainty and the long nights and the way you looked at him because now every time you tell me you love me, you do it with your hand over your heart."

This brings all the color flooding back into my face in a rush of humiliated warmth, and he looks at me with that grin that lifts half of his mouth.

"It's okay to have emotions sometimes, Katniss," he says, and when I reach out to sock his shoulder, he grabs my hand and places a kiss in the palm.

"It might have only been the idea of you for a long time," he says quietly, "but even just the vague memory of that was enough to convince me to stick around and figure out that you were the only person in my life I've ever loved enough to die for. After they took everything out of me, you don't know how much of a long shot that was."

He leans forward suddenly and kisses me in the trickle of warmth coming in from the rising sun.

"Loving you is the best thing I've done with my life," he says softly, his blue eyes gentle against mine. "No matter which form or permutation, you've been it for me as long as I can remember. I wasn't kidding, Katniss. I heard you sing and I was a goner."

"I was in love with you for a long time," I tell him, and it takes me a second to realize why he's laughing until I look down and realize that he's right, that my hand is pressed over the thump of my heart, as if to assure him that my heartbeats are numbered in accordance with his own. "I'm sorry it took me so long to realize it."

"You beat me," he tells me with that grin, and here we are, back together on the sand, and I realize finally what everyone has been trying to tell me: That every moment with him, even the hard ones, even the ones that I thought would break me, have gotten us to where we are right now; that I could not love him this fully, this cleanly, without knowing for sure that it is far worse not to love him.

"Oh," I say in surprise. "Oh, I get it now."

Peeta looks at me curiously, probably convinced by this point that he never should have started this conversation, and I lean forward and cup my hand against his cheek.

"This baby," I marvel, "is proof that once there was a boy who was braver than he gave himself credit for, who loved even the idea of a girl enough to throw his life away for her."

He tries to interrupt, and I trail my hand down and press a finger against his lips.

"Then he fell in love with the girl, and she fell in love with him, and here is this baby, this gorgeous attestation, this impossibility, and every second we get with this baby is worth it because we shouldn't have gotten any time at all."

He is quiet behind my hand, and I am suddenly sure that I have it all wrong.

"Isn't that what you've all been saying?" I ask weakly. "That's it, right?"

He reaches up and grabs my hand, returns it to my lap, his fingers warm over mine as he leans forward and kisses me.

"I'm in love with you," he tells me quietly, firmly. "With you. Always."

He kisses me again.

"And yes," he says. "You're right."

He's still kissing me when the sun breaks over the horizon.