Hi, everyone! I didn't get as many reviews as I hoped for the last chapter, but don't want to make the people who do review every chapter wait for the next one. Thanks to all of those who have been commenting on my HSM stories lately- I feel like I've gotten a huge inflow of reviews even though all of my stories are pretty old! Enjoy the chapter!

Chapter Fourteen

I refused to stay in my room anymore after being confined to my bed for three days in a row. Gale and Peeta insisted that I stay put so that I wouldn't hurt myself before I was fully healed, but I wouldn't listen to them. I wanted to see the sunlight, and smell fresh air instead of staying in the dim bedroom that smelt dusty and unfamiliar.

Peeta was making lunch when I finally came out of my room after getting dressed in a t-shirt and pair of pants. He looked up from the sandwiches he was making when I came into the kitchen. Gale was sitting at the kitchen table, looking over maps and manuals, which he bunched together and put away when he saw me.

"Nice to see you on two feet again," Gale said from his spot.

"Nice to be on them."

"The kids already ate," Peeta said. "Do you want a sandwich?"

"Not right now."

I looked around the kitchen and saw similar features in it that our house had before it burnt down. The layout was the same as ours, but the colors and furniture was different. Everything was much dustier too from no one living in it before us. I felt Rosemarie grab my legs, and looked over my shoulder to see her.

"Can we go outside?"

"Sure," I said, wanting fresh air probably more than she did.

I could tell Peeta wanted to suggest we stay inside, but he let us out of his sight anyway and let us go outside. The fresh air instantly made me feel a little bit better, and I loved the feeling of being out of the house. Rosemarie and I walked off of the front porch, and she looked at the two lots next to us, the ones that used to be ours. It looked like someone had bulldozed through the ash of our houses because everything was neatly pushed to one side. There was yellow tape around the perimeter of the ashes. I wondered if whoever put that up thought that some tape could keep someone from walking there.

Rosemarie and I walked until we found a patch of grass near the woods in front of the house, and we both sat down there. Rosemarie was starting to make a necklace out of dandelions, content with just sitting there. I laid down so that I could look at the sky, and watched the clouds pass above us.

"Are you sad, Mama?" I heard her asked after a while.

"Why do you ask that?" I asked her, tilting my head to the side so that I could see her as she sat with her legs crossed next to me.

"Because our house is gone."

"No, sweetheart," I said to her. It was the honest answer since after seeing the house burn down, the fact that it was gone wasn't what was terrifying. What had scared me was thinking she and her brother were inside of it when it did. "I'm just glad you're okay."

"Are you going to have to keep sleeping during the day?" Rosemarie asked, onto a new subject.

"Not anymore. I think I'm back on your schedule."

She smiled down at me and seemed excited to hear this.

"Then you can tell us bedtime stories?"

"If you want me to."

"Good, because Daddy hasn't told my favorite lately because you were better at telling it," she explained.

"Which story is that?"

"The one you tell about falling in love with Dad."

I raised my eyebrows because I hadn't realized the stories she was being told before she went to bed were of me and Peeta. The idea that came next shouldn't have crossed my mind, since it was almost terrible to do, but I had a nagging feeling to act on it.

"Do you want to tell it to me?" I asked her.

She looked up from the dandelions in her hands.

"I will," she said.

She handed me over her necklace and I lifted my head and put it around my neck. The sweet smell of the pretty weeds made its way to my nose as she lay down on her back next to me.

"Ready?" she whispered to me, as if I was lying in bed and she was staying quiet because it was nighttime.

"Ready," I whispered back.

"You and Daddy were partners in a game," she started, saying this line so matter-of-factually that I knew she had heard this story a countless number of times. "The two of you got separated during it, so you went looking for Dad in the woods."

I closed my eyes, trying to picture everything she told me as if it were my own memory. I remembered Peeta saying something the other day about how he and I were always paired together, and realized he meant we were partners in this game Rosemarie was describing.

"You walked by a stream," she told me. "And were afraid that someone would tag you out before you were able to find Dad, but then you heard your name. At first you didn't know where it was coming from, and then Dad told you not to step on him."

"Why would he say that?" I asked her.

"Because," she said. "Dad was hiding in the rocks. He painted himself so that no one would see him. When you saw him you were glad to see him, but you knew he was hurt."

"I did?"

"Yeah, he got hit in the leg by a bad guy, so he was bleeding."

I tried to picture Peeta so camouflaged against the ground he laid on that I couldn't find him and the injury he apparently had.

"You had to get Dad to a safe place so that no one would tag the two of you, so you had to help him into a cave that was near the stream. Dad didn't feel good when you put him in there, and you were telling him that he would be okay."

What she was saying seemed so far from a possibility that I almost interrupted her to tell her that she didn't have to continue. Why Peeta and I would be playing a game of tag and hiding in caves, I didn't know.

"You had to get medicine for Dad, because you were afraid to live without him. Uncle Haymitch only sent you soup, which Dad didn't even want to eat."

"Haymitch?" I repeated, wondering how he could have been in our game. He was just our neighbor, the guy who lived next door for as long as I could remember.

"Yeah. He was watching the game, so was everyone else. Uncle Gale too," Rosemarie said. "Uncle Haymitch is your mentor."

"Mentor for what?"

"I don't know," Rosemarie said, looking over at me.

"Go on," I said, wanting her to continue.

"You knew you had to get Dad help, so you left him alone in the cave and ran to the center of the playing field where you knew medicine would be."

"How'd I know that?"

"A voice told you," Rosemarie said in almost a duh-tone. "A voice from the sky."

I opened my eyes and saw the sky, trying to picture a voice coming from it, but I knew that was impossible. Rosemarie kept talking, though, still so sure about the story.

"You went to the center and got Dad medicine as fast as you could, and your head got cut, which hurt."

I smiled softly, because I could imagine that feeling.

"But, you got the medicine and ran back to Dad, who was angry that you left him because he was worried about you."

That part sounded like Peeta, so I could at least imagine the look on his face when he found out what I had done.

"You helped him get better," Rosemarie reminded me. "You kissed him."

"I did?" I whispered.

"Yes, but don't worry, he didn't have germs on his lips, just his leg."

I laughed out loud and she laughed too even though she didn't know why I was laughing. She sat up and looked down at me, watching the smile on my lips grow.

"Is that the end of the story?"

"Not yet," Rosemarie said with a shake of her head. "Then you fell in love with him."

I smiled at her and felt tears brim the edges of my eyes. She laid back down when I laid on my side and looked at me. She played with the dandelions around my neck and we both laid there for a long time.

"Do you want to know the best part of the story?" Rosemarie asked me later.

"Me falling in love wasn't the best part?" I asked her with a smile.

She shook her head and rubbed her nose when grass tickled it.

"You and Daddy won the game," she said.

I was surprised because with everything she told me about falling in love with Peeta and being afraid to be without him, I didn't even think about there being a winner. I was still surprised that I had fallen in love with him while playing a game.

"Thanks for telling me," I said to her.

"Maybe tonight Dad can tell the story about when he fell in love with you."

"I'd like that."

We stayed outside for a while longer, only coming in when the clouds started to accumulate into a thick layer of white that blocked out any sign of the blue sky. Rosemarie walked happily in front of me when we went inside and she went to the family room where Gale was sitting on the couch when I made my way to the kitchen. Peeta was putting food back into the refrigerator when I came in. He smiled when he saw me, but smiled even bigger when I walked right up to him and kissed him, me and him hiding between the two doors of the refrigerator from anyone who might walk in.

"I love you," I told him.

"I love you too," he said, smirking. "You should go outside more often."

I laugh at the look in his eyes and left him be in the kitchen to join Gale and the kids. I missed, though, the look that slowly took over his face as I walked away from him; the one that looked as if he was missing me.

Peeta and I tucked the kids in together for the first time since we left them with Haymitch the night our house burned down. Rosemarie was lying down and ready to be told a bedtime story before we even got to her room, and when she saw us, she smiled, looking at me because we shared a secret.

"What story do you want to hear?" Peeta asked Rosemarie as he knelt on the floor next to her bed.

I sat on the end of the bed with Rosemarie's feet in my lap.

"The one where you saw mom for the first time and fell in love," she said.

Peeta seemed glad that she had chosen that one, like he knew there'd be certain stories he couldn't tell her in front of me. I hung on his every word as he told Rosemarie the story. I laughed at parts that I thought were funny, like how it was elementary school when he saw me first. He was right about skipping the friend part and going right to love. He would glance at me occasionally throughout the story, but mainly kept his eyes on Rosemarie, watching to see her fall asleep.

I felt like I was ready to burst into tears as Peeta finished the story. The fact that I recalled absolutely none of it made me sick, because it was one of the greatest things I had ever heard. To think that I had lived that story myself once, only to forget it now was heartbreaking. I had to leave Peeta to shut the lights off in Rosemarie's room because I thought for sure I would cry.

He didn't come and check on me when I went into our room, which I was thankful for. I didn't want to have to confess that I got Rosemarie to tell me something from the past. I had a feeling that the story she told me was one that Peeta wanted to keep in the past, but I couldn't imagine how he felt knowing everything that has ever happened between us while I remembered none of it. It had to have been tearing him apart inside not being able to talk freely about what he thought about on a normal day because he didn't want me to find out. I lay in bed repeating the story Rosemarie had told me over and over again until I had it memorized. I hoped, as I drifted to sleep, that I would wake up in the morning remembering a detail that I hadn't been told before.

Like it? Review! There's one more chapter left!

Much love,

unknownbyhim22