"Fucking useless piece of shit," Rye muttered under his breath. He'd been stomping around the kitchen since I arrived, slamming down everything he touched and swearing with inspiring dedication.
"Will you stop cussing like that in front of her," Phyl nodded toward me. "And what's your problem now?"
"You," Rye snapped. Phyl was taking off his apron, preparing to leave for the afternoon. I glanced toward the stairs. I could hear the low murmur of my mother's voice from the second floor and the occasional barely audible answer from Peeta. He was most likely hiding from the hostility in the kitchen. "Just fucking taking off and leaving all this shit for me." Rye gestured to the kitchen. The sink was full of dirty dishes, the table and counter littered with batches of bread and a few pies and desserts cooling to prepare for the afternoon rush.
"I have a wife and child to get home to," Phyl snapped back. "And another job to go to tomorrow morning, thank you very much."
"Rye, stop being an asshole," Twain called back from the storefront. Phyl shot Rye a triumphant smirk that fell as soon as Twain started speaking again. "Phyl, don't you dare walk out that door without cleaning up after yourself."
"Can I help with anything?" I asked. I felt useless just leaning against the wall by the stairs with nothing to do but watch them and wait.
"Yes," Rye said as he pointed to a tray of at least two dozen bare cupcakes on the end of the work table. "Get some fucking frosting on those, please." Phyl turned away from the sink to shoot Rye a glare, earning himself a sneer in response.
I bit back a smirk as I stepped closer to the table. Prim and I never fought, but I'd seen plenty of fights between Gale's little brothers mirror this a little too closely. There was a tub of frosting sitting on the low set of drawers situated at the end of the table with a full piping bag on top. I'd seen Rye do this a few times before, and I knew what the end result was supposed to look like. With any luck I'd do a decent job of duplicating it. Peeta and my mother made their way downstairs after I managed a couple of shaky cupcakes. He sat down at the opposite end of the table and mom moved into the storefront to talk to Twain. I noticed the brace was gone, but that hat hadn't gone anywhere. I couldn't help but wonder what the wound looked like under there.
"You're—d-doing that wrong," Peeta said after watching me struggle through a few more.
"How am I doing it wrong?" I frowned at him. He rolled his jaw, staring at the piping bag in my hands for a moment.
"You're-" he cut himself off, shaking his head in frustration and getting up out of his chair. "Just—g-give it to me." He moved down to my end of the table. Rye and Phyl froze, looking across the kitchen at each other with wide eyes before turning to watch me hand the piping bag to Peeta. He worked the frosting down into the bag, twisting it off and draping the end over his forearm before leaning forward over the cupcakes. Peeta whipped through more than half the tray in a couple of minutes, topping each of the cupcakes in a perfect, uniform swirl, pausing to squeeze the frosting down toward the metal tip on the bag and twist it off again. He managed a few more before his hands started to shake. He pressed his eyes closed for a moment, drawing a deep breath through his nose and squeezing out one more slightly off kilter swirl of frosting before he dropped the piping bag to the tabletop. Rye took a hesitant step forward as Peeta pressed one hand over his eyes while steadying himself against the table with the other. He was starting to shake.
"Peet?" Twain said quietly. I looked back over my shoulder to see him standing in the doorway with my mother. They looked as awestruck as Phyl and Rye. Peeta shoved himself away from the table, beelining for the stairs and stumbling at the bottom. Rye was at his side in a second, helping him to his feet and starting to climb the stairs beside him.
"I'm fucking fine," he snapped in Rye's face, jerking out of his reach. Rye opened his mouth to speak, and Peeta leaned forward, the venom in his expression pushing him back a step. "Just—fuck off."
I stared after him as Peeta moved up the stairs, rubbing the back of his wrist under his eye just before disappearing from view. No one spoke or even moved for a moment. I looked down at the cupcakes. Even the last one, easily the worst he'd done, put everything I did to shame.
"Are you going to go up there or not?" Rye finally said, and it took me a moment to realize he was talking to me.
"Am I..." I glanced at my mother. "What?"
"Go after him," Rye jerked his thumb over his shoulder toward the staircase. "Now." I stammered for a moment, looking at Mom again. She just nodded, and I took a breath before crossing the kitchen and climbing the stairs.
The Mellarks lived above their business like most of the other merchant families. I had been upstairs briefly before, but I hadn't seen beyond the living room at the top of the stairs. I assumed that Peeta was in his room, but it dawned on me that I had no idea which one was his. I moved down the hall, past the kitchen, the bathroom, and a partially opened door that offered a glimpse of a bedroom I could only assumed belonged to his parents. Or just Twain, really. I turned to the door across from it. It was open just a crack. I stepped forward, looking through it to see Peeta sitting on the edge of his bed, leaning forward against his knees with his hands over his eyes. The shades were drawn, blocking out the late afternoon sun that would otherwise be streaming in through the window.
"Peeta?" I rapped my knuckle against the door softly. He startled, sitting up as I pushed the door open. "Can I come in?" Peeta didn't answer, just set his jaw and turned his head away. That was permission enough for me. I pushed the door open further to go in and saw a bed up against the opposite wall as well, realizing he shared with Rye. It occurred to me that meant Phyl was likely crammed in here with them when he still lived at the bakery. I wondered how much worse the mess was then as I stepped over the clothes on the floor to sit down on the edge of Rye's bed. "I'm guessing you haven't done much decorating since, um, that happened."
"I haven't d-done much of—anything," Peeta snapped, tripping over the sentence as his chin twitched to one side. He squeezed his eyes closed, pressing his knuckles against his mouth. "It's—I can't use—um. Fuck." He leaned forward again, yanking the hat from his head and tossing it to the floor at his feet before combing his hands into his hair, bouncing his leg.
"Squeezing those piping bags is a pain in the ass," I looked down at my hands, clenching my fists for a moment. "I did, what, five of those? And my hands hurt. I thought I was strong." He drew a breath, opening his mouth to speak and cutting himself off. I thought about the way he had been before; how easygoing he'd seemed talking to his friends, the time he sweet talked our English teacher out of a vocabulary test last year. He'd flattered her into blushing. That was somehow the same boy who sat in front of me twice a week unable to put together a sentence longer than five or six words without faltering. If he spoke at all.
"I can't... d-do it," he said. I waited for him to continue, watching him look down at his hands and rub them together. "It's like I'm... stuck in someone else. Everything I used to d-do is g-g-gone."
"You did a pretty damn good job on those cupcakes," I tried. He frowned at me, the rest of that statement hung in the air between us. Until you couldn't even hold the bag anymore.
"Eight weeks," he said, that angry, dead look falling over his face. "And I j-just m-mastered getting up and d-d-down the stairs alone." His face twisted into a frown and he turned his face away, trying to hide that twitch in his jaw. I still saw it, and I saw him fighting back tears. I got up, stepping across the room to sit on the bed beside him. He tensed up immediately.
"I'm sorry this happened to you," I said, reaching for his hand and weaving our fingers together. Peeta just stared down at where our hands rested on my knee, taking a slow breath before yanking his hand away and swiping his thumb under his eye.
"Don't you have s-some—hunting to d-do or someth-thing," he snapped.
"Okay then," I sighed, shaking my head as I got up and left the room. I glanced back as I pulled the door closed and saw him staring down at his hand, finally letting himself cry.
Everyone was still standing around the kitchen when I got back downstairs. They stared at me expectantly but I had no idea what to say. I looked around at them, shrugging and shaking my head, looking to my mother for help.
"Does he need someone up there with him?" Mom asked.
"I think he needs some time to himself," I said. Mom nodded, turning to Twain and flashing him a brief smile.
"How about I try again tomorrow," she said to him softly.
"Thank you, Lavender." Twain smiled at her, brushing his fingers over her arm lightly. The two of us left with a bag of fresh bread. My mother couldn't shake off her smile until we were well into the Seam.
"That was a big breakthrough you know," she said to me, looking over at me with something close to pride on her face. "Good job."
"I didn't do anything," I gave her a look.
"You have no idea of the effect you have on him," she said, shrugging a bit. "He's better when you're around."
"That's better?" I tried to imagine what that meant he was like when I wasn't there. What was worse than the silent, surly, withdrawn boy who frustrated himself near tears with everything he tried to do? Mom just nodded without saying anything more. "What happened to him? I mean. I know what his mother did to him, but what did that do? Why is it so bad?"
"He has a brain injury," Mom said. She sighed, pursing her lips for a moment before continuing. "When I took over, Twain told me that Dr. Lawrence thinks there's two parts to it. One from the actual impact, and one from when he hit the floor." I frowned, looking down at the ground in front of us and thinking about the look that crossed Peeta's face every time I caught him staring at the space in front of the ovens.
"I guess I just don't understand how that affects things like walking or the way he talks," I said as I shoved my hands into my pockets. "He said it's like he's stuck inside someone else. And the things he used to be able to do aren't there anymore."
"His brain has been damaged," Mom said. "There are skills and memories he used to have that were just wiped out and just as many that there's no connection to anymore. He has to learn some things all over again."
"No offense Mom, but, um," I looked over at her, raising my eyebrows. "Isn't this a little-"
"Beyond my abilities?" she smirked, shoving my shoulder lightly when I nodded. "It's new, and I'm learning. Dr. Lawrence has been helping me quite a bit, though. All of those books I've been reading are from his collection." My mother had a longstanding agreement with the doctor in town. Anyone she couldn't handle she sent his way, and anyone who couldn't afford him was sent to her. "He studied in the Capitol when he was young and said that the hospitals there have ways not to just pinpoint the exact damage done, but ways to repair it completely. It's a shame we can't have that here for him." I chewed on my lip, frowning at the ground and adding that little detail to my list of reasons to hate the Capitol. "What else did he say to you?"
"Not a whole lot," I shrugged as we climbed the stairs to the front porch. "You guys keep telling me all the good I'm doing for him but he still doesn't even talk to me. Any time I spend with him ends with him swearing at someone and storming off."
"You got him to pick up a pastry bag today, Katniss," she gave me a look, opening the front door for me. "He hasn't even tried doing any bakery work since it happened. That's a huge part of who he is." I paused in the kitchen, watching her for a moment and trying to figure out what that meant. "Go get your sister. And tell Hazelle I want them over for dinner Sunday."
"Do you like helping mom with Peeta?" Prim asked while we were laying in bed that night, huddled together under the blankets against the draft sweeping through our room.
"Sometimes," I turned toward her as she squirmed closer to me, wrapping an arm around her shoulders. "He can be kind of a jerk, though."
"Well, obviously," she scoffed. "He's scared. He has this awful injury and doesn't know when it's going to get better and he has to rely on everyone to do everything for him. Plus he's afraid of embarrassing himself in front of you."
"How do you know all this?" I smirked, resting my cheek against her hair.
"You would too if you were paying attention," she said, punctuating the statement with a yawn.
"Go to sleep, Duck," I rubbed my hand over her back. How did my baby sister end up more perceptive than me so quickly?
The next morning I slipped out to hunt long before the sun rose, bundling up against the cold. A light snow fell overnight, just enough for my tracks toward the fence to be painfully obvious and not enough to truly cover them. I doubled back a ways, finding a pine bough to sweep across the ground behind me and left a swath of bare ground in my wake that was probably just as obvious as actual tracks. I met up with Gale at the ridge over the valley. He had already been through our snare lines and sat on a fallen tree cleaning what little he'd managed to pull from the traps.
"Morning, Catnip," he shot me a smile as I sat down beside him.
"You're up early," I shifted my game bag into my lap and leaned the bow against the tree beside me. He shrugged. "I brought breakfast." I tossed open the top of my game bag, pulling out a small loaf of dark bread and a packet of cheese from Prim's goat.
"Must be nice," he smirked as he accepted the hunk of bread I tore off for him. "Fresh food all the time."
"My mom gives you guys almost half of what she brings home," I laughed, offering him the cheese as well.
"Still," he grinned, taking a bite and talking around it. "It'll make for an easier winter."
"For both of us," I gave him a look. There were times last winter when we had less than nothing; when Mom had no patients, when there was nothing to hunt, and Gale had helped us. He used the money from the odd jobs he picked up around town and the pay from his spot on the crew that repaired the winter damage to the fence to get us all through it. His family and mine. I owed him for that. Between the pay mom was bringing home every few weeks and the food Twain insisted on us taking home nearly every visit I would be able to return the favor this winter.
"How is all that going?" he asked. I looked over at him. "Helping. Whatever it is you're doing that has Prim whining to Rory every time she's over."
"It's fine, I guess," I shrugged, looking out over the valley. "He's kind of a jerk sometimes. Although I guess he can't really help it."
"He can't help being a jerk?" Gale asked. I could hear the laughter in his voice and sighed.
"It's complicated. Come on." I pushed up off the tree and tucked away the leftovers from our breakfast. We managed a decent haul that was well worth the hours we spent trudging through the cold. By the time we made it back home it was well into the morning.
Madge was waiting for us at Gale's house, sitting in the living room and braiding Posy's hair. She had started tagging along on our Saturday trips to the Hob this past summer, out of curiosity as much as boredom. Her presence hadn't exactly been welcome to begin with; no one really wanted to do business in front of the mayor's daughter. After a couple of weeks, though, her being with us started to have the opposite effect. It made people more honest. They haggled less and paid a little more, as if there was some unspoken agreement that if the mayor were going to hear about us out at the Hob through his daughter he'd only hear good things. Gale and I certainly didn't mind, so she went with us every weekend.
She peppered me with questions throughout the morning, carefully considering my answers as if she were trying to figure something out. Whatever it was, I didn't have the patience to try piecing it together.
"I can't believe he's that bad," Madge frowned and folded her arms over her chest. Gale was a few feet away trying to trade off the last of our game for the day. "I mean, we all knew his mom hit him, but I don't think anyone had any idea how bad it was."
"I know." I thought about the one time I'd seen it in action. It was on my way to trade a few years ago. He had stumbled out onto the back porch with his mother hot on his heels and slapping the back of his head. You're every bit as slow and stupid as your father. I could still see the angry sneer on her face as she yelled at him. I could remember the way he'd just hunched up his shoulders and turned his face away; his mouth twisted into a frown and his eyes pressed closed. I ducked behind a tree in the back alley, not wanting him to know I'd seen.
"He'll get better though, won't he?" Madge asked. I sighed and shrugged.
"Mom said some of it will. She also said some of it is permanent, and there isn't really anything to do but wait and see which is which." I chewed my lip and hugged my arms around my ribs. A pair of peacekeepers on the other side of the Hob caught my eye. I couldn't quite see who it was. If it was anyone but Cray or Darius I hoped Gale had the common sense to pay attention. There were a few of them who took it upon themselves to take a stroll through and take anything that caught their eye and call it 'seizing contraband goods'. I gestured toward them. "And you know what I really hate? These idiots would lock Gale and I up in a heartbeat if they caught us slipping through the fence, but I guarantee that woman won't hear a word about nearly killing her son from them."
"The Capitol cares more about control than welfare," Madge said, following my line of sight. "Dad hates it. It's part of why he lets so much slide, I think. He hates that double standard."
A few days later Mom sat in the living room with Peeta while Prim and I did homework at the kitchen table. She had been trying to get him out to our house more often than the usual one day a week, insisting that the fresh air would be good for him and that he needed to get out of the bakery more. The card game she played with him had been replaced with flash cards, pictures, words, and phrases she grilled him on in 20 minute bursts. Every once in a while I looked up from my books and saw his face twisted in frustration as she asked him for a fifth way to phrase something or another sentence with whatever word she was focused on. When I listened in to see what sort of things she was putting him through to make him huff and rub his hands over his face like that I found myself getting just as frustrated with some of her questions.
"Girls?" Mom looked over at us. "Would you excuse us for a few minutes?" I nodded, nudging Prim up out of her seat. Peeta watched us cross the room, and I flashed him a faint smile as Prim and I disappeared out the back door.
"Some of the stuff she asked him is hard," Prim said, lifting the latch on the gate to the goat pen and slipping inside. I leaned against the fence, smirking at her. She turned to me and raised her eyebrows when I didn't respond. "I know you listened more than you were doing homework, too."
"Maybe," I smiled, pulling my sweater a little tighter around myself. I watched as Prim lifted the lid of the feed barrel, scooping some grain out for Lady and laughing at the impatient headbutt she took to the hip when she didn't put the bucket down fast enough.
"I wonder what they're talking about when she kicks us out," she scratched along Lady's shoulders, twisting her mouth in thought. I honestly wondered the same thing and was debating shifting close enough to the house to try to listen in on it. I didn't want Prim doing the same thing, though, and decided to set a better example than I wanted to be.
"Didn't you tell me last week that he's afraid of embarrassing himself in front of me?" I raised an eyebrow.
"Yeah, in front of you," Prim rolled her eyes, shaking her head. She put her hands on her hips, staring down at the goat. "He doesn't care how he looks to me." There was a hint of insult in Prim's voice that I couldn't help but smile at.
"You mean you wouldn't tell me?" I ask.
"Well—yeah. I would," Prim said, smiling at me sheepishly.
"And I'm sure he's well aware of that," I smiled at her. We cleaned out Lady's shed, replaced her hay, raked the pen, and changed out her water trough before Mom stepped out onto the back porch again.
"Kat? Would you like to take Peeta home?" she asked.
"Isn't his dad coming?" I stood, brushing the dirt from my pants.
"Not today, they're busy tonight," she folded her arms around herself, rubbing her skin through the sleeves of her dress to warm herself up. "I'll go, if you don't want to."
"No, I'll go," I said. Prim stood up beside me, scratching behind Lady's ears and biting back a smile. "What."
"Nothing," she grinned, unlatching the gate and leading the way back into the house. Peeta stood by the kitchen table, leaning against it with one hand and flipping through my homework with the other. His face was pinched in concentration. I wondered how much of it made any sense to him. I crossed the room to him, leaning against the table and watching him for a moment.
"Ready?" I asked. He startled, looking up at me as if he didn't know I'd even stepped into the room, and nodded. "Come on." I nodded toward the door, lifting my arm toward him just a little, just enough for him to see and know he could grab hold if he needed to. Peeta glanced down at the gesture briefly before crossing the space to the front door without my help and lifting his coat off the hook by the door to pull it on. I sighed, looking back at Mom before following suit, pulling on my own coat before opening the door and pushing his wheelchair out ahead of me. He followed behind me, hesitating at the top of the stairs as I bumped the chair down to the bottom. It was heavy and the wheels were wide enough to make moving it over the packed dirt roads that led through the Seam almost as easy as the stone paved streets in town. I turned around and looked up at him. After his refusal of my help inside, I didn't think he'd appreciate it now.
"K-Katniss?" he said quietly after a few moments of hesitation. "Um. C-could you-"
"Help you?" I asked. He closed his eyes, tensing his jaw and nodding. "Yeah." I climbed the steps to stand beside him and held onto his elbow as he moved down the stairs.
"Steeper—than th-the ones at home." He frowned as we reached the bottom, lowering himself into the wheelchair and assuming that closed off, angry expression I had come to know too well. The sun started to set as I pushed him toward town, the air chilling dramatically as it dipped below the horizon. I wished I'd brought some damn gloves.
"I think it's kind of ridiculous that my mom expects you to want to get out and get some fresh air when it's this damn cold," I said. He didn't even react, but I didn't really expect him to. "What the hell are you going to do when it snows?" I tried to imagine pushing this thing through the narrow, dirty trails that were worn through the snow by the hundreds of pairs of feet making their way to and from town or school or work. Last year the banks along the paths to school were as tall as Prim. The sidewalks and streets were usually cleared in town, but not very well. Peeta must have been thinking the same thing, he sighed and shifted in the chair, folding his arms over his chest. The rest of our trip was made in silence. I didn't speak again until we'd gotten close to the bakery. "Any of your friends come to see you yet?"
"N-no," he said. I frowned, thinking about what that meant for him, how that must have felt. My list of friends began with Madge and ended with Gale, but if something happened to me and either of them failed to check in on me, I'd have felt horrible. From what I could tell, Peeta had far more, and that had to have made the feeling even worse.
"Not even Delly?" I chewed my lip. "I thought she was your best friend."
"Wh-when we were six," he snapped.
"She said you used to visit her at night," I said, wondering what that meant. What there was to the two of them. He sighed and made a few false starts before speaking again.
"We're—were—still friends," he said, looking down at his knees. "She's d-dating Rye."
"Oh," I said, unable to hide the surprise in my voice. I tried to remember ever seeing the two of them together and came up completely blank. Not that I'd ever really paid attention. Maybe I'd just missed it. What I didn't miss, though, was the irony of Rye dating someone in my year after Gale told me the nasty shit Rye had said to him about robbing the cradle when he started dating Madge.
When we reached the back of the bakery he got up from the wheelchair and started up the back steps before I even had the chance to offer help. I watched him for a moment, sighing as I folded up the chair and hefted it to the top of the stairs. Peeta led the way into the house. I tucked the chair to the side in the small mudroom that separated the back door to the porch from the bakery kitchen before nearly crashing into where he stood rooted in the doorway.
Rye had Delly pressed up against the work table, one hand in her hair, the other firmly planted up the front of her shirt. They looked like they were trying to extract each others tonsils with their tongues. I bit back a smirk, glancing over at Peeta. The look on his face killed the expression immediately, though. He was watching them with something caught between annoyance and sadness. I turned back to look at them, wondering how the hell they hadn't noticed our presence at all. I cleared my throat and Delly all but shrieked, shoving Rye away from her and whirling around toward us.
"Oh my god," she said breathlessly, smoothing down her shirt and trying to tuck it back into the waistband of her skirt. "Peeta. Oh my god. I came to see you. See how you're doing, you know? But you weren't here. Um." She pushed her hair back away from her face, trying in vain to smooth down her curls. "Hi, Katniss."
"Great timing, guys," Rye deadpanned, stepping closer to Delly, slipping his arm around her waist and trying to work his fingers into the top of her skirt. She slapped his hand away.
"Hi D-Delly," Peeta frowned. He didn't budge from his spot in the door frame, he just turned his attention toward Rye. "Where's D-Dad."
"Out on a delivery," Rye said, his attention still mostly focused on Delly. Every attempt he made at touching her again was met with a slap or a glare.
"How are you doing?" Delly asked, melodramatic concern plastered across her face. "You look great. Really great, Peet."
"F-fine," he said. I could see the tension settling in and his hands starting to shake. His grip on the door frame tightened.
"Everyone says hi," she tried. His response was obviously unsettling her. She chewed her lip, looking at me and Rye before turning back to Peeta. "We talked about all of us coming over but, um, I thought maybe it would be better to limit it. You know, so we don't overwhelm you."
"No you d-didn't," he snapped. Delly straightened up, frowning at him. "They don't care. You—you even took this long. Probably j-just here for him, anyway." Peeta nodded toward Rye. Delly's lip quivered, her eyes shining with tears.
"Hey," Rye frowned, settling his arm around her shoulders, the first gesture she didn't shrug away from. "Don't-"
"Shut up," Peeta hissed, pushing himself away from the door frame and into the kitchen. "I'm g-going upstairs." He brushed his hand along the wall for balance, pausing when he got to the foot of the stairs for just a moment before continuing up.
"I told you," Rye said to Delly softly. "That's why I keep telling you to wait." She folded her arms around herself, watching Peeta until he disappeared to the second floor. She closed her eyes as Rye wrapped his arms around her. He stared at me over the top of her head. "Are you going to go up there?"
"Are you serious?" I dropped my arms to my sides. "He's your fucking brother, don't you think maybe you should be the one to talk to him about your girlfriend being an insensitive bitch?"
"First of all, you're the only one who actually helps him," Rye snapped at me, pointing toward the stairs. "And secondly, don't fucking talk about her like that." He rubbed his hand over Delly's back, dipping it far lower than was tasteful for comforting someone. I just rolled my eyes and climbed the stairs to the second floor.
I found Peeta in his bedroom, sitting in the dark on the edge of the bed, bouncing his leg and chewing the side of his thumb. He stared blankly at the floor, barely even looking up at me until I sat down beside him.
"You okay?" I asked. He glanced at me, taking a breath and dropping his hand into his lap.
"No," he said. I just watched him, waiting for him to continue. He always did, given enough time. The only other person I'd seen wait for him to speak for as long as they really needed to was my mother. "They d-don't care. I thought they did. And she's just—just c-c-covering for them. Because she thinks it'll h-hurt me less." He stopped, his next words catching in his throat, and stared at the opposite wall.
"Kind of fucking rude to turn up like that." I thought about what he said about her just being there for Rye. It sounded bitter, maybe a little jealous, and that made me wonder about the two of them again. "She seemed a little more interested in jamming her tongue down his throat than your welfare."
"Whatever," he shrugged, dismissing it. "That's Rye. It's—h-how they are. I'm not-" He hesitated, chewing the inside of his lip for a minute.
"Not what?" I asked quietly. He just shook his head, looking down at his lap and picking at a hole in the leg of his pants.
"It's getting late. C-cold," he said, his voice softening a little.
"Trying to get rid of me, Mellark?" I smirked. A smile twitched across his lips and he shook his head.
"Just s-saying," he said. I smiled, rubbing my hand across his shoulders before getting up.
"See you in a few days," I said, heading for the door.
"Goodn-night, Kat," he said, and I paused outside his door as I pulled it closed. I wondered if he'd picked that nickname up from my mother. No one else called me that, not even Prim. Not since Dad. I smiled to myself as I made my way back downstairs, deciding that I liked the way it sounded from him. I came to a stop at the foot of the stairs. Rye had Delly against the cabinets this time with his hand under her skirt.
"Seriously? I was up there for like, five minutes. If that," I gestured back up the stairs, dropping my shoulders. She went rigid, her eyes going wide as she shoved him back. Rye just laughed, leaning against her again. I rolled my eyes, heading for the door, and I swear I heard her slap him as I stepped out onto the porch.
The response to this story has been very humbling and wonderful. Thank you guys so much for all the follows and favorites, and for taking the time to read and review the story. And a big thank you to everlarkrecs on tumblr for pointing us out! Coauthor credit, of course, to my husband. He can be found on tumblr as yourpeetaisshowing, and I can be found as alonglineofbread. Come say hello!