I told Nick to wait somewhere outside my room so I could tell my parents about the mess we got ourselves into in private. I can't guarantee mom will be happy about the deal we made with President Crowe. In fact I am almost sure she will be disappointed in me for doing this. I'm not sure what Dad will think of this but I don't have much time to wonder because I hear the door open slowly. I see dad first him looking at me with sad eyes.
Dad comes in slowly looking at me, he comes up to me in the bed wrapping his arms around me, I'm not sure if it is a I'm glad you're alive Hailey, orif it is I'm sorry for your loss hug. Mom is looking at my eyes; she must notice they are not as dark and distance as they were earlier today. Dad pulls away and sits next to me on my bed, mom must have told him how quiet I have been and how it was likely I wouldn't talk because he begins talking right away.
"Hey Hail, how are you feeling?" He looks at me with pain in my eyes.
"I'm fine." I say that because it's true. In all this mess and pain I have been suffering through the past days, I am fine, just because I get to keep Nick alive. Dad looks surprised to hear me talk and even more surprised to hear me say I am fine. Both of them stare at me with such caution like I could start yelling and screaming at any moment. It kind of annoys me but it clears from my mind when I realize that they are under the impression that Nick is still dead.
"That's great Hailey, we're just about to have dinner, are you feeling up to joining us?" Mom says this as I am sorting out the information I have to share with them.
"Um, yes, but first there's something I have to say." They look at me with questions in their eyes. "It might shock and confuse you…" I warn them because I know how it feels to be caught off guard by such a surprise.
So I tell them, I don't leave out a detail, I tell them about the surroundings and how scary President Crowe was. I can see the horror rising in mom's expression as her and dad listens so carefully to my story. When I finish telling them about the deal and what President Crowe said I must do at the interviews, they don't say anything for a while. Then dad puts his hand on my shoulder.
"Hailey…maybe you need some rest." The thought that they might think I am lying to them makes me angry.
"Dad, I'm serious, if you don't believe me I'll get Nick!" I stand up from the bed without waiting for an answer from them. I fling the door open in frustration and turn my head around looking for Nick and sure enough lingering around the room he is there. I walk over to him and pull his arm towards my room. When I come back into my room the expression of doubt washes away off of dad's face. We take turns explaining what happened and what we know.
"You made a deal with President Crowe?" Mom looks worried and is switching her eyes back and forth from me and Nick. I look up at Nick who is looking down at me and we catch each other's glances for a second. We both turn our heads to my mom and nod them.
After mom lectures us on how it was a terrible idea to make a deal with the President, and how much trouble it could get us in for later, she sighs and looks at the two of us hanging out heads low.
"Since no one can know about Nick, he will stay here while we go eat, we will bring you food." She looks at Nick. "Is that ok Nick?" Nick nods his head and thanks mom. Dad has yet to say a word about this whole thing but he just looks at Nick with wonder in his eyes.
I glance back at Nick before my mom, dad, and I walk out of the room.
/
After we got back from eating Nick is shown into a room that is secluded from everyone. When it is time to go to sleep I feel afraid being so far from Nick, I rather have him holding me with his big warm arms surrounding me. I lay in my bed staring at the wall thinking of every aspect of Nick that I love so much until I fall asleep.
I wake up to banging on my door and I hear the familiar voice coming into my room slowly. "Hailey! Oh how nice it is to see you! Get up now, get up, it's going to be a big big big day! We're going back to the training center to your prep team!" The voice belongs to Effie. When I stick my head out from the covers I see her smiling face back at me. She helps me out and she gives me clothes.
We ride over the training center in a car separate from Effie so Nick can ride with us, though it isn't that enjoyable because he has duck down so no one on the streets can see him. No one says much on the way there except when we get out and we have to find out a way to get Nick inside without being seen, especially with me, because right now according to President Crowe, I think Nick was dead.
Nick ends up going the opposite way with my parents while I meet up with Effie who takes me up to my old room in the training center. The room reminds me of the night that I spent in there after Nick kissed me. The bed is made and I look down at the dark blankets that once surrounded my frightened body the days leading up to the games.
When I get into the bathroom sitting on the chair that sits next to the shower is Everett. When he sees me he smiles. I wonder if he knows President's Crowe's plan, Caesar Flickerman definitely knows, but maybe someone told Everett so he could match us. He comes up to me putting his arms around me. He whispers in my ear,
"You're a good fighter." I pull away from him and give him a smile; probably the first one since the arena. Once again he knew what I was thinking, how through all this mess everyone was worried how my emotions were, and not complementing me on my skill for getting it that far in the games.
Soon after we hug I hear the door and hear a bunch of people taking, when I come out of the bathroom I see my over excited prep team. When they see me there faces light up and they drop all the stuff they were holding. They come towards me wrapping their arms around me, congratulating me on wining. Everett comes out with a smile on his face but he is yelling at the prep team for dropping my dress. He runs over to the messy pile and pulls up a hanger with black cloth over it, which must be hold my dress underneath it.
The prep team gets right to work on me, washing my hair in the bathroom sink. When they are done drying my hair Everett comes in with the bags and bags of makeup for the prep team to put on my face.
After that is my hair, I think they did the same thing that I had on the chariot rides, it was wavy and to the side. When they were finished with that, the dress was next. I was actually excited to see my dress, but of course Everett made me close my eyes and turn away while he got the dress out.
I feel the soft fabric brushing my skin as he puts the strapless dress over my body. When he is done fixing the position of the dress he steps away and says to look.
The dress I am wearing is a medium length dark purple dress. It's tight at the top, there are no straps, but below the waist the dress starts coming out more loosely. I notice I was right with the prediction of my hair; it is waved and brought to the side by a purple flower clip that matches my dress. The sides of my mouth creeps into a grin. Once again Everett has made me look great. I thank them for the work they did and the prep team and him leave the room to let me evaluate myself.
I look in the mirror just at my face. The makeup covers up any flaws I had on my face. When I stare back at this girl in the mirror I am wondering how I can pull off a miserable girl. I have never acted like President Crowe wanted me to. It couldn't be that hard, I will just have to make myself believe that I will never see Nick again. To make my eyes seem less bright I think of when Nick plunged the knife into his torso. Immediately the light leaves my eyes, I know what to do now.
Everett comes back to take me to the elevator. We go down to the ground floor that will take us to the city circle, it reminds me of the chariot rides, it feels like forever since then. When we got to the last floor Everett leads me to the place we went before our interviews so long ago.
I'm standing looking down at the floor, my mind racing through what President Crowe instructed me to do. I fill my head with the saddest thoughts I could ever think of. Things that have happened and things that I am afraid that will happen. I think it works because when Everett comes back he looks at me and asks me, "Are you alright?" I answer back "Yes." In the best voice I could think of that sounded depressed. Everett tells me that I am to go on the stage when I hear my name, which should be really soon.
And it was soon, like ten seconds soon. It takes a moment to realize that I must go to the stage. I hear the crowd roaring and it makes me smile a bit, but before I am visible to the crowd I snatch my smile away and swap it for a slight frown. When I look out to the crowd there must be millions of people. There screaming my name and Caesar is looking at me a huge smile.
Caesar gives me a hug and I give him a weak smile. When the crowd settles down Caesar and I begin to talk.
"Hailey! What it is a pleasure it is to see you! I see you are following in the footsteps of your mother and father." Caesar is still keeping the big smile on his face and I am still keeping my miserable face on.
"Yeah, uh…I guess so." I don't add much personality to any of my words so everyone can notice how broken I am. Caesar asks me more meaningless questions about the tributes, very clearly avoiding everything on Nick. I answer back in the same melancholy tone. I keep glancing back stage to see when Nick would be introduced, because right now I want him next to me.
"So Hailey, in the arena, there was no doubt a relationship with you and your District partner, Nick." The sound of his name makes me perk up my head. "We all saw your terrible reaction when he heroically stabbed himself so you can live, how are you feeling?" When he is finished I know this is my real time to shine, to show President Crowe I can act and I will do everything to keep my side of our deal.
"I…I am just…I feel terrible." I say slowly, sniffling my nose. The crowd awe's and Caesar's eyes look apologetic. "I just wish I was dead instead of him, he deserved to win, not me." Caesar puts his arm on my forearm and looks me in the eye.
"Well Hailey, we have a surprise for you and hopefully it will make you feel better." I try not to show my giddiness because I am supposed to be depressed and not waiting for my not anymore dead boyfriend to come onto the stage. I lift my eyes up to Caesar and say,
"I doubt it Caesar." I say back dragging my words. I can see Caesar mouth rising in such a smile I find myself fighting to stay in my glum expression.
"Well Hailey, just you wait. It appears that when the hovercrafts picked up Nicholas Hawthorne's body, it appears he wasn't completely dead, and they were able to revive him." I lift my eyes up and widen them.
"What?" I say fast and loud, I try to capture the emotions I felt when I saw Nick's alive body lying on the bed in President Crowe's building. Caesar is standing up now and holds up his hand.
"Let's bring out our second victor of the 76th Hunger Games! NICHOLAS HAWTHORNE!" Besides being extremely happy to see him again I remember I need to act like I just found out he was alive. I stand up and turn to the edge of the stage that we are on. Nick looks ten times better than he did the last time I saw him, which is extremely hard to do considering how great he looked before. His eyes sparkled in the spotlight. He was wearing a stunning black suit that made him look 5 years older. It was not just acting what I decided to do next.
I run to Nick and throw my arms around him. He lifts me up as soon as my hand touches the back of his neck. I look into his eyes and he looks into mine. Then for the first time since the arena, I kiss him. We stay there for a while, kissing each other. The kiss is so passionate that the whole crowd is howling and Caesar has to tap Nick's back to remind us that there are still interviews to do. We laugh as I peel myself off of Nick and take a seat next to him on the couch next to Caesar.
After that the interviews are very easy because I can feel the warmness from Nick's body next to me and it feels great, like nothing bad could ever happen. We go into questions quick and I am actually enjoying myself.
"Hailey, since it is incredibly clear that you and Nick are not 'Just Friends' in our first interview together, where you lying to me? Or did you not know you loved Nick." I laugh at Caesar and so does the whole crowd.
"I just think I didn't want to let myself love him, but it was incredibly hard." I say with a smile and at the end of my sentence I raise up my head to Nick and he smiles at me giving me a peck on the lips. The crowd awe's again and claps at our cuteness.
"What do you think your guy's parents think of this?" I laugh a little because despite me and Nick kissing passionately on TV I haven't though once about what my dad thought about my little romance with Nick.
"I think my parents are fine with it. I mean who would mind having Hailey around." The crowd laughs and I give Nick a goofy smile.
"Well my parents on the other hand, I'm not too sure!" the crowd laughs as Nick and I banter back and forth about my dad's opinion of Nick.
"Well regardless of the past, I'm sure my dad will learn to love Nick, because he is a really good guy." The crowd is overwhelmed with our cuteness and is making all different kinds of noises.
"What are you guys looking forward too, going back home?" I look to Caesar and tell him how excited I am to see my brother who I miss terribly. I give a wave to the camera to Will and I look up to Nick to hear his answer.
"To spend time with Hailey." He says quickly without thinking. He looks back down at me and is giving me the same smile with the same dimple I've seen so many times. Except this time I am not scared that this could be the last time that I see his face of perfection. This time I am certain I love Nick and that I want to spend the rest of my life with him
One more chapter to go! Ahh! It's almost finished, one again I want to thank everyone for reading and reviewing! It means so much. But other than thanking you, I wanted to let you know that I want to write a sequel to this! and I already have some ideas but I don't want to write it unless you guys want it, so let me know if you want a sequel in the reviews, because if you don't I'll just think you don't, so please let me know if you want a sequel! Thank you so much. I love all of you!:)