not mine test test test

by delicatekissez

test

1. Chapter 1

She tells him that she moves here for the change of pace.

It's no lie; she was never good at that sort of thing.

Katniss knows it was unsustainable, the way she was going. Running and running because the ache in her lungs and the pounding of her muscles would surely prevent her body from feeling its real pain. Thegate control theory of pain, she thinks. She's not sure. It was always Prim who was good at those medical terms, her science-focused mind.

She knew she needed to stop. So she went back to the start.

Her foot presses down on the brake pedal of her electric car. They'll wear out fast here, she thinks, in these rolling green hills. Lush with trees, but ill-fitting for farmland. Or jobs.

That's what Peeta tells her.

"Young people move away from here," he says. "They don't tend to move back."

She wonders if he knows this because he's one of the young ones who moved back. It couldn't have been too long ago. She found his room for rent listing on an app that she didn't think old people knew about. There are only lines in the corners of his mouth when he smiles. And he smiles when he talks to her. It's not too big, not forced. Just enough to know that talking to her isn't a chore or obligation.

He doesn't talk to her too much, to her relief.

Their schedules don't align.

He wakes before dawn to get to his bakery. She finds a clerk position at the antique store, which doesn't open until noon.

She runs into the problem with a small town with the owner of the antique store, Sae.

"I haven't been able to go through any of it yet, but your mama just dropped some things off last month when she moved," Sae says to her, a hundred questions etched into every line of her old face.

Why'd you only move back when your mother moved away?

"I was so sorry to hear about your sister," Sae says next, and Katniss feels her heart clench, bracing itself.

She manages a nod.

"We're open six days a week," Sae continues, all business, and Katniss exhales.

She hikes on Sundays when the whole town is closed, and she assumes Peeta gardens at the same time, because the yard is always neat.

They cook their own meals, at different times. She thinks the kitchen is too small anyway, for them to work in tandem.

In those rare early evening hours they exist in the same space, she keeps to her room. She hears the faint sounds of the television in the living room where Peeta sits on the duck-and-marsh printed couch.

She catches herself trying to listen sometimes, wondering what he is interested in.

Sometimes the living room is empty, and she can hear the front door open and close. She wonders if he sees friends, and what they are like.

She writes him a check for her first month's rent, and he seems surprised about the paper.

He can't be too old,she thinks again. He had to be in his thirties, though she wasn't sure in which part of them, and at what point it became unacceptable.

Katniss decides it doesn't matter. She's not embarrassed to be renting a room from an older man's old-fashioned country house in her hometown. She needs to keep her savings intact, for when she moves back home. She covered enough colleagues' maternity leaves in the past year to understand that her prospects would suffer with such an absence. She can't be gone for too long, not when she was just starting her career. She just needs enough time to collect herself, glue all the pieces.

She sits out on the porch to eat breakfast before leaving for work. It's early for her, but she thinks about how Peeta is halfway through his day at the bakery already by this time.

It's still summer. The sun bakes the city's concrete back home. The sun makes everything seep out here.

The last remaining wildflowers release their fragrance. The grass smells green. The leaves rustle and their oils are carried by the breeze.

The door is always open at the antique store. Sae likes the light, and Katniss agrees.

It's musty and cool inside, but not abandoned-feeling. She has no real knowledge of any of the inventory, no concept of their monetary value. But she likes how each little thing is different.

The big box store in town starts to look alien, with each thing multiplied by a hundred.

She weeps because she cannot tell Prim about these tiny observations.

She knows that Peeta notices when there is redness in her eyes, because instead of asking about her day, he asks,Have you been on the old rail bridge trail yet? You'll like it, it's out of the way.

Katniss is bad at lying, but she's good at pretending to Peeta that she hasn't already been on every trail under the seeping sun around here with her dad years ago.

She thinks she's good at saying,No I haven't, that sounds greatto Peeta, because he always seems pleased to have distracted her from whatever made her eyes so blood-red.

He smiles at her, warm like an open weather will be good this weekend.

She wonders for a moment if she should invite him to come with her. He wears a prosthetic leg, but he seems to move well with it.

She doesn't ask him.

She regrets it as she toes the ancient iron bolts on the abandoned bridge.

The water rushes beneath her. She notices the yellowing of leaves. She aches to tell someone about it.

Katniss waves to Peeta as she passes him in the long driveway winding up the front yard. He's wearing a cotton baseball hat, a trickle of sweat down the side of his smiling face, and he leans on a heavy rake with metal teeth as he waves back.

His sleeves are rolled up to his elbows. She can see the strength in his forearms; probably from kneading dough every day. His entire body is solid. It seems to take up so much space, despite him not being too tall. It draws the eye anyway, wherever he stands.

She knows that he is attractive. She knew that from the moment she met him. But it strikes her now that he is actually quite beautiful, in a way that wasn't intimidating or a statement. His smile is beautiful. It could easily be weaponized. But it never feels like he expects anything from her when he smiles.

She wants to be closer to it, his beauty.

Her shower seems extra hot, her skin almost sunburned. She hums an old tune to herself, vibrations in her throat.

She feels like steam when she steps out. She turns right instead of left, and sits down on the carpet-like couch with her phone with her hair still wet and dripping.

She doesn't look up when she hears Peeta come back in. She stares at her phone as the shower turns on again, cheeks sunburnt with the knowledge that warm water was beading and running down every angle of his body.

Katniss keeps her head down and imagines the surprise on his face when she is still in the living room when he's done. She can hear in the way he's moving that he hasn't put his prosthetic back on after his shower; she senses his weight and heat settle on the other end of the couch, and she knows he'll be here relaxing for a while.

"Do you mind?"

Her head snaps up. His hair is tousled-damp. He has a small smile on his face. He nods toward the television.

"I like some background noise," he explains.

"Go ahead," Katniss says, and she wants to die at the crack in her voice.

The TV turns on, and she welcomes the excuse to turn from him. It's a nature documentary, something about floods and migration patterns of animals. She sets her phone facedown on the couch cushions.

She finds that it's nice to learn again.

Peeta picks something up in the corner of her eye. She hears the scratching of a pencil on paper. What she had always assumed were stacks of coffee table books must have been sketchbooks.

The documentary ends, and they look at each other as if on cue.

"Hungry?" he asks.

"I could eat."

A pencil is loose in his large hand. She wants to sneak a glance at the open book in his lap, though she thankfully exercises some self-control.

"I brought home some bread. Thinking of making french onion soup to go with it."

She nods. "That sounds really good."

Her eyes water simply standing in the tiny kitchen with him as he chops up yellow onions.

"How do you do it?" she says, pressing a paper towel to her smarting eyes.

Peeta laughs. "I grew up doing the food prep for the bakery. Used to it, I guess."

She's in charge of stirring the soup while he prepares the cheese-covered bread for the broiler. She imagines a younger version of him, rising before the sun.

"Did you work before school?"

"Yup."

"I did too. Delivered newspapers."

He raises a brow. "That was still a thing when you were a kid?"

Katniss scoffs. "How young do you think I am?"

He shrugs good-naturedly, but doesn't answer the question.

"I'm twenty-three," she says anyway. A part of her wants him to know.

Peeta doesn't volunteer the same information back.

"Watch out," he tells her quietly, his hand on the oven door handle. She moves out of the way as best she could in the cramped space as he places the bread on the rack.

They eat mostly in silence, but it's comfortable. Peeta looks out the kitchen window, past the ruffled, old-fashioned curtains, but it's not to avoid her eyes or anything.

"You really notice how the sun is starting to set early these days."

Katniss watches the shiny fats swirl on the surface of the soup in her bowl. "There were some yellow leaves on my hike."

"Fall's coming. Tourists are coming."

She hums as she remembers. There were always leaf-peepers in October.

"Busiest season for the bakery. I'll need to start looking for someone to help."

Her heartbeat picks up. She lifts her spoon, breaks the surface tension.

"I could do it."

"You want to wake up that early every day?"

"Not really," she says honestly, before she could think.

Peeta finds this amusing. He grins. He has nice teeth. They're straight, but not uncannily so.

"But I could do it," Katniss repeats.

"I know. I have a feeling you can do anything you set your mind to."

She likes the confidence he has in her. Refreshing compared to her place of work back home, where she is the greenest and no one trusts her with anything. Johanna, her officemate, is no exception, despite being her best friend and roommate.

"I'll have to tell Sae I'm quitting. Not sure how she'd take it, considering I just started."

"Sae would have you back any time. She likes you."

She wonders if Sae is one of Peeta's friends. "How do you know?"

"This is still a small town. Everyone knows everybody."

Of course, Katniss thinks.

"I don't know you. I mean, I don't remember you when I still lived here."

"I probably would have already moved out to college by the time you were old enough to remember."

It's the first time he references his age. She did sound like a baby when he put itthatway.

"I remember your father," Katniss tells him. "He snuck me an extra fresh cookie whenever I bought a dozen day-olds."

Peeta nods. "Sounds like something he would do."

It occurs to Katniss that his father probably passed away if his son had taken over the shop like this. She bites her lip, wondering if she had brought up a painful subject.

She sees that his bowl is empty, and she expects him to stand.

"Do you bake?" Peeta asks.

"No," she admits. "But I can learn, if you're willing to teach me."

Peeta exhaled a little laugh. "You don't need to take this job if you don't want it, Katniss. I can find someone."

She isn't sure how to explain herself. She supposes she has an inclination to help when it is needed. Something she learned from her younger sister, despite Prim claiming it was the other way around.

"You're helping me," Katniss says. "I want to return the favor. So yes, I want to do this."

It's sound reasoning in her head. Peeta seems to accept it as well.

"Break the news to Sae tomorrow," he tells her as he stands on uneven feet.

She knows she shouldn't.

But she opens the door to her bedroom anyway, and listens.

It's midnight, and silent. Peeta should be in deep sleep, as he needed to rise in three hours. Katniss crosses the hallway silently, always light on her feet, and she makes her way to the coffee table in the living room.

She picks up the sketchbook on the top of the stack, and carefully cracks it open.

It's mostly cake designs. Recipe notes. She recognizes some of the birds from the documentary they watched.

She isn't sure what she was sketches of me?

Katniss sets the book down, feeling a little sick with herself. What was the point of this invasion of his privacy? There wasn't any point, and she swears to never violate his trust again.

She marches back to bed. She closes her eyes and enters a nightmare.

It's the same one. Where she begs to take Prim's place in the crosswalk, wishes she wrenched the bicycle straight from her baby sister's hands, so she could have never got on that last ride.

Katniss wakes with a hoarse, strangled shout. Her heart pounds, and her eyes screw up with hot tears. She turns forcefully to her side, blinking as she catches the time on the alarm clock.

She sits up, her pulse still elevated. Peeta is usually awake by this time, did he hear her? She strains her ears, but it seems quiet.

Her head slowly returns to her pillow. The man has thunderous footfalls, she would have heard him if he were still home.

She closes her eyes—they shoot back open, heart pounding again as she hears the floorboards creak, his telltale heavy steps in the living room down the hall. He must have heard her.

Katniss waits to feel embarrassed, but she mostly just feels lonely. She checks the time again. This is usually about the time he leaves; sure enough, the old house's frame shifts as he opens and shuts the front door.

She feels an irrational trickle of bitterness down her sore throat that he would leave her in this state, instead of coming to her to make sure that she was okay.

She doesn't remember falling back asleep.

Sae takes the news well, as Peeta predicted.

"Just do me one favor?" Sae asks. "Give me the day today."

"Of course, I can stay as long as you need."

"Alright, man the front for me. I need to go through inventory."

Katniss takes her place at the register. She greets customers. They're usually retirees or kids that she swears ought to be in class at the moment. They value different things. The old customers are collectors. The kids buy for the sole purpose to sell.

She doesn't know any of them. They're either too old to have crossed her path, or too young to have existed at the same time as Katniss did here. Peeta is right, anyone who would have known her has largely moved away.

Katniss doesn't know who else to ask.

What can you tell me about Peeta?Katniss prepares herself to ask Sae the next time she steps out from the back storage room.

But the question dries up in her throat as she sees what Sae is holding in her hands.

"This was your pa's. I found it in the bags your mama donated."

Katniss takes the jacket, its weight nearly unbearable. She had seen her father swing it around his shoulders a million times, he never seemed to struggle with it. "I remember this."

"I just wanted to get through those bags before you left today," Sae says with gentleness. "I figured something like this could have been in there."

"Thank you, Sae." Katniss hugs the leather to her chest. It smells and feels safe in a way she hasn't felt in a while. She looks up at Sae. "What can you tell me about Peeta?" she asks, almost in a whisper.

"Broke off an engagement to move back here," Sae says, back to small-town bluntness. Katniss tries not to appear too interested in Peeta's close brush to marriage, despite it being an objectively interesting event. "His pa had just passed away, and then his mama got sick. Don't think she ever really knew how to take care of herself without her husband. Her other two boys have families of their own, so Peeta was the one who moved back to save the bakeryandtheir mama."

Katniss knows she should show some sign that she was listening. But her heart is too cold for her to move. Sheisstone cold, someone who moves back to her hometown only when she knows the coast is clear of her mother's melancholy. So unlike Peeta, who came back in time to catch the pieces before they all fell to the ground.

Sae sighs. "He tried his best. That woman clung to life out of spite, if you ask me. She never expressed any gratitude for his sacrifice. She swore that he was just doing the bare minimum of being a son." Sae places a hand over her heart. "But I've got kids of my own and I don't ever want my life to torpedo theirs. Never understood why people had children if they're only going to use them as a retirement plan." She gave a sniff. "Never liked that woman. She always took something home from here andthenclaimed it was damaged. Refund. Nightmare. But I was still worried about him when his mama passed, and he was all alone in that house. He's been through so much in such a short amount of time." Sae pats Katniss on the shoulder. "But then you came along. So I'm glad for that, you're good company."

Katniss finally moves as she snorts a laugh. "I'm not much of a conversationalist."

"You know what that means? Less chance of you spewing bullshit."

"And that's why I'm good company?"

"Yup."

Katniss smiles, despite herself.

"So if you're asking if he's a good man, I'd say yes. A resounding yes."

It's not as hard as Katniss feared to wake up at the witching hour the next morning. She rubs the sleep from her eyes in the dark quiet, and hears the shower turn on in the bathroom.

She mentally prepares herself and flicks on the yellow light. Tries to pick out an outfit that she thinks she will be comfortableandlook presentable in; she curses her limited wardrobe. Her clothes are really only suitable for hiking or a desk.

I need a stylist, Katniss thinks, for the first time in her life.

She forces herself to just put onsomethingbefore she could be tardy for such a silly reason.

"Morning," Peeta greets her in the kitchen. She thinks about how she thought it was too small for them to cook in here together, but they had managed it. She wonders how closely they'd work together in the bakery's kitchen.

"Good morning."

"Thought we could carpool."

"Okay."

He tells her to just observe him today. Katniss is always agreeable to quiet and hangs back, leaning against stainless steel, taking notes on her phone.

She thinks he works fast, but it still takes so long to fill up a tray with danishes. They go into the large chiller, and then come out again. There is more walking involved in baking than she would have imagined.

She likes seeing people in their element. Like her father surrounded by songbirds in thicket, or Prim kneeling to examine a stranger's skinned knee beside a tangled bicycle. Peeta is obviously good at this. He produces batches that are equal in shape and size. His arms are strong, the posture of his shoulders and back good through all the bending down to pipe the small cakes.

She gives him room to work, but occasionally they are close so he can tell or show her something. He smells like salt-sprinkled loaves, and the sweet soap they both use in the shower. She wants to move closer, inhale more deeply, take more of him. She refrains, respecting his space.

She watches him add cheese on top of the breakfast pastries, over thinly sliced potatoes.

"I was thinking about the bread you prepared for the french onion soup," she says, her voice a little raspy from a morning of quiet observation.

"Yeah?"

"It was really good."

Peeta looks up from his work to smile at her. "Good."

"Is that a thing you could make here? Cheesy bread?"

"Already changing the menu on your first day?"

Katniss shrugs. "You don't have to."

"We'll tinker with a recipe," Peeta says, and she thinks it's a small sort of promise. More time spent like this, in his soothing presence. She clings to it with her fingertips like soft, sticky dough.

He shows her how to use the point of sale system, and where the allergen information is.

"Neat handwriting," she observes, flipping the pages of the old binder.

"My dad's."

"Are these his recipes?"

"Most of them, yeah." Peeta brushes his hands on his apron. "But I've been trying to make my own. Figured that I might as well, if I was really going to do this."

Katniss isn't sure what he means by this, but she nods as if she understands.

"Your dad worked in the coal industry, right?"

Katniss nods again. She swallows, hoping her throat doesn't bob too obviously. "Did you know him?"

Peeta shook his head. "I just knew of him. Your mom used to be my dad's neighbor when they were growing up."

She tries to work out the math in her head. "He must have had you young."

"My mom was older, yes."

"He died so young," Katniss realizes aloud, before she can stop herself; her own mom is only in her fifties. She bites her lip. "I'm sorry—for your loss and sorry, I shouldn't have brought it up like that—"

Peeta chuckles, for some reason. "It's okay, Katniss." He eases down onto one of the stools he has scattered throughout the work area. "There's this sort of relief I feel when talking to someone who has also been through death and trauma." Her eyebrows shoot up, but Peeta is still half-smiling. "There's this shorthand, you know? There's no need for the awkward apologies, the tiptoeing around the subject. Life fucking sucks sometimes. Depends on the day. Yours might be worse than mine. Or the other way around. But there's no suffering Olympics. Just commiseration."

Katniss stares at him. And he's right. Maybe this is why Johanna is her best and only friend; she had also lost her family. Thereisa certain weight off her chest every time Katniss can talk about all this bullshit without the hand-wringing, the pitying.

"You know what's the biggest bullshit?" she says suddenly.

Peeta doesn't seem taken aback by her outburst, he just nods for her to continue.

"I was always sad for Prim cause she never knew my dad before he died, but she never knew my mom either though, did she? My mom was fucking catatonic foryears. Prim didn't know that she used to laugh and sing. And then there's my mom, she probably can't name a single play that Prim did all the way up to middle school, a single sport I did through high school." Katniss crosses her arms over her heart, her braided hair, frowning. "I'm the only person in my entire family who actuallyknewmy entire family."

"What your family should have been," Peeta says quietly. "All at the same time."

"Yeah." Katniss worries her lip. It's not the hardest thing to say all this to Peeta, but it still stings the corners of her eyes. "And you?"

"Me? Depressed dad who died too suddenly for me to make it here to say goodbye, alcoholic mom who couldn't die fast enough." Peeta sounds like he's ticking off a grocery list. "Two half-brothers way older than me, I don't know them too well either. I've got other people, though."

"Other people?"

"Friends. Found family." Peeta stretches out his arms, and gets back on his feet. "They're all on the West Coast, but Finn and Annie are visiting in a few weeks."

"Is that where you were living?" Katniss asks casually, zero mention of a fiancee.

"Yeah. I miss it."

"I've never been. I honestly don't know if I've ever seen the ocean."

Peeta does seem surprised about this. "It's gorgeous. Hereandthere. You have to go."

"We never exactly went on vacations growing up," Katniss says a tad defensively. "I'll see it someday."

"You've got plenty of time," Peeta assures her.

She wants to argue this; her father died in the only mining accident in the region for the past few decades, her sister taken from her twice as violently. But Peeta is already moving to the back.

"Dough should be rested by now."

She glances down one more time at his father's neat, careful words. Peeta's handwriting had been different in his sketchbook. It was slanted, quick strokes. More artistic than his father's.

"Okay."

They work well together, she thinks.

She's not a natural at baking, but she can follow directions when she wants to. She's careful in everything she does, not wanting to let Peeta down.

More people pass along their sorrow to her mama, give condolences for her sister, in teetering, roundabout ways, imploring eyes, leading half-questions.

Katniss is grateful for hertrauma shorthandwith Peeta after those moments.

"Just say it," she complains to him as they pack up day-olds. "Have the fucking guts to ask for the details, I know that's what you actually want from me."

"People feel entitled to know every little thing." He twists the bag, ties twine around the neck. "It's like how they ask if I served. Might as well say, 'Hey, did your leg blow off in the Navy or the Army?'"

Katniss snorts a laugh.

"It was neither, by the way," Peeta adds, smiling. She thinks it's an invitation to ask him for the story. But she finds that she's not particularly curious about it. He'll tell her if he wants to, or if it comes up, she decides.

"Wanna work on the cheese buns?" she asks. It's become their ritual after the bakery closes.

Peeta nods. He looks happy about something, not as tired. A little extra excitement. Her chest aches with affection.

"You know when a dream triggers a memory?" he says, leaning in. Katniss tries to catch her expression as it falls. She knows all too well.

She can tell that Peeta notices the hesitation on her face. He brushes her arm with the back of his hand. It's barely-there, easy to miss; but she is grateful for the reassurance.

"I remembered this goat farmer who used to come to the farmer's market when I was a kid," he continues. "I looked up the farm and they're not too far. They're still producing cheeses. I think the tang of a goat's cheese would go well with the sweetness of a bun, right?"

Katniss nods. Her mind doesn't quite work like this—she needs the tactile to reach a conclusion. But she trusts Peeta.

"I was thinking we could head over on Sunday."

"Sounds good," she says with all sincerity.

The small farm has a little pen for petting the more mild-tempered animals. Young families have already begun flocking to the area for the fall festivities, and Katniss smiles as she watches chubby little hands reach out, delighted shrieks in the air as much as the beginnings of any autumn chill.

She thinks testing this recipe is just a good excuse to eat a wide spread of cheeses in balmy weather, surrounded by Peeta and green.

"I like this one."

"More than the last one?" he asks.

"I dunno." Katniss feels lazy, lulled by the winding drive here and the salty cream on her tongue. She leans back on the bench against the picnic table, her father's jacket unzipped and open. "They're all good."

She can see more cars coming in from the next hill, little ants. A bird rustles in a shade tree. She sips her chilled apple cider, unpasteurized and raw. It's crisper. It's nice. It's a good way to pass a Sunday.

She thinks of Prim.

She closes her eyes, feeling almost resigned. The tears are growing hot already, the air suddenly cold, and she gets to her feet.

"Need to wash my hands," she manages, before she runs.

Katniss stares at her hands in the sink, well water gushing over them from the sputtering silver will I stop crying every time I think of her?

It's cruel that she dreads that day as well. As if dry eyes were an insult to her sister.

But she can't carry on like this either, could she? If she's honest with herself, it's why she had to retreat from her apartment and job in the city, where Johanna was subject to her breaking down at any point in the day or night. Johanna had lost her whole family and could speak aboutanythingwith the exact same acerbic-sweet bite. And now Katniss lives and works with Peeta, so steady, steady. She feels weak compared to them, when she's always taken pride in getting back up again.

She thinks about how she might need to remove her miserable self from Peeta's life as well.

She stands there for so long, her feet start to get a little numb. She slowly crosses the grassy lawn to Peeta, who hasn't moved except to pack up their food.

He watches her approach, but not so closely that she feels self-conscious about the way she walks. Just enough to know when she would get back to him.

"Ready?" he says quietly, when she's finally standing in front of his knees.

Katniss tries to nod, but it's more of a grimacing shrug.

"Can we stop to get pie first?" Peeta asks as he stands.

"Don't you make pies every day?" she blurts out.

"Yeah, but sometimes it tastes nicer when someone else did all the work even if they're not as good at it."

This makes sense to Katniss. She realizes thatso muchof Peeta clicks in her brain. She doesn't feel like she needs to be flipped on, to speak with a certain cadence. Her short sentences aren't interpreted as moodiness, her silence isn't mistaken for surliness. He doesn't pretend that he doesn't notice the tears, and he doesn't tell her to stop them from falling either. He just seems to accept them, the way one would about the color of the sky and how it changes.

This all washes over her. To her horror, her eyes feel wet again. He is just so beautiful. She wants to let him know somehow, that he was something really fucking special.

She doesn't know how. She feels like this is a waking nightmare as well, wanting todosomething, unable to, frozen,useless—

"What's your favorite? I'll make it for you." He was indulging her with all this cheese bun perfecting, the least she could do was bake one pie by herself.

Peeta raises his eyebrows, though his face quickly splits in a grin. "Mixed berry."

Katniss frowns. "The one you make every day?"

"Can't beat it."

"But—" Katniss hesitates. She almost wishes she can take her offer back. "But yours is perfect, mine's going to beso farout of left field—can't I make you something where you don't have a direct comparison?"

"Are you doing this for me or for you?" Peeta says lightly. But she can hear that it's a real question.

She squares her shoulders.

"Let's go get some berries," she tells him with grit, and he laughs.

She follows the written recipe, rereading every neat line from Peeta's father. Her pie looks like it's bleeding out when she pulls it out of the oven at home, and she looks upon the carnage with a grim sort of mirth.

Even my pies die on me.

It's only after Peeta thanks her and takes his first bite that he mentions that he has made heavy edits to that recipe for his own.

Katniss's mouth drops open. "Well then this onereallywon't be as good as yours."

He quickly scoops another bite in his mouth. "Still good."

"You're too nice."

Peeta cuts a fresh slice. "Try it."

She sections off the pointy end of the slice, bringing it to her mouth. Her eyes widen slightly as it touches her tongue.

"See?"

"The crust is, um."Crumbly, she wants to say, but she searches for the word she had learned from Peeta. "Shorterthan yours."

He brightens. It's in his eyes, his shoulders, even in the way he breathes. He looks so happy, andproud. It warms her from her chest to her cheeks.

"Coming from someone who didn't know what a 'blind bake' was a month ago. This is truly very good, Katniss."

She accepts it, sitting back in the kitchen chair. Her skin is buzzing from a day of sun and standing in front of the oven. She feels tired, but accomplished—in a way that she rarely felt after a day of work at her job back home.

"Does that mean you found that country change of pace you were looking for?" Peeta asks when she tells him as such.

"I guess so."

"Baking a pie from scratch is what people imagine their life to be when they move to a place like this."

"What did you imagine when you came back?" Katniss asks.

"I didn't imagine much. Moved back to complete the task at hand. I feel like I've just recently gotten out of autopilot."

She wonders if that had coincided with her arrival, before checking her ego. "So what are you consciously doing now?"

"Well I started sketching to figure out new recipes, designs. Discovered that I enjoy that a hell of a lot more than baking and running the bakery." She nods. "If I do pivot in the future, I think it'd be something in the realm of illustration or design."

Peeta's life seems so open. Even free. She's usually looking at the same exact view as him, why does she feel so limited somehow?

"Do you think you'll ever move back to the West Coast?"

"Maybe, if it ends up that way." Peeta scrapes the last bit of pastry off his plate, where the sticky filling had bled through. "You know, my life doesn't actually look all that different between here and there. Good, not great at my job. No family. Only difference is I have fewer friends here. But I'm good at making friends anywhere."

"I know," Katniss says. She can tell.

He half-smiles, and starts cutting another piece off. "Speaking of which, my friends are visiting for the holiday weekend."

She knows. It's been in her phone calendar for weeks. She feels almost nervous about it, like it's the first day at a new school.

"What are they like?"

Finnick and Annie look exactly like what she imagines people from California look like. They look like they emerged from the ocean, hopped off a surfboard, with Annie's flowing red hair and Finnick's bronzed skin.

Katniss finds Finnick's presence quite distracting. His face is almosttoosymmetrical. His arms strain in the sleeves of his perfectly-fitted shirts. And he talks and laughs with her as if he knows her.

He doesn't, Katniss thinks with annoyance.

She likes Annie more. Finnick's wife is every bit as attractive as him, but she is overwhelmingly kind above anything. It makes Katniss vow to be at least a little more sweet.

Candied rhubarb is the goal, maybe.

Peeta suggests the open mic night at the popular hotel bar in town. Katniss thinks that this is where he goes when she's in her bedroom and the living room is quiet, because plenty of people recognize him and clap their hands on his broad shoulders; or in the case of some of the women, curling their whole fist around his bicep like burrs on weeds.

Katniss likes when Peeta introduces her immediately after, and the women let go of him. She smiles at them with teeth. She's wearing her father's jacket again, but one of Prim's tops beneath it. It's small, and shows a peek of her toned stomach whenever she lifts her hand to shake theirs. She's not vain, and she understands that she is standing next to two objectively more stunning human specimens in Finnick and Annie, but sheisa conscious woman. She wants Peeta to notice.

It sweetly burns in her chest when he begins to slide a hand to the small of her back to say,This is Katniss. So that these women don't have the chance to latch onto him. She hopes she's subtle as she allows herself to cuddle into him as she says,Hey, nice to meet you—

"Would you like anything to drink, Katniss?" Finnick asks her. He has a gleam in his stunning eyes that she has an odd feeling about—they slide from her to Peeta, and she deliberately detaches herself from his side.

"Just some iced tea."

"Same for me, Finn," Peeta says. He looks down at Katniss. "You don't drink?"

"Not really. You?"

"Alcohol made my shitty mom shittier. Turned me off from it pretty early."

Katniss nods. Annie pats his forearm, and Katniss doesn't mind it.

"Find us a table," Annie says, nodding at Katniss as well. "I'll go help Finn with the drinks."

Katniss gets the feeling that Peeta's friends are trying to leave them alone, and she decides that she doesn't actually mind Finnick.

There's a shiny black piano on the stage, reflecting purple, red, green from the lights in the bar. There's a man seated there currently, singing as he plays. She talks to Peeta, but she listens to the music as well, with an ear trained by her father and years of piano lessons.

"He's good."

"He's always here. You'll see, there's a ton of talented people in this small town."

Katniss recognizes some of them, including Sae. She points them out to Finnick and Annie as regulars at the bakery, her old boss. Peeta's friends ask easy questions, she gives easy answers, and she can feel her shoulders relax as she sips her iced tea.

Peeta eventually leans in. "Do you want to go up?" He speaks in her ear so only she can hear, and she knows he does this so she is not pressured to do anything.

"Not today," Katniss hedges.

Peeta grins. "So youdosing. I thought you did."

His smugness is equal parts endearing and challenging. She wonders if he has heard her hum to herself in the shower. "You don't know, I might be a comedian."

"Tell me a joke," he says, serious.

She opens and closes her mouth, and she can sense her defeat as a new smile cracks his face. "I need time for a setup," she insists.

"You have the floor."

She scowls, and Peeta's eyes crinkle in the corner as he chuckles.

"See, I made you laugh," she points out.

He tipped his glass of tea at her. "Yeah, go up and do that exact set, it'll kill—"

"Oh shut up," Katniss says, though it's punctuated by what can only be described as a giggle from her own mouth. He smiles at her, and nudges her shoulder with his as turns back to the stage. It's a small gesture of camaraderie, good company. But it leaves her more aware of his body heat than ever, and how much space he takes up around her.

She comes back to her senses a bit when she catches Finnick's shit-eating grin as he watches them from across the table. He leans over and punches Peeta's arm.

"You go, dude."

"What would I even do,dude?"

"Stand-up," Finnick tells him matter-of-factly.

"Oh, please, Peeta," Annie says, pressing her hands together as if in prayer. "It wouldmake my yearto see that—the only thing better would be a hip-hop routine—"

"What do you think, Katniss?" Peeta asks her, ignoring the other two's muffled laughter.

"Show me how it's done," she says, and Finnick punches her arm next in approval. She finds that she doesn't mind this either. Finnick is smiling so big at Peeta the entire time. She guesses that Finnick draws happiness from his friend's happiness, and she warms towards him just a little bit more.

"I will," Peeta tells her jauntily.

"Ugh," she informs him, fighting a laugh.

She claps hard when he makes his way up the stage, and leans against the piano as if he has a plan for any of this. He lifts the microphone as the applause dies down.

"Many of you know me as the town baker." He pauses to scan the room—to make eye contact with them all, Katniss thinks.

"So I'm hoping to get ariseout of the crowd tonight—"

Several good-natured groans come from the audience, and Annie chuckles, shaking her head.

"Take it off!" Finnick shouts through his cupped hands. Catcalls erupt from the crowd; Katniss rolls her eyes as a couple of women actuallyscream.

"I'm not taking suggestions from the crowd," Peeta scolds Finnick, smirking. "I'll just stick with, I dunno, airplane humor—I actuallywasat the airport recently, trying to get through security." He knocks on his thigh, above his prosthetic. "And as some of you also know, I've got an upgraded leg—"

"Take it off!" Finnick hollers again, snickering as Annie smacks his arm and the crowd groans and jeers again. Peeta snorts into the microphone.

"Yeah, Finn, that's exactly what security said, how'd you know?" The room laughs, and Peeta exhales a laugh into the microphone as well. "Alright, anyone else want to heckle me before I let the actually talented people come back on the stage?"

Peeta is looking directly at Katniss as he says this, his eyes twinkling. She gives him an innocent smile, lifting her hands to show they're empty.

"You sure?"

She nods, laughing.

"Katniss?" he presses into the mic so it reverbs around the whole god-damned room, and she shakes her head vehemently, to let him know her outrage at him calling her out by name.

Sit down, she mouths at him, fighting another laugh.

He grins.

"Alright, the boss is telling me that's my time."

"That's how it's done?" Katniss asks.

"Finn cut off my set," Peeta explains, unperturbed.

"My bad, man."

"No worries, bro."

Katniss bites her lip, amused. She hadn't realized that she didn't know this whole side of Peeta. The friend, the patron. The two of them had only ever spoken alone, in the house, the car, the bakery. She didn't know what Peeta was like around other people.

Though that wasn't really true; she saw him chat with customers plenty of times, with other people at places like the farm they visited.

No, she just hadn't seen him with people he loved, who loved him back. And she can tell there is genuine affection when Finnick jokingly cups Peeta's cheek, and Annie notices that Peeta needs a refill before anyone else.

Katniss can't help but observe how Finnick and Annie are with each other as well. The love is tangible. Finnick doesn't look so intimidating when he's a soft pudding under his wife's years, they've been together, Katniss remembers Peeta telling her. She can't fathom it. They chatter like they had just met.

Like the way she and Peeta are talking now.

"Favorite flavor of limeade," he prompts her.

She can't quite remember how they got here. Something about their iced teas, Arnold Palmers, lemonade.

"Watermelon."

Peeta beams. "That is a correct answer."

Their heads are bowed together, trading their parts of the conversation; her belly flips as she feels his breath linger on her neck, and she inhales before she speaks, the warm scent from his skin. Like aftershave, flour, the salt of exertion from a long day, all lifted by the sun and Katniss pressing into his space.

She feels almost drunk. The world is dream-like. The stage is muffled, the colored lights are somehow out of focus and a thousand spotlights at once. She notices his long lashes. Everything she says is funny. She doesn't regret a thing she's saying for once. She's not thinking, and she doesn't mind it.

"Come with me tomorrow morning," she says, and she can hear how giddy she sounds. "We don't have work. Hike with me. I know you won't be hungover."

"Yeah, sure," Peeta says.

"Thought I'd have to convince you."

"You're very convincing. I like your company. I feel like it'd be devastating if I ever let you down."

Katniss thinks he sounds drunk too. There's something in his eyes. It's not clouded. Just some pure form offondnessthat she can't quite put a finger on.

The set ends. Finnick and Annie go upstairs to their room for the night.

Her feet crunches on the gravel outside the hotel as she walks with Peeta to the car. The night air keeps her awake. They're still talking.

She wonders if she imagines his hesitation when they step inside the house. Like there's something that he still has to do.

But he bids her goodnight, and she wishes him a good night back, because for the first time, it occurs to her that he might have nightmares as well.

Katniss tells Peeta to pick the trail, because she doesn't know his hiking skill level, or what would work best with his leg. She stops with him on the trail a few times for a break, but otherwise they make good time and sit down to eat at the top of the hill before noon.

Peeta grins at her as he reveals the cheese buns from his backpack.

"Oh my God, thank you," she says, grabbing for them.

"I think this is it. This recipe."

She sinks her teeth in and closes her eyes. "Yeah, this is it."

They eat in quiet, not silence.

She likes the breeze, the birds. Her heart beats like she has a crush. She does.

It doesn't matter. It comes back. She sets down her bread, and cries.

She can feel Peeta moving. He doesn't put his arm around her. He just sits closer, his hip and shoulder pressing against her as she shakes.

"I don't get it," Katniss tells him between sobs. "I can talk about my dad without crying—I'vebeenable to. I don't get it. I can't eventhinkabout Prim. I can't imagine getting to that point with Prim. I just can't."

"You don't have to get it," she hears him say quietly.

"I don't think time—" Katniss inhales a ragged breath. "I don't think time is the solution here. It was never like this with my dad—how do you do it, Peeta?" She swipes impatiently at her wet, hot face, angry with herself and the beauty of an earth without her sister on it. "How do you carry on so well? Is it cause you hated your mom? Is it easier because it was a goddamned relief when she died? Are you even sad?"

She knows it's wrong, but she's too angry to care. She hugs her knees and buries her face in her arms.

"I suppose I mourn what could have been," Peeta says slowly, above the waterline. "I'm sad that I was here for my mom's last days instead of my dad's. He was the better parent, the better man. But even then, he wasn't exactly accessible. I think some part of him died a long time ago, before I even met him. My half-brothers don't bother, I think they absolved themselves of this family before it had a chance tobea family. They saw the dysfunction, they already lived through it. They didn't want any more. I don't blame them. But yes, I'm still sad for what could have been."

Katniss knows she should apologize. Now, rather than leave it for later. Her shoulders hitch with another sob.

"It's like a bruise on your soul," Peeta continues, quiet but steady. "Except it never goes away. Years from now, you press on it, it'll hurt. Press too hard, it might even bleed again. I won't tell you the pain lessens with time. I've heard that. I don't think it's true. I think you just learn how to accommodate that bruise. Maybe you favor a certain walk over the other. Maybe you don't stretch yourself the same way you used to. You learn to live around it. With it. It doesn't go away. But you learn to live again."

He pauses, and she feels his body stiffen.

"I hate every single fucking thing in that house."

It sounds like a confession. It's enough for her to finally raise her head.

"I'm so unlike Prim," Katniss whispers. "I'm so unkind."

Peeta furrows his brow. "What do you mean? I've never seen you treat anyone poorly."

"I just did, to you."

He shakes his head. "You're upset—"

"I'm not cruel, I know that," Katniss desperately tries to explain herself. "But I'm not proactively kind. I do things for people in return for the things they do for me. But I feel like I'm never first. I don't do anything out of the kindness of my heart. It just feels like a repayment of debt."

"You shouldn't think of things that way," he says softly. "Sometimes people just want to help, not because it's a transaction."

She doesn't want to argue. So she just waits for her anger to abate.

They don't speak much on the walk down. She's achy-limbed, emotionally exhausted.

They stop for a hot meal on their way back to the house. Katniss is relieved when it feels like a reset. They're talking normally again, about scattered things, the way they always did. The food settles in her stomach as Peeta smiles at her. The sun sets behind him in the restaurant window.

She hums in the car. She can tell that Peeta likes it: the back of his head to his headrest, his right arm draped on the center console while he drives with his left hand, and she's tempted to sing. She can't shake the feeling, the fantasy that he would adore it.

Katniss can't keep her eyes open. She crosses her arms to rest them over her belly. Her head slumps against the back of the couch, her cheek pressed to a stitched mallard.

"You should get rid of this sofa first," she says, her words molasses, her voice dragged down from tears and use.

Peeta is slouching as well, lounging back, his arms and chest spread wide. "Itisthe biggest offender."

"Would you ever sell this house completely? Clean slate?"

He thinks for a moment. "I could. I don't think I would have said that even a few months ago, but yeah, I could."

"I think that's what my mom did in selling our house here and moving to Charleston. Or tried to do. I don't actually know."

Peeta hums. "Do you ever think you'll take the time to find out?"

"Maybe one day. I know I should talk to her. She could die tomorrow. I should know that by now, after my dad. After Prim." Katniss closes her stinging eyes to rest them. "I don't know why I never learn, Peeta."

"You can't 'learn' death."

"You know what I mean."

"I do."

Her eyes are still heavy-shut. She can feel wetness gathering beneath her lids. "You're the only one who ever does," she mumbles. Her head lolls forward.

"Katniss," his voice says quietly. "Don't fall asleep here."

Her shoulders jerk, and she opens her eyes. She can feel tears clinging to her lashes. "Why not?"

"You'll regret sleeping with your neck like that in the morning."

She stares up at him. He's close.

"I'm sick of nightmares," she 'll understand.

His eyes look heavy as well. "I'm sorry," Peeta says, and that's it.

He won't do it. So she does.

Her knees dig into the couch cushions as she leans in, reaches up to kiss him.

She feels an achingly brief pressure back, before he pulls away. She sits back on her heels, her lips still parted, angry at something she could not name.

"You're grieving," Peeta says. It's quiet, and filled with pain.

Katniss fights. "So are you."

He simply looks at her. It's longing, she thinks and thinks.

He rises. "Good night, Katniss."

There is a feeling of profound loss in her chest that is newer than the rest as she watches him walk away.

She fights harder. She swipes at her eyes with a balled fist. She follows him.

"Why shouldn't we feel happiness in grief?"

He addresses her over his shoulder. "I'm not going to take advantage of it."

"You're not taking advantage of me, I'm a grown woman—"

"Not you, butthis." Peeta gestures around him, at her, at his mother's choices in decor in the hallway. "You're my tenant, and I happen to be with you when you are most vulnerable—"

"You think I kissed you becauseyou happen to be in the same room as me?"

He finally turns to face her. "Yes."

Her mouth drops open again, for a different reason.

"That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard, and I can't believe it came fromyou."

Peeta half-laughs, shaking his head. He's not taking her seriously, and she swears it's because—

"You're so young, Katniss."

She is truly angry now.

"So everything I've been through—everything I've survived and fought through—it's all discounted because I did it inlesstime?"

His expression seems almost pitying. She hates it. Her fists curl at her sides.

"I don't want to do this, Katniss. That should be enough of an answer for you."

"You do, though. You kissed me back."

"I want you," Peeta says steadily. "But not this."

Her nails are digging into her palms. She swears she has never been more frustrated in her life.

"You're not a better person by turning me down." She wrenches open her bedroom door opposite his. "This isn't noble. You're not going to get an award for doing this, because you're not doing either of us any good."

Katniss waits for a split second, but it's just silence occupying the air. She hates it. It's worse than any coal dust.

She shuts it away. Seals the door and weeps behind her walls until she can't breathe through her nose and her temples are pounding.

Her brain feels waterlogged, she can't think. Instinct takes over.

Water, her body begs her.

She drags herself up, and shuffles toward the kitchen.

Katniss jumps when she sees that he is back on the couch. It's the first time Peeta's presence takes her by surprise. He is sitting on the edge of the sofa, on his phone, his head in his hand. His fingers catch on his hair as he turns to look at her.

"I just—water," she explains lamely, her voice conveniently cracking.

He locks his phone as he stands. "Come sit. I'll get it for you."

He sounds so weary. She wonders how long she's been crying. Embarrassment crawls into her achy chest as it hits her that she's been sobbing in the dark over aboy. Within earshot of said boy. She sinks into the couch, dragging a blanket over herself to hide.

Peeta returns, and a lump joins her throat when she sees that he's brought her a cheese bun as boy with the bread.

She thanks him, and gulps down water. She has to quickly swallow when she sees that he is moving away from her, back toward the bedrooms.

"Can you just sit with me?" she pleads, all shame apparently forgotten. "Can you just stay?"

Peeta hesitates.

"Okay."

He perches on his side of the couch, pulling out his phone again. She eats her cheese bun, wanting to cry again because it's warm. Peeta has heated it up for her, at God knows what hour. She's a mess. She doubts that she'll recognize herself in the morning looking back.

She can see out of the corner of her eye that he's typing. Maybe he's talking to Finnick. Telling him about how messy she was, maybe. A mess of a girl, too young and stupid to take a chance on.

Katniss punches out the armrest into an acceptable shape for a pillow, curling on her side. Peeta is still there, staying as promised.

He's still silently talking to someone else when she finally slips into sleep.

She is disoriented by the morning light hitting the wrong side of her face. She blinks, and recognizes the sunshine coming in from the kitchen window instead of her bedroom. She panics briefly at the obviously late hour, before remembering that it's a Monday holiday today. They had agreed to stop by the bakery for some light prep for the week, before meeting up to spend the rest of the long weekend with Finnick and Annie.

She turns her head the other way, and there's a tug in her belly when she sees that Peeta is still there. He is asleep, his arms crossed, his head slumped onto his shoulder.

Her mind is making a little more sense something for him,she tells herself sternly.

She hears Peeta's voice in the living room when she's putting the kettle on. "Katniss?" he says, almost sharp. She wonders if he was jolted awake.

"I'm here," she says, her voice hoarse from sleep. She clears her throat. "I'm making you tea."

He says something in response that she can't quite catch. She sees that he's pulled out his phone again and reading something when she returns to the living room.

"Thank you." Peeta locks his phone and watches her as she sits down with her own mug. "How'd you sleep?"

"No nightmares."

"I'm glad."

She thinks it's unfair that he can be so attractive the minute he returns to consciousness in the morning. His wavy hair is fluffy instead of tangled, his eyes clear. There's a slowness to the rise and fall of his chest in low light that makes it seem even broader somehow.

She wonders if he's hard, the way men are in the morning.

Katniss sips her tea, and he mirrors her.

"Hot," he mutters. He sets his cup down. "I'll hop in the shower and let it cool."

"Okay."

She drags herself up to change into clothes for the day. Steam swirls up from her tea as she stands in front of her closet, not really looking at anything. She's listening to the water hitting Peeta's skin, the way she's certain that he listens to her hum in her bare throat when she is in the shower.

She wonders what it would feel like to sink to her knees in the tub in front of his chair, taste the water mixed with his salt on his cock as she closes her mouth over the swollen, leaking head.

Arousal drips between her thighs.

It seeps into her panties on the drive to the bakery, as they work side by side. It's distracting. Even the tips of her breasts feel sensitive against her sweater.

Peeta leans over, around her. He comes so close to touching her when he passes her in the kitchen.

And once or twice, she catches his gaze on her as well. It's thoughtful, but she can't decipher much else. She wonders if he's assessing her levels of I'm mentally fit to fuck, she thinks scathingly, despite knowing that it's much deeper than that.

"You go hang out with your friends," Katniss says when Peeta has his keys in his hands. "I'll head back home."

He furrows his brow. "Are you sure? They'd love to see you before they go."

"I'm tired," she says quite honestly. "Tell them I'm sorry."

Peeta seems almost annoyed at the message. He exhales, and it sounds resigned. "Alright, I'll tell them."

Katniss can't bring herself to feel too badly about this social stumble. All of her senses are wrung out already; from her sticky panties to the headache she swears she got from breathing him in all day.

She rubs her temples as she drives back, wondering what she was doing now, and what on earth she would do tomorrow.

The leaves catch colorful fire, informing her of the passage of time as she goes through the motions.

Nightmares haunt her every other sleep as she sleeps alone in her room. She blameshim, whether it's fair or not, convinced that they would permanently cease if he would just hold her.

But the bruises are permanent, a part of Katniss corrects 're not going to go away just because a man loves you.

She knows that Peeta doesn't love her, just as well as she knows that she doesn't love him.

But it's the closest damn thing she's gotten tolovesince her world ended, and she wants it to have a fucking chance to grow.

The leaves lose their fire and die all around her, mocking her. The tourists leave, and she knows he doesn't need her anymore.

Katniss waits for him to tell her that she can go back to working at Sae's. Or hell, go backhome. She had to search high and low for a month-to-month lease in this town, thinking she would need that flexibility to leave after just a few weeks.

Yet she stayed here long enough to watch the leaves go fromgreentogone.

He doesn't demand her absence, but he also doesn't seem to smile at her anymore.

She doesn't know what to do.

She runs.

"Peeta?"

He looks up from his baking in surprise. Usually she only interrupted him working to ask him a technical question, but it's been a little while since she has had to. "Yeah?"

She takes a breath. "Do you still need me? Here, I mean."

He opens his mouth, shaped around aNo. She braces her heart.

He closes his mouth. He shakes his head instead.

"How much notice do you need for the lease?" she asks in a whisper.

Peeta looks down at his hands. White flour, not coal dust. "You can leave whenever you need to," he says after a beat.

She swallows. "Okay."

Her car is packed, with a single bag in the backseat. She's already wearing the only important thing she owns, so there isn't much in terms of luggage.

Peeta walks her out.

It's Sunday. In her new country life, this would be the day that she rests by recharging with a hike, even a slow one.

Katniss stands next to her car on the driver's side, not quite ready to open the door.

Peeta reaches for her first. Gathers her into his arms, first tucking in her elbows, then drawing her under his chin, and finally wrapping his arms around her—one arm resting on her shoulders over her jacket, the other arm circling her waist under it.

Her heart plummets. That swooping sensation of a devastating crush. The drop of a hard fall. She clings to him. Buries her nose into his chest, and he smells so, so good.

It's safe here. She closes her eyes. His hand strokes her back, under the leather, over her shirt.

She presses into him. His fingers catch on her hem, lifting it just enough to brush her skin.

His voice is rough when he finally speaks. Not in a coarse way, but thick like crystallized honey.

"You can come back whenever you want."

The city hasn't changed. Katniss can hardly believe it. It's hard to reconcile how the world could look and function the exact same way before she left and after she came back, when she met Peeta in the space in between.

Johanna gives her a breath-stealing hug in their living room.

"Finally," she says. "Someone to talk to."

Katniss snorts a laugh. "We barely talk at home after a whole day of talking at work."

"Yes, and I need 'barely', not fucking 'none'."

She contemplates telling Johanna about him, and about how she would describe why exactly she liked him.

It's easy to exist around him.

Katniss can envision Johanna rolling her eyes; not because she thinks that it's a stupid reason to want someone, but because Katniss returned without so much as a proper kiss from Peeta.

"You should've tried harder, brainless," Johanna tells her sure enough, as soon as Katniss finishes speaking.

"He says I can go back whenever I want to," she says almost defensively.

"Well there you go." Johanna rolls her eyes again for good measure. "You've got a man begging on his damned knees for you, and you're still managing to batzero."

Katniss snorts a laugh despite herself.

"If I go back now, it'd be the same thing."

"Does he have some countdown running or something? When is the right time?"

Katniss thinks for a moment. "I'll go back to work."

"Yeah?"

"But it's a job that I got because they would pay for my education, so that Prim could have the extra tuition money for nursing school. And then I stayed because…what? Why do I stay?"

"I'mthere," Johanna says with a sniff. "Also, bills."

"Sure, but what am I working toward? Like you, you want to open that ax-throwing place eventually. I don't think I even have a dream. I just want Prim back."

Johanna looks uncharacteristically solemn. She sits on the couch and indicates that Katniss should follow, and she does.

"And I can't have that, so what am I even working toward?" Katniss exhales. "It can't just be towardseeing Peeta again."

Her roommate crosses her legs matter-of-factly. "Look, I don't particularly believe in love for me, but I still think it's fine for other people. What's wrong with wanting to be with someone?"

"I don't think there's anythingwrong—God, I don't know." Her fingers find the texture of the sofa cushion. No mallards. "It just can't be theonlything going for me, you know?"

Johanna leans in, absolutely no regard for her personal space, in a way that Katniss fiercely wishes Peeta would.

"Oh, my dense and only friend—then don't let it be."

Johanna suggests a cooking class.

"Why?" Katniss asks, more curious than derisive.

She shrugs. "I dunno, you bake now. Cooking is adjacent. And let's face it, we're both good with knives and like showing that off."

It's an excuse to do something new, and Katniss appreciates it. She pays for both of their spots in an Indian cuisine class.

"You covered rent for me while I was gone," she explains.

"Yeah, makes sense," Johanna says.

The class is informative; and again Katniss appreciates learning again. They cook a meal that she had never realized wasSouth IndianversusNorth, and arrange it all on a platter at the end. It doesn't particularly spark a newfound passion the way that sketching did for Peeta, but Katniss finds that she is actually comfortable in the fact that not everything has to.

"Do you wanna go to another one?" Johanna asks immediately after, warm spices still clinging to their hair.

"Yeah, I do," Katniss replies, because she can tell that this class might have unlocked something for her friend; and she decides that witnessing Johanna's joy is just as worthwhile as discovering her own.

She goes from place to place for a while. Work, gym, cooking class.

Autopilot, she thinks.

She veers off course and signs up for pilates at the gym in their office building, surprising herself. She's always been skeptical of her needing someone to teach her how to move her body, when she's been so attuned to it her whole life.

Katniss gives up on it after two classes. It's as inane to her as she thought it would be.

"I don't need to be taught how tobreathe," she complains to Johanna when they meet up again to carpool home.

"Don't go to yoga then," Johanna says with a smirk, hitching her sparring gear over her shoulder. "I swear, you'll do downward dog just to spite the fact that someone told you to do warrior pose."

"Guess I'm never going to be all-the-way open-minded," Katniss says with a grunt.

"No shit, all that means is that you let your brain fall out with zero resistance. A healthy skepticism is basically the dura mater." Johanna raps her knuckles against her skull with her free hand. "Prevents you from being totally brainless."

"The 'dura mater'," Katniss repeats. "How do you even still remember this from school?"

"The only difference between me and a doctor is conviction," Johanna says airily. "I neverwantedto be a physician. But I could do it if I did."

Katniss rolls her eyes, before breaking down in a laugh. "You're insane."

"And that's fine. I keep it mostly under control."

"Yeah, it is. And you do." Katniss hesitates as they reach the car in the cold-empty parking lot. She has known Johanna since the day she moved to this city, the first day of college.

"How do you do it?" she asks after a beat.

Johanna cocks a brow. "Some would say court-ordered therapy, psychiatrist-ordered meds. But I dunno. Probably just timing. A life without family is all I remember." Her hand raises to push the button to start the engine, but then it falls. She turns back to Katniss. "So I think it's a little different with you and your sister," Johanna says, as gently as Katniss has ever heard her speak. "This fucking stupid new normal."

She thinks about how Peeta told her about growing strong around the bruise.

"Fuck cancer," Johanna adds as an afterthought to the windshield.

Katniss almost laughs. No one in their collective families had died of cancer. But she understands her best friend, and the need to air grievances with the audacity of this world. She faces forward as well.

"Fuck cancer."

Katniss decides the countdown is over the first time she sees the new buds on the trees outside her office window. The asphalt doesn't hold the damp so much anymore. And she feels ready to go back.

"Good luck, come back to me before I get too bored, but also get hitched and never come back?" Johanna says questioningly as a goodbye.

Katniss hands her a birthday gift as a farewell. Johanna gasps as she rips off the paper.

"I had to ask Sae what was good. She told me about this type of vintage cast iron pan?"

"I mean, hell if I know, but—" Johanna weighs the hefty pan in her hand and grins from ear to ear. "God, I could kill someone with this," she says happily, and Katniss knows that's the most sincere thanks Johanna could give.

Katniss runs through a script in her head on the drive, the address to the hotel on her phone screen.

She imagines that she'll see him laughing. And her heart will ache at how beautiful he is. They'll lock eyes. Peeta won't even look surprised. He'll just smile at her, so wide her own cheeks hurt. He'll beckon her to join him at the table. Katniss will shake her head. And he will look surprised then, when she walks up to the open mic bathed in the bright lights instead.

The town is extra quiet after the rumble of her car tires on the freeway. She turns down the volume of her music, her pulse jumping. There are clouds of warm weather bugs in the air, shimmering against pink-purple sky, as she pulls into the packed gravel parking lot.

Her heart rate settles to a beat when she can't find Peeta's car.

She is reminded that life was more akin to an upended ink bottle rather than printed words on a page when she can't find him inside either.

She spots Sae before her spirits could really sink.

"Oh my goodness, it'sKatniss!" A few heads turn curiously as Sae gushes at the sight of her, and Katniss hugs her back. "How have you been, sweetheart?"

"Working, taking classes. Keeping busy."

"Oh, you're in school?"

"No, cooking classes, I mean," Katniss explains. "Workout classes, stuff like that. With my roommate."

Sae makes a tutting sound. "Oh, speaking of roommates, you missed Peeta!"

"WhereisPeeta?" she asks, trying not to feel pathetic, conscious that there are still curious eyes on her. Katniss can tell that they remember her, and how Peeta had his arm around her the last time she was spotted here.

"He's visiting those ridiculously good-looking friends of his out in Cali. Gosh, hejustleft too—"

Right. It was a holiday weekend for him as well, of course he would be taking advantage of it. She wonders why she believed that he would have just been sitting here in place, waiting for her arrival.

Katniss glances at the stage.

"Are you going up?" Sae asks, and she sounds like she's smiling.

Katniss doesn't really see a point in exposing herself like that if Peeta's not there, until she does.

Are you doing this for me or for you?she hears his voice in her head. She turns back to Sae.

"Yeah, I think I will."

If thiswerea movie, she would suddenly be good at this. Effervescent, effortless coy smile into the microphone, engaging.

She ghosts her fingertips on the piano keys to reacquaint herself, and leans in.

"This is an old song that everyone knows around here," she says into the mic, a plain statement that she immediately second-guesses.

If this were a movie, she would be watching Peeta falling in love with her in real time as she sang.

But in truth it's quite hard to see out into the crowd. The lights are too bright on the stage, the audience dark and amorphous. It does feel like she's doing this for herself, by herself. The tactile piano keys, the strings in front of her, taut and lovely in their shine. She marvels at how an instrument could work, how the words could flow even though she hasn't sung them aloud in years. She gives herself permission to look down, not out. Her hands aren't healing hands, but they can do good work, good deeds.

She doesn't notice until just before the final note that the crowd is not just muffled in her ears, but it is truly quiet in the are judging, her gut says.

Her mind is more gentle for are listening.

She doesn't imagine the applause. And as she descends, she swears there are smiles directed at her. Katniss smiles back. Her eyes finally adjust back to the ambient light, and she can see the recognition there. New old nostalgia. A bit of home, even if you never left.

Sae is beaming when Katniss finds her. "Katniss, that was wonderful." Her eyes are warm, and she touches the arm of Katniss's jacket. "Lovely voice, just like your pa. He used to come to this open mic night, did you know?"

Katniss shakes her head, a lump in her throat.

"It's where he met your mama. She probably had to fight off some other bachelorettes in the process, but there you go. Produced an equally talented daughter."

Katniss gives a small laugh at the image of her mother in battle. "Thanks, Sae. I don't think I've sang in front of an audience since kindergarten."

Sae clicks her tongue. "You know, you'd be a great camp counselor, wilderness guide, what have you. The no-bullshit one that kids actually listen to, that can bust out a guitar and make things interesting."

Katniss smiles at her, a fresh wave of warmth in her chest. "I've never thought about that. I don't know if I'm good with kids."

"Oh yes you are, I've seen you. You should be teaching classes, not just taking them."

"Thanks, Sae."

She pats her arm again. "So are you staying?"

Katniss surprises herself again. "Just stopping for the night. I'm on my way to Charleston to see my mom."

It's not an idea completely fabricated on the spot. It's been growing in the back of her mind along with the new spring growth.

But she does call her mom first, instead of just showing up this time.

To her credit, her mother doesn't try to put on airs.

"How are you?" she asks simply, instead of pretending that they are catching up after a summer apart.

"Good," Katniss says. It's not a lie. "And you?"

"I'm fine."

She does look healthy. A little sun from coastal living. She's not as thin as Katniss remembers. It suits her.

"Are you liking it here?"

"It's a great place." Her mother gestures up and down the street where they're seated outside a cafe. "Right now the weather's perfect. Warming up, not yet humid. And the tourists aren't quite here yet, so the locals are out enjoying it."

"Is that what you are? A local?" It sounds harsher than what Katniss intended, but her mother doesn't seem offended. She smiles, anyway.

"No, but I hope to at least blend in someday."

Katniss sips on her iced coffee. It really is a nice day. The trees are deeper into their bloom here, and the people are more relaxed.

"Do you remember the Mellark bakery back home?"

Her mother raises her brows. "Yes, why?"

"Do you remember the son, Peeta?"

"Is that the oldest?"

"Youngest."

"Then no."

That's a shame,Katniss thinks. To never know Peeta Mellark.

"He took me to this open mic night at the hotel bar on Second." Katniss watches her mother's expression carefully, for any signs of recognition. But she mostly looks lost.

"When was this?"

"Last fall."

Her eyebrows raise, though she visibly composes herself. "Are you dating?" she seems to guess.

"No," Katniss says easily. "I lived in his spare room, worked at his bakery. You moved away, I moved back. But we've always dealt with things differently, haven't we?"

She regrets it as soon as she says it. "I'm sorry."

Her mother shakes her head. "It's fine."

"No, it's not, I'm trying—" Katniss takes a breath. "Peeta just—I want to be—better. I want to be better. I'm sorry. I know some things just aren't worth saying because it doesn't do anyone any good."

She can tell her mother is on the verge of saying something, but she instead seems to accept her daughter's apology with difficulty and a small nod.

"I'm sorry as well," she says softly. "I'm also trying to be better."

"I know," Katniss says, because she knows how badly she hopes someone would acknowledge her own efforts as well. She pauses. "Is it true that you had to fight off a bunch of other women at that open mic night for Dad?"

A laugh bubbles out of her mother, caught off guard. Katniss's mouth twitches as well.

"Who told you that?"

"Sae from the antique store."

"Oh, of course." She sips her tea, her soft eyes on Katniss's leather jacket. "Frankly, yes. You've heard him before. You can imagine. You two always sounded so much alike."

"No one was clamoring formeafter."

Her mother's smile widens. "You sang?"

"Yeah," Katniss mutters. Her mother is looking at her like she went on a nationally televised talent show.

"They probably thought you were already taken," she says shrewdly, "if Peeta took you there. It wastheplace to take a date back in the day."

Katniss thinks about his arm low and heavy on her back, his nose at her ear. "Maybe," she allows herself to say.

They talk. About Johanna, office culture, and where Sae thinks she should be instead. Katniss looks down the street at times, at ocean blue. But she mostly looks at her mother. And her mother doesn't seem to take her eyes off her. She's always looking straight at her daughter whenever Katniss turns back to her.

Both of their cups are empty when Katniss gets a text, and she can see that it's Peeta.

Katniss stares down at her locked phone screen. Normally she thinks she wouldn't dare read a boy's text to her in front of her mother. But at this moment, she hopes her mom doesn't get up, and keeps watch over her as she picks up her phone.

Hey, I'm so sorry I missed you. I'll be back on Monday. Let's hang out if you're still around.

It was a simple message. She reads it three times.

So sorry, she repeats.

"Are you staying in town?" her mother asks neutrally, when Katniss fails to say anything.

"I took the week off," she says, tearing her eyes away from her phone, "with no real plans."

Her mother smiles. "That's exactly the type of thing you should be doing at your age."

"And if I derail it because I want to see a man I'm not even dating?" Katniss says dully.

Her mother's smile turns wistful.

"That's all part of it, sweetheart."

Katniss walks through downtown, relearning her mother.

It surprises her when her mother calls Prim by name. Her eyes are noticeably glossy, her voice quieter. But she does it.

"Prim said she wanted to do her bachelorette party here."

"That's random," Katniss says, her brows raised. Her baby sister was nowhere near engaged, to her knowledge. Katniss would have tried to put her foot down if she were.

To her surprise, her mother manages to chuckle. "I know. Maybe that's why it stuck with me."

"That'swhy you moved here?"

"I know, I know—but when people ask, I tell them it's because of the weather."

Katniss is taken aback by her own laughter. It isn't funny, but it is. Moving somewhere because your dead daughter once made a throwaway comment. It doesn't make sense, but it makes so much sense to Katniss that her head and her heart hurt in equal measure.

They visit an antique store in Sae's honor, and then sit at a bar for lunch, watching the people walk by.

"Want to head down to the water?" her mother asks after she pays the bill.

Katniss hesitates. It sounds terribly stupid already in her head, and she works up the courage to say it aloud.

"Seeing the ocean…Peeta and I had talked about it."

The words sound just as stupid hung in the air like that, but her mother seems to understand, to her relief.

"Okay, let's do something else then."

They embrace in a parking lot. It's covered in light-colored sand, not gravel. Her pulse is elevated like she's in an all-out sprint, though she's perfectly content to stand still right here.

"God, it's good to see you," Peeta says, and her heart thumps against her ribs, a good sort of pain for once.

"I missed you," Katniss whispers. Her throat feels raw. She's been laid open lately. Strangers passing by could probably see how earnestly her heart is beating, and how Peeta's arms protect it.

He lets go, and Katniss is grateful when it doesn't feel like he left her.

"So is the ocean what I hyped it up to be?"

Katniss scoffs. "You didn't introduce the entire concept of the ocean to me." He smirks. "But yeah, it's pretty great."

"Can I suggest a different park a bit down the coast?"

"Sure." She unlocks her car. "You could have told me to meet you there."

"You gave me this address," Peeta says simply. She can feel her cheeks burn as she beams at the thought that he wants to meet her where she is.

As she is.

Katniss feels like it is different now that they exist in the same space in her caroutsideof their tiny town, with the wide world whipping by. Now that they drink tea and catch up on each other's lives, not in an outdated kitchen that can't be cleaned of certain things, but in a cafe past Shenandoah. And when she looks to her right, not on a patterned sofa but on the beach, feet in the sand, salt in his wavy hair.

She thinks she understands now. If she was beginning to love him before, it was as an escape. Even if she didn't do it on purpose.

She feels that it would be different now. If she kisses him as a piece of her happiness, not as a means of hanging the weight of her heavy heart on something other than her own mind.

But she does want to love him. She can't help feeling that she does.

Katniss wonders if you can love someone simply because they makesense, when so much of life can be so senseless. Because they are so human, in a way that seems like a lost art in a server-based world.

She loves Peeta in a way that makes her actually want to acknowledge any mistake she makes. She isn't deep. But she does feel like she's figured at least a few things out.

And suddenly she understands the fondness she sees at times in his eyes, because she is certain that she feels the same fondness now as she looks at him. The first new connection you make with another human being after a loss, after you don't think you could ever bring yourself to care again. When you achieve comfortable silence, along with easy conversation.

They pull off the road at yet another vista point, this time because the sun is setting on the water. There is no other car present, and she just hears the rush of her pulse and the sea.

The ocean is endlessly wide, but for once, something so endless doesn't feel like it's suffocating.

She hugs her arms as she looks out, he puts his hands in his pockets. Her temple meets his shoulder, just a little weight.

Peeta doesn't move, or speak. Katniss thinks that in itself is an acknowledgement. That he doesn't mind this contact. That he understands why she does it.

She knows they will need to have that conversation that night when they get to a hotel. She doesn't think they'll decide on separate rooms. But she also doesn't feel shattered at the thought of sleeping apart from him. She has done it before, after all. And she lived.

He turns his head. One of his hands leaves his pockets, and then she feels its warmth at her back.

"Thank you for inviting me," Peeta murmurs.

He kisses the crown of her head. She feels the tip of his nose press into her hair, and then he kisses her again.

She thinks that perhaps Peeta might have been right. She latched herself onto the soul that was in her orbit at the time. But she also thinks that if they were ever so fortunate to cross paths at any other time, they would have connected like this anyway. Inevitable.

She turns her body and wraps her arms around his waist.

"What's something that you've always wanted to see?"