I think the next chapter is going to be the epilogue! Thanks for sticking with me guys, I know I'm not exactly the most reliable author when it comes to updates. I don't own The Hunger Games.

Clove lay in bed, the sheets drawn up around her, basking lazily in the morning sun. She knew that once she opened her eyes, she would fully awake, and that the sun streaming in through the window would most likely fry her corneas.

She lay still for a few more minutes, slowly coming to her senses. When she felt awake enough she cracked a bleary eye open, and immediately wished that she hadn't.

"Shit!" Clove sat bolt upright in the bed, the sheets still drawn up around here. She spotted an oversized sweatshirt, one that she'd thought she'd lost months ago, within reaching distance and made a grab for it.

"Cato!" She hissed at the sleeping figure beside her as she pulled on sweatshirt. "Get up now!"

"Mmph." Cato made an unintelligible noise and rolled over in the guestroom bed.

"Clove? Are you home?" Melissa's voice, followed by the closing of the front door, drifted through the walls. Clove didn't dare to even breathe until she heard her sister's footsteps on the stairs.

"Get up!" Clove hissed at Cato again and hit him with her pillow. This time, he obeyed.

"Clove, you don't have to-"

"You need to leave. Now." She'd die before she let Melissa catch her in bed with her boyfriend. It was the ultimate betrayal.

"Clove-"

"No!" Clove cut Cato off as she all but shoved him out of the bed. She averted her eyes as she pulled on the suit pants he had been wearing last night.

"Clove?" Melissa's voice reached them again, this time coming from upstairs.

"Go!" Clove was panicking as she stood up and pushed Cato, whose shirt was barely even half-buttoned, towards the window.

"You don't have to worry!" Cato tried to reassure her as he climbed through the window, into the front yard.

"Like hell I don't!

"Hey!" Cato reached back through the open window and took Clove's hand. "This is less complicated than you think. Now, I'm not leaving until you tell me that you love me."

"I love you! Now fuck off, please!" Clove whisper-yelled at him, but she couldn't stop the smallest hint of a smile from tugging at the corners of her mouth. Cato winked at her, and then he was off. Thankfully, he had parked his car just around the corner, so Melissa probably hadn't seen it.

Clove made a mad but silent dash towards the kitchen. By the time Melissa entered the room, Clove was lounging over a bowl of cereal, thumbing through her phone.

"Oh." Melissa blinked at Clove in surprised. "Hey."

"Hey." Clove smiled casually at her as she prodded at her cereal. In her haste, she had grabbed a fork.

"I called. Didn't you hear?" Melissa grabbed an apple and sat down opposite Clove at the breakfast bar. She propped her bad foot up on a stool.

"No, sorry." Clove shrugged. "How was the after party?"

"Pretty good. You and Cato never showed."

"Yeah, sorry about that. We were both pretty beat. I think I wore him out." Clove had always been good at lying, but she had never felt so guilty about it in her life.

"You're weak." Missy grinned. "Though, I do have something to confess."

"Yeah?" So did she. Not that she was going to in that moment.

"I may have made out with Marvel." Melissa smiled sheepishly.

"What about Cato?" Clove was pretty shocked- she hadn't thought Melissa would ever want to leave Cato, no matter how good Marvel would be for her.

"We-"

The ringing of Clove's phone cut Missy off before she could finish her sentence.

"I gotta take this." Clove rolled her eyes. "It's Johanna."

Clove stepped away from the bar and flicked her thumb across the green phone button.

"Sup?" She greeted Johanna.

"The sky, Clove. That is what's 'sup'. Where the hell are you?" Johanna didn't really sound best pleased.

"In my house…" She was forgetting something, and Jo was going to murder her.

"You said you'd come early to the parade to set up the float, remember?"

"Aw, crap." The parade was a homecoming tradition at West Palms High. Every upperclassmen was involved in making a float. Clove was supposed to take point on the soccer teams' float, but she had completely forgotten.

"I've got Will helping me out." Johanna sighed. Will was the captain of the guys' soccer team. "But don't for a second think that I'm letting you get away with this."

"Wouldn't dream of it." Clove laughed. "Later, Jo."

"That reminds me." Melissa stood up once Clove had turned back to her. "I'm supposed to be helping with the cheerleaders' float in, like, ten minutes."

Melissa grabbed her purse and headed for the door.

"But Clove? We really need to talk about something."

And with those ominous words, Melissa was gone.

…

Generally, Clove appreciated the hot days in Florida, especially during the winter and autumn months. However, standing atop a huge, soccer field shaped float, as they traipsed around the streets of West Palms, she was sure that even her sunburn would get sunburned. The float had two pedestals at either end of the soccer pitch, where the goals would have been. Will stood atop one, with his two captains on the lower branches. Clove stood at the top of the other one, with Johanna and Katniss to her left and right.

"We need to talk about Caaaaato." Johanna trilled in a sing-song voice.

"No we doooon't!" Clove sang back.

"You want to be with him." Katniss sighed impatiently. "So just stop dragging it out."

"It's not that simple. I've told you a hundred times." Clove ran a hand over her exasperated face. "Melissa really likes him. Even if they were to break up, I couldn't be with him. It wouldn't be fair to her."

"That's stupid." Katniss rolled her eyes.

"If you love someone, you can't just let them get away from you. That's a lesson I had to learn the hard way, Clove." Johanna shifted awkwardly on her pedestal under the surprised looks of Katniss and Clove.

"What?!" She snapped.

"Nothing." Clove shrugged. "I just didn't know you had… Feelings."

"Whatever." Johanna grumbled.

"Who were you talking about?" Katniss asked, but Johanna only glared at her in response. Clove wasn't entirely sure who the love was that Johanna let her escape from her clutches. She wondered if it had been Gale.

"Back to the issue at hand." Johanna looked pointedly at Clove. "Cato?"

Clove threw her hands up in the air. She was done, done with all of it. She was just so sick of the same constant drama every day when in reality, it didn't even matter.

"Fine. I'll admit it. I'm in love with Cato Stone. A part of me probably always will be. I'll scream it from the rooftops, if that's what you really want. None of it matters!"

"I think it matters."

Clove turned around so quickly she was worried she might slip right off the float. Cato, wearing his football jersey and dark jeans, stared at her from behind the pedestal. His eyes locked onto hers. She couldn't breathe.

"How did you-" Clove stopped talking as her phone started to ring.

"Hello?" She quickly answered without checking the caller ID.

"Clove, I'm sorry." It was Melissa's voice that came out of the cell.

"Missy? What for?" Clove had broken eye contact with Cato, but somehow her eyes wondered back to his again.

"I was supposed to tell you this morning, but then were both running late."

"What? Tell me what?"

Clove was beyond confused as Melissa sighed down the phone to her.

"Remember the Homecoming dance?" She asked.

"It was last night, Melissa. I'm not senile." Clove snorted.

"Do you remember Cato disappearing off for, like, fifteen minutes? Because I was supposed to tell you where he was. I made him promise that it had to come from me.

"I'll be right back, okay?"

"Okay." Clove grinned at Cato as she danced gracefully to the crappy Homecoming music. She looked beautiful.

He made his way outside, towards the parking lot. By this time, all of the students had arrived. It was empty except for Cato as he pulled out his cell and made a call.

"Cato?" Melissa sounded surprised that he had called.

"Melissa. Hey." Now that he had called, he wasn't really sure what to say. "I think we need to talk."

She sighed wearily. He could imagine her rubbing her eyes at his words. He didn't want to hurt her, and he definitely wasn't expecting her next words.

"Yeah, I agree."

"Why do you think we need to talk?" Cato asked, more out of curiosity than anything. It didn't matter- there was only one way this conversation was going to end.

"Because you're in love with my sister?"

Cato's mouth went dry as the Sahara desert. Had he really been that obvious?

"Missy-"

"No, please. Before you say anything- it's my fault. I was so wrapped up in this fantasy of being the popular cheerleader with the popular football player boyfriend, like in movies, that I ignored everything around me." She explained.

"Like what?"

"Like the way you've looked at Clove ever since that day she called you out at the Inter-State Games. Like how the two of you were so clearly meant to be together, and I was just getting in the way of that. How Clove was being stupidly protective, like always, and wouldn't want me to get hurt. Like how you are not some stereotype for me to play around with just because I want to feel popular. And like how Marvel looks at me the same way you look at Clove."

"So… Not much thinking, then?" Cato joked, but he was secretly glad that he hadn't hurt her. Clove would have killed him a hundred times over.

"No, not much." Melissa laughed. "I'm sorry."

"I'm sorry too."

"Please don't tell Clove. I have to be the one to tell her. I have to explain things to her that can only come from me." Melissa sounded like she was close to begging.

"Okay." Cato sighed. "I think we owe her that."

"You two broke up." Clove was stunned. Cato looked like he was trying to keep back a grin.

"Yes. I'm sorry, Clove. You two should have been together from the start. I know that since your mom died, you've been trying to protect me after everything I helped you to get through. But you don't need to that anymore. You can be with Cato without fear of upsetting me. I want you to be with him, and I want to be with Marvel." Melissa declared proudly. Clove would have high fived Marvel if he were close by.

"But I don't want to be with him." Clove watched as Cato's face fell and he frowned deeply.

"Oh."

"I'm just kidding." Clove grinned at Cato, who rolled his eyes. "I'll talk you later, Missy. Thank you."

"No, Clove. Thank you." Clove went to hang up, but Missy spoke again. "Clove?"

"Yeah?"

"Next time you try to sneak a six foot three quarterback out of a window in the early hours of the morning, do make sure I'm not looking out of the upstairs window."

"Bye, Melissa. You bitch."

Johanna and Katniss had apparently decided that they had done enough interfering, and had cleared off.

"Come here." Cato held his arms out, and Clove stepped into them. He placed his hands on her waist, and she let hers rest lightly on his shoulders.

"You and Melissa broke up and didn't tell me." She raised an eyebrow at Cato.

"She made me promise not to tell you." Cato shrugged, a lopsided smile plastered on his face.

"Oh, so you're blaming this on my poor, defenceless sister?"

"No way. This whole thing was your fault."

"You're a dick." Clove laughed. "But I'm glad this relationship didn't start with us in bed together whilst you were dating my sister."

"Shut up, Clove." Cato silenced her with a kiss. It was deep, and sweet, and everything Clove had hoped it would be.

Johanna had slipped into the crowd of students and made her way to the class float that Gale was sitting on. He looked pretty miserable, but then again, so would she if she had to sit on a float shaped like math book.

"Look over there." Johanna said. She had crept up on him from behind, and Gale almost jumped out of his skin.

"Look over there." Johanna pointed to the soccer float in front of them, where Cato and Clove were making out like rabbits in heat. They were going to have to hose those two down later.

"Mission success?" He grinned up at her. It was the first time she hadn't seen him looking miserable outside the presence of Madge in a long time. Too long. She stretched out her hand. He bumped it with his fist.

"Mission success."