When the Red X is on the Door

by MADAM BETH

Post Mockingjay. Katniss and Peeta rebuild their relationship while trying to deal with the trauma of having been through the horrors of their lives since being reaped into the Hunger Games. They are there for each other when nightmares creep in the dark, but how does Katniss know when it is not safe for Peeta to be near her because of his hijacking? When the red X is on the door.

29. Chapter 24

(A/N: Once again, thanks so much for the WONDERFUL reviews! I'm really, honestly amazed by some of the responses to this story! All I can say is thank you a million times and keep the reviews coming! Another chapter will be going up either on Monday or Tuesday (warning: it will be the darkest I've gone in this story, but as I'm not a sadist, you can assume that things will brighten up soon enough!) this coming week and then there will probably not be another one until Memorial Day week sometime as I have end of the year assessments to write for kindergarten as well as an end of year play to 'direct' (which is kindergarten teacher code for 'make sure all of the kids know their lines, don't roll around the stage floor, and try to refrain from telling their classmates EVERY time they get a line wrong in rehearsal! Gotta love the 5-6 year old crowd! Actually, I should thank my class for providing me with a lot of the motivation for Bow's personality! She wouldn't be the kid she is without my little muses!)

Chapter 24

So they dug your grave
And the masquerade
Will come calling out
At the mess you made

"Demons"- Imagine Dragons

I cursed myself all the way to the meadow, through the woods and had finally calmed down slightly by the time I reached the lake. I knew for certain that a lot of my feelings were focused on feeling stupid.

Stupid for having missed the shot.

Stupid for not realizing it sooner.

But mostly stupid for having let Peeta get to know me well enough that he was able to see that there was something wrong almost immediately upon laying eyes on me that morning.

It was so easy to forget in the relative peace and quiet we'd experienced in those first six years that deep down inside of me there was still a desperate and lonely-by-choice girl from the Seam who shied away from emotional attachments to anyone but her family.

I still had moments, of course, like when what had been the date of Reaping Day rolled around every year. Then a panic so deeply ingrained in my soul would send me fleeing for the comfort of the woods. That was one of the hardest days to forget since it had always been the most feared and dreaded day of the year to every child in Panem.

It was different after the war though, because was that I never had to face that date alone again.

Peeta and I woke up on all 6 Reaping Days since the end of the war and disappeared into the woods together. There we would try our damnedest to make it a day of good memories instead of bad like it had been for our whole lives up to that point. We picnicked at the lake, swam in its cool waters to give us some relief from the summer heat that seemed to always be unbearable on that date, and hiked to the highest point we could find to watch the sun set sitting hand-in-hand.

To celebrate the five year anniversary of the end of the war, Peeta had slipped a large rolled up piece of paper from his pack while we were sitting watching the sunset on Reaping Day and placed it in my hand when I had reached for his to hold.

I had looked at him uncertainly and he'd rolled his eyes, telling me to give up the aversion to surprises thing for a minute and just unroll the paper. When I did, I was definitely surprised (to say the least) to find blueprints for a cozy cabin. Peeta then told me he wanted to have that cabin built for us by the lake.

It was one big room with only the bathroom separate from the living space, but it was something that would be entirely ours. The victor house we lived in together had originally been mine and while we had built the bakery together, it was the trade Peeta had been raised in and so it still felt more like his domain. This cabin next to the lake was something we'd be able to enjoy together on the frequent trips we took to the lake in the spring and summer months. And to be honest, I thought it would be nice to spend nights there comfortable in a bed rather than on blankets on the floor of the old concrete house.

Sitting on that hill at sunset, I told him how much I loved the gift. Then I gave him a surprise of my own when I pushed him back into the tall grass and climbed on top of Peeta to show him how much I loved it.

I was so caught up in thinking about some of those many good memories we'd made together in those first few years together, that I didn't realize I had reached the lake until I saw a large prey bird swoop down and pluck a fish out of the shallows in front of me.

I watched it fly through the air and off over the trees where it was likely going to feed on the small fish or bring it to its young chicks waiting in a nest somewhere. I sighed and cast a suspicious look at my abdomen thinking how even nature, my closest confidant, was hell bent on reminding me that I might be carrying a child of my own.

I slowly raised a hand to my middle and was about to touch my stomach when an angry blue jay began to squawk at me from the tree closest to our cabin. I dropped my hand quickly and then reached up to pull my bow over my head as I headed for the door to the cabin. I threw open the door and dropped my bow on the porch before swiftly slipping inside in order escape the overwhelming surge of thoughts and feelings I was having.

I looked around the space that was roughly the size of our living and dining rooms at home combined. There was a small kitchen with a pot bellied stove and a simple oak table with chairs for 4 to the right. To the left was a large sofa with a matching love seat and recliner that faced a large fireplace which could be used for both warmth and cooking. Next to all of that was Peeta's pride and joy of the cabin: a large wood-fired oven that he used for baking.

Nestled in the back of the room was our bed, next to the bathroom door and Peeta's paintings hung everywhere for decoration.

I made my way around the room, opening all of the windows to let the late spring breeze into the humid, stuffy space. We hadn't been to the lake much that spring because, up until a week earlier, it had been fairly cold up. So we hadn't had the chance to properly aired it out yet. We also hadn't been there enough for anything in the cabin to have retained mine or Peeta's scent. There was something about not having Peeta's scent in the air of our cabin that made it that much more painfully obvious to me that I was alone and that it was my choice to be so. Since it was built the previous year, I had never been to the cabin without him.

I stood in the middle of the room trying not to think of Peeta and finding it almost impossible to think of anything else. Whether I was willing to admit it or not at the time, Peeta had become the most important person in the world to me.

More important than I was to myself for sure, but that wasn't saying much in those days when I was still in need of weekly or bi-weekly phone conversations with Dr. Aurelius.

I was no longer just Katniss Everdeen, a girl who kept her mother and sister from starving in the Seam. I was Katniss Everdeen; a woman deeply in love with the man who had been saving my life in so many ways since we were children.

Somewhere along the way, as I had stumbled through the years of my life between my first Games and that moment in the cabin, I realized that Peeta had become my family too and that I loved him more deeply than I had ever loved anyone before. The love I had for my mother and for Prim was different and just as strong, but it was the intensity of what I felt for Peeta that gave me pause. It literally took my breath away even to admit that in my mind and I started to have what Dr. Aurelius would call a panic attack.

I was in love with Peeta and I did want to be his wife and for him to be my husband. I realized with sudden startling clarity the reason why I never I felt deserved of the kind of love or happiness that I knew would come from marrying Peeta in this post-Hunger Games world. It was because the same opportunity for happiness was no longer available to the only person I had loved as fiercely as I loved Peeta.

Prim.

Prim, who had died long before having her first love or, as far as I knew, even her first kiss. She would never experience the firsts that I had. It wasn't until Peeta and I had started a real relationship that I realized some of my fears about marriage and children had certainly come from the loss of my father, but more of them had not been from fear at all. Instead, the thing really holding me back from taking those steps forward with Peeta was a crushing sense of guilt for my little sister's unfinished life.

I had denied myself the chance for any future happiness I might find in different stages of a life with Peeta because of my dead sister who would likely have killed me herself just to tell me how stupid it was to stop living in honor of the dead.

It was with this terrifying realization that I dropped to our bed and buried my head under a pillow to cry. I cried for being on the precipice of a major life change. I cried for Prim who would never know what it was to lay late at night in the arms of the man she loved, trembling in a mixture of fear and ecstasy as she gave herself over to him for the first time, the second time and every time thereafter. But mostly I cried because I had turned Peeta away that morning when we had probably both needed each other most.

When I came to it was because another irate bluejay was hollering at me from the open window above the bed. I'd have liked to been able to blame Peeta because he was the one who always fed the birds with leftover bread from whatever meals we make at the cabin, but with everything else I was feeling I decided flipping out on the bird would provide me with a modicum of the emotional release I needed at the moment.

"Shut up, stupid!" I hollered as I pulled the pillow over my head away angrily.

"Do you SEE the stove on?!" I asked rhetorically and threw the pillow at the annoying bird. There was a screen over the window that blocked him from taking a direct hit but it had the desired effect of scaring him off the window sill.

I sat up still glaring at the empty window and yawned as I looked beyond the trees and yard to see where the sun was in the sky. There was an alarm clock on the nightstand next to Peeta's side of the bed (where I seemed to have found myself splayed out sleeping), but old habits die hard I guess. It looked to me to be close to 2 o'clock and I had to admit I was a little impressed with myself to find I was only off by 5 minutes when I looked over at the digital clock blinking 1:55.

Throwing my legs over the side of the bed, I was just about to stand when I saw the X we kept at the cabin in case Peeta had an episode while we were there sitting on the nightstand propped against the clock. I reached out to touch the little wooden letter and picked it up gently, turning it over in my hands. What I found on the other side made me both laugh and cry at the same time.

Peeta had never had an episode at the cabin and so I never really had any reason to inspect the cabin model of the red X before. I obviously then had never seen the tiny picture Peeta had glued to the back side of the wooden letter. It was a close up photograph of Just Peeta's face contorted in a dramatized, manic grin complete with crossed eyes and tongue hanging out of his mouth. It was obviously intended to make him look crazy.

Surely this was Peeta's way of inappropriately poking fun at his tendency for episodes. I didn't want to think it was funny but the longer I looked at the picture, the funnier it became until I wasn't sure if my tears were from joy or sadness. I brought the letter to my face, rubbing the picture against my cheek and thinking for probably the millionth time in 6 years how undeserving of Peeta's love I really was.

There I was hiding in a cabin sulking about the possibility of being pregnant when I had the kind of partner at home who could make a joke out of the most horrifying experience of his life like it was no big deal.

I sighed heavily, the sheer exhaustion of all the emotions coursing through me making it feel like I had napped for a few minutes instead of the several hours I really had been out. I was hungry but knew we hadn't left anything in the cabin for fear of animals getting in to try and eat it and I didn't feel much like hunting either. With nothing left to distract me from doing so, I decided it was time to suck it up and head home to try and apologize to Peeta and figure out what to do next with the possible pregnancy situation.

I washed my face in the bathroom sink and rebraided my hair which was a mess from sleeping with a pillow over my head. I even straightened the bed and put some things that had been left lying around away before I closed the windows and grabbed my bow from the porch.

As I made my way across the porch after scooping up my bow, I touched the rocking chair Peeta had dragged all the way through the woods to bring to the cabin the second time we went there after it was built. I smiled and gave it a gentle push, watching it rock itself back and forth rhythmically as I stopped a moment to remember that day.

I had laughed at how excited Peeta was the first time we went to the cabin. He was so ready to go there that he left Lane in charge of closing the bakery even though he hadn't worked there for long in order to be home and packed up to go before it got too dark to venture out into the woods. He'd decided to close the bakery for the weekend in order to give us two full nights and days alone together at the cabin.

We'd made it just in time for a quick meal of sandwiches and fruit which we had eaten on a blanket out on the empty porch, watching as the first fireflies began to blink their way out of the tree line. They drew closer to us, little by little as if inspecting the new neighbors in their forest community.

I had mentioned, rather off-handedly, that it would be nice to sit out on the porch in a rocking chair with a cup of hot chocolate in the morning. I hadn't mentioned or thought of it again for the rest of the weekend because we'd had such a wonderful time in those two days.

Peeta had baked a tray of big, fluffy chocolate chip muffins for us to enjoy for breakfast on Saturday while he thought I was still sleeping. I really was just lying there motionless, watching him mix ingredients without needing to measure a single thing that went into the bowl.

We had gone swimming in the lake most of that first full day and then I'd let Peeta hunt with me and managed to take down a nice sized pheasant for dinner.

And by 'let Peeta hunt with me' I of course mean I stood him in one spot in the woods and told him not to move anything but his eyes while I went 100 yards away and shot the bird.

I laughed at the faces Peeta made while I pulled out the feathers in the kitchen sink to prepare it for cooking at dinner time. Peeta sketched me after we ate, sitting in front of the fireplace restringing my bow. We passed out on top of the bed together, both of us exhausted from the exertion of playing in the water and hunting all day.

The next morning we'd eaten the rest of the muffins from the day before while listening to the rain that began around sunrise. We were curled up on the the floor of the porch, me in Peeta's lap with the comforter from the bed wrapped snuggly around us as we ate and sipped from mugs of hot chocolate.

The rain continued on through the rest of the day, giving us as good a reason as any to spend that entire Sunday in bed talking, cuddling and making love until it was time to head back to do some prep work for opening the bakery again on Monday morning.

I left Peeta at the bakery where he said he wouldn't be home in time for dinner and for me to just leave him a plate to heat up when he got in. I thanked him again for having the cabin built for us and told him I couldn't wait for the next time we went.

That next time ended up being only a few weeks later. I had done some hunting for our meals the next day and Peeta said he would meet me at the cabin when he was finished at the bakery for the day. It was a Saturday night and since the bakery was always closed on Sundays anyway, we only planned to stay at the cabin that night and into Sunday afternoon. I'd headed off without him reluctantly but Peeta assured me he knew how to get to the cabin by himself.

I cleaned a little bit and started working on the fence we were putting up the next day to start a garden at the cabin and was rolling out the chicken wire to cut to the lengths we needed when I heard an unusually loud rustling coming from the woods. Peeta was and always has been pretty loud when walking through the trees but this didn't sound like the footsteps I'd always associated with his arrival.

I stood from the crouch I was in and walked around the cabin to the front just in time to see Peeta emerging from the woods…carrying one of the large rocking chairs from our porch at home. "Are you nuts?" I asked hurrying over to help him with the pretty heavy piece of furniture.

Peeta was breathing heavily and sweating buckets through his white undershirt. He rolled his eyes and took ahold of one arm of the chair while I took the other and we carried it the rest of the way to the porch. "Oh thank you, Peeta…" he said trying to mimick my voice. "…what a romantic gesture you've made by bringing a rocking chair to the cabin like I said I wanted the first day we were here. How sweet of you to remember!" he said and I laughed and gave him a little shove after we set the chair down on the porch.

"Jerk…" I said as he pulled me into his arms and rubbed his sweaty face against my neck and cheek, making me squeal. "It is sweet that you remembered that but you could have tripped and hurt yourself carrying that over uneven ground, not to mention it's like a 2 mile walk!" I said kissing him on the lips softly between every few words.

"I'm fine, Katniss. Just a little…tired and…gross now." He laughed pulling the collar of the shirt up to wipe his face. "You wanted a rocking chair here and now you have one. Anything for my girl." He grinned and leaned in to kiss me as his hands slid down to cup my backside.

I pushed my hips into his lightly and wrapped my arms around his neck. "Thank you. It is insanely romantic that you remembered I'd said that and dragging a rocking chair 2 miles through the woods for me gives you some major points too." I teased against his mouth and Peeta kisses his way down my neck and across one shoulder.

"Points that could possibly redeemed for, oh I dunno…" he murmured kissing his way back to my neck and tugging my hips forward to make a tighter fit with his. "…shower sex maybe?" he asked and I chuckled before pulling back and smiling up at him.

I stepped away from his hold suddenly and turned, giving the rocking chair a little push to make it move as I walked back towards the door to inside. Just as I reached it I turned my head and raised one hand, beckoning him to follow me with a wiggle of my index finger. I couldn't help but laugh at how quickly Peeta moved across the porch and squealed when he lifted me into his arms and ran inside just after I'd opened the door.

The rocking chair was still moving as I stood there alone in the afternoon sun with my bow in my hand, wishing things could be as carefree as that day not so long ago. I knew I had to go home and talk to Peeta but I wasn't sure how exactly to start the conversation.

As I stepped off of the porch, my conscience reminded me that I might want to start with 'Peeta, I'm sorry'. I took one more look behind me at the cabin as I entered the woods and headed reluctantly back towards reality.

Whether intentional or not, I ended up passing our local midwife's office on my way home. There still weren't many properly trained physicians in the districts at that time but I had heard on the news that the government was in the process of training the very best healers from the districts of old Panem and hoped to have trained specialists in all of the hospitals in the country by the end of the decade. I was proud to say that my mother was one of them. This left most district women with only a midwife to go to for childbirth and other specialized women's care and I found myself standing at the bottom of the steps to the District 12 midwife's office before I knew it.

Her office was attached to the clinic where I went for my shot and I cast a dirty glance its way as I slowly started up the steps to the door after looking around to make sure none of the neighbors were around. I tried the handle and when it turned, I pushed the door open and stepped in quickly to avoid being seen.

The tiny waiting room was empty and I appreciated not having to face anyone I knew during that particular visit. If I had, I was sure Katniss Everdeen visiting the midwife would have been the talk of the town before noon the next day. I had heard mumblings for years already as to when Peeta and I would get around to having children and had ignored it for the most part. Haymitch made sure to remind me that if I ever did decide to 'pop out a few' as he so colorfully put it, then I should let him know first because as our closest friend, he deserved first shot at the heft purse that had grown throughout years of people placing bets on when it would finally happen.

I was walking around the room looking at different posters showing the stages of fetal development when the inner office door opened and a short, stout woman with long wavy blonde hair and a white doctor's coat on popped her head out and smiled at me.

"Katniss…so nice to see you!" she said even though I had never met her before. It didn't faze me anymore to have complete strangers greet me like we'd known each other for years as it had been happening for so long that it was no longer a big deal. Hell, sometimes I didn't even realize they'd done it because I was so used to just going along with all of their instrusive questions about my personal life.

"Oh, I'm…I'm so sorry." She said with a nervous chuckle and beckoned me over to the doorway she was standing in. "How rude of me, people must do that to you all the time!" She said apologetically and shook my hand gently. "I'm rowina, it's very nice to meet you. Is there something I can help you with today?" She asked casually and I suddenly panicked. Today? Was I really ready to deal with the situation right then after all I'd been through already that day?

"Uh…w-well, I was more hoping that I could…maybe make an appointment with you?" I mumbled and she smiled easily at me and nodded.

"Well, I'll admit I've been wondering when you were going to finally start coming to see me for regular gynecological care. I'm sure your mother has told you that at your age you should at least be seeing me once a year for a check up…" she began and I shrugged my shoulder nervously and shook my head.

"No…no, well, yes, my mother has been telling me for years that I should be coming to you and I've done a pretty decent job of ignoring her…until now…" I said with a smirk and she leaned against the doorjam with a slight frown and folded her arms over her chest.

"And….I assume it isn't a crisis of conscience for not having listened to your mother the last several years that has brought you here today?" She asked and I bit my lower lip and shook my head as I looked her in the eyes finally.

After a quick glance around the waiting room to make sure it was empty, Rowina opened the door she had been leaning against and gestured for me to enter it. "Come on back, my next appointment isn't until 4." She said leading me down a short hallway and into an exam room.

I looked around the tiny room that contained only an exam table, a small desk and a long countertop with a sink while Rowina opened up a new folder and used some sort of small laser device to put my name on the front before she took out a pad of paper and a pen.

"Please, have a seat if you're comfortable." She said kindly and gestured towards the table. I huffed a laugh and gently pushed the stirrups at the end of the table out of my way as I moved to sit down on the crinkly paper covering it.

"Are there ever people who come in here that are comfortable?" I asked as I settled myself rigidly on the edge.

I could see Rowina smiling slightly as she watched me adjusting myself just so to make sure the metal stirrups had absolutely no contact with my body. "Fair point." She said finally looking up from what she was writing and smiled.

"So, what can I do for you?" She asked setting the pen tip to the paper and looking at me expectantly from the rolling stool she was sitting on. I looked between her face and the paper a few times uncertainly before I answered. "Anything you say here to me is completely confidential, Katniss." She assured me with a gentle smile. I nodded and took a deep breath.

"Well, the thing is, I usually get uh…that shot every 2 months for birth control and I've always been really good about remembering to get it but I…I had a lot going on last month around the time I usually get it and I just…forgot." I rused out and then took another breath. "And then I didn't get my period when I usually do, so I was starting to worry that I might be…"

Damnit. I still couldn't say it.

"…Pregnant?" she asked without looking up from what she was writing on the pad. I waited until she stopped and looked up before I nodded slowly.

"Well, I assume that since you're a 25 year old woman in a committed relationship that you've probably been having sex regularly since missing that shot?" Rowina asked and again I nodded. "Would you like me to give you a pregnancy test to find out? I can do it right here in the office. It's a very simple and non-invasive procedure. I'll just need a drop of your blood to put through a scanner. Only takes a moment." She explained and I looked at her, then the door and back again, biting my bottom lip. "Would you like to have Peeta here with you?" She asked gently and touched my knee. "I can give him a call, shouldn't take him long to walk down here." She offered and I sighed, thinking of how things had been left between us that morning.

"Um, no…no that's okay." I said straightening my back. "I'll tell him the results when I get home." I said trying to sound strong and failing miserably by the look I saw on Rowina's face.

"Are you sure?" She asked again softly and I nodded and looked down at my hands twisting nervously in my lap. "Alright then, let me just grab the testing equipment and I'll be right back." She patted my knee again as she stood and headed out the door as I finally released the breath I'd been holding since entering the exam room.

A few moments later she returned wearing latex exam gloves and carrying a small portable scanner. "Okay, I just need you to relax and give me your hand so I can take a drop of blood from your finger." I had another brief moment of panic as I thought of the last time I'd needed my finger pricked. During the Games when a drop of my blood was used to confirm my presence at the Reaping.

"It's alright, Katniss. I'm here to help you not hurt you." Rowina said quietly and I took another breath as I gave her my hand. It really was just like checking in at the reaping. A quick pinching prick to the finger and a drop of blood on a small slip of paper.

She handed me a small strip of gauze which I pinched between my fingers to staunch the bleeding as I watched her place the strip of paper into the scanner she was holding.

Going against my rationale about time being a universal invariant, those seconds between Rowina placing the slip into the scanner and it processing the results felt like hours. When the machine beeped my heart leapt into my throat and I actually jumped a little in surprise.

"Well, there we are." She smiled and patted my knee as she turned the little screen on the device around so that I could see it. "Not pregnant." She said at the same time I was reading the words.

I stared at them for a long few moments as I felt like the weight of the world had been lifted off of my shoulders and at the same time, a strange and completely unexpected feeling of…sadness.

"You were hoping for a negative test result weren't you sweetie?" Rowina asked gently and I tried my best to flash her a relieved smile, but sensed that it fell a little short.

"Oh, yeah…yes, definitely." I said with another nervous laugh. "I definitely don't want a baby." I mumbled and looked down at my wringing hands in my lap again. There was an awkward moment of silence as I absorbed the news and I finally placed my hands on my belly with a deep sigh. "Hooooo…well, crisis averted I guess." I said with yet more nervous laughter and slid off the end of the table. "So should I get the shot now or…" I shrugged and Rowina shook her head.

"Wait until your next scheduled time to get it so that it doesn't throw your cycle off anymore than it already has been thrown off." She said rooting around in a drawer under the counter area. "Until then…" She said turning and slapped a familiar box of condoms into my hand like the ones Peeta used when we were first together. I smirked and set them on the edge of the table as I straightened out my clothes to leave.

"Woah, there Miss Everdeen." Rowina said sternly and placed a hand on my shoulder. I looked at her wide eyed and froze. "While I have you here you might as well let me give you an exam so that you can be honest with your mother the next time she calls." She said and pressed a paper-thin gown into my arms. "More importantly so that I can be honest with your mother the next time she calls me." She smirked and stood from the stool.

"I'll just be out in the hallway, take off all your clothes and put the gown on open in the front." She said slipping out the door and I dropped my head back with a silent groan. "Fuck." I hissed quietly as I stood from the table and begrudgingly toed out of my boots and pulled my socks off.

I stopped for a sandwich at the deli on my way home and brought one of Peeta's favorites home for him as a sort of peace offering. I stood on the doorstep for a few minutes before taking a deep breath as I reached for the handle and turned it slowly. I felt better since finding out that I wasn't pregnant, but I also knew that Peeta had been hurt by not only my continued insistence that I did not want children, but also by what he considered to be my not feeling comfortable confiding in him when I thought I had been carrying his child.

As I entered the house I immediately listened for any sound that might indicate where Peeta might be. Right away I could tell that he wasn't anywhere on the first floor and I didn't hear any creaking of floorboards upstairs either.

"Peet?" I called and walked deeper into the living room heading for the kitchen. "Peeta?" I said as I rounded the corner into the kitchen thinking maybe he was just being exceptionally quiet. I looked around the room for a moment and then turned my head towards the back door when I heard the rush of water through the walls that indicated the hose outside was being turned on. I smiled softly, thinking that Peeta must have been out there watering the new flowers we'd planted the day before. I dropped the bag with his sandwich on the kitchen table and headed out the door.

"Hey…" I said stepping out onto the back porch and folding my arms over the chest. Peeta was standing in just a pair of jeans with no shirt on and his feet bare as he held the hose out in front of him, sweeping it over the new garden slowly. I was momentarily distracted from my concern over how upset he still might be with me when all I could think of was how deliciously hot he looked standing there.

"Oh, hey…when did you get back?" he asked turning back to the garden as if he hadn't sene the way I was ogling him.

"Just now, I stopped at the deli and got you a sandwich for dinner…need any help?" I asked sitting on the step and wrapping my hands over each knee gently.

"Nah, I was just finishing up here and then I was going to grab a shower." He shrugged and didn't even turn his head to look at me. He was really pissed off. Luckily, I had a few things in my bag of tricks.

If there was one thing I knew about Peeta and diffusing arguments with a 24-year-old man, it was that while still in his sexual prime, he could be distracted from just about any unpleasant emotion if sex was being offered in return for his cooperation.

"Want any help with that?" I asked raising my eyebrows with a coquettish smile I knew he could rarely resist. Peeta swung his head my way with a wounded look as he cut off the hose and moved back to the side of the house to recoil it.

"I'm just going to rinse off quick. I'll only be a few minutes." He said without even cracking a smile as he wiped his hands off on the legs of his jeans. 'Wow.' I remember thinking. 'He must be really, really pissed off.' "Besides…" he continued moving over to stand in front of me with his hands on his hips. "Isn't that what got us into this…situation in the first place?" he asked with a frown and waved a hand towards my abdomen. Even if I hadn't been looking right up into his face, I would have known that Peeta was still very hurt by our exchange that morning.

"I'm not pregnant." I said shaking my head as I looked up at him from where I was sitting on the top step of the porch. "False alarm. I'm sorry I put us through all of this, and the fighting this morning was just stup…" Peeta cut me off as he dropped his hands from his hips to hang at his sides.

"And just how the hell do you know that you're not pregnant?" he asked raising his voice slightly. I opened and closed my mouth a few times before I could finally answer.

"I…well I was just…I was passing the midwife's office on my way home and I thought I should stop in and see if I could make an appointment with her to find out for sure if I was or not and…and she was able to take me right in before her next patient." I said, my voice weakening with each word as I watched Peeta becoming angrier and angrier. "What?" I asked with an exasperated shrug and looked uncomfortably around at anything in the yard but Peeta.

"So what you're saying is, once again, you felt it necessary to keep me out of something that would have affected both of us?!" he demanded and shook his head in exasperation, laughing humorlessly.

"You're a real piece of work you know that, Katniss?" he asked storming past me up the stairs to the back door.

His words were like a slap in the face for me. He'd said basically the same thing to me while strapped to a hospital bed the first time we talked face to face after he attacked me in 13.

"Peeta!" I called after him and stood from the step just as the door slammed shut behind him. I rushed up the steps and flung open the door just in time to see him rounding the steps to the second floor at the front of the house. "Hey!" I said chasing him down and grabbing him by the elbow before he could hit the third step up. "I didn't know she was going to be able to take me in right away! Like I said, I was just trying to make an appointment!" I tried to explain as I heard my own voice rising.

"And you didn't think to call me and see if I wanted to come down there and be with you? While you were having tests done to see if you were pregnant with my baby?!" he spat, pulling his arm away from my grip and continuing up the stairs.

I was left at the bottom of the steps watching him go, unable to come up with any reasonable defense for my actions. I was haunted by the look in his eyes as he had turned away from me and realized just how deeply I was continuing to hurt him with my selfishness.

He was absolutely right.