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I wake in the dark, disoriented. For a moment, I don’t know where I am. Who I am.
While I’m still trying to piece that together, I sense it. Movement. Someone is approaching the bed. Quiet, deliberate. I can’t see her, but I know. It’s Katniss.
A surge of conflicting emotions floods through me: fear, rage, longing, grief, love, lust.
I lie still, paralyzed by the storm inside me. I’m equally convinced she’s come to kill me – and to offer the only comfort that can quiet this chaos.
Comfort that only she can give.
She stops at the foot of the bed. I want to scream at her to leave. I want to beg her to stay, to hold me.
My mouth won’t move, but I manage to sit up and flick on the lamp. The light cuts through the dark. And there she is.
Her face is pale, stricken. She looks both frightened and resolute. She studies me the same way I study her, each of us unsure what comes next.
“Katniss,” I say, my voice rough. “What are you doing here?”
Her face twists – pain, confusion, something like shame. And for a heartbeat, the urge to hold her, soothe her, protect her, rises up strong enough to drown everything else.
But only for a heartbeat.
Then it’s war again inside me.
“I don’t know,” she whispers. “I can’t sleep. I can’t stop thinking about you. I can’t stay away.”
The part of me that remembers her – the real her – knows how hard it is for her to admit that.
But the part that fears her sees it as a trap. A weakness she’ll exploit to destroy me.
“You shouldn’t be here.”
That comes from both halves of me. The Peeta who wants to shield her from this. The Peeta who needs to shield himself.
“I can’t…” Her voice breaks. “I can’t be anywhere else.”
She takes one step forward. Just one.
I need her.
I hate her.
I love her.
“Please,” she says.
Neither of us knows exactly what she’s asking for.
Her voice lingers in the air like smoke – fragile, impossible to hold. Please.
I reach for her before I can stop myself. My hand brushes her wrist, just barely. Her skin is cold. She stills but doesn’t pull away.
That tiny touch unravels something in me. The ache of missing her, of needing her, of remembering her – it all rushes in at once, overwhelming.
I pull her toward me. She doesn’t resist.
Her knees hit the edge of the bed, and she leans forward, letting her hands rest lightly on my shoulders like she’s afraid I’ll shatter.
Maybe I will.
Maybe she will.
I lift my hands to her waist, her ribs, feeling the shape of her through the thin cotton of her shirt. The contact burns. It’s real. Too real.
Then the darkness twists it.
She’s here to destroy you. She knows how to make you weak. She’s done it before. She’ll do it again.
I shove her back harder than I mean to. She stumbles a step, eyes wide, arms still half-raised like she doesn’t understand what just happened.
“Don’t,” I breathe, like I’m warning her. Like I’m warning myself.
“I’m not trying to hurt you,” she says, voice low, steadying. “I just… I need—”
“Need?” The word snaps from me, sharp and bitter. “You need me now?”
She flinches like I’ve hit her. And I hate myself for it.
I hate her for making me feel anything at all.
Her mouth opens, then closes. She’s trying to find the right words, but her words are meaningless. Lies.
“You say you need me,” I whisper, and I can’t keep the venom out of my voice. “But you don’t even know who I am anymore. I don’t know who I am.”
“I know enough,” she says quietly. “I know I’d rather be here – with you like this – than anywhere else.”
I press my palms to my temples, trying to block her out. Block it all out. “You don’t get it. I can’t trust what’s real. I don’t know if I want to kiss you or kill you.”
She takes another step toward me, slow and steady. “Then let me help you figure it out.”
My eyes snap to hers. There’s no fear in them now. Just that strange mixture of grief and bravery that’s always defined her.
I can’t stand it. I can’t look away.
“Don’t make me choose,” I say hoarsely. “Because I don’t know which part of me will win.”
Her voice breaks when she answers. “Then don’t choose. Just… let me stay.”
I don’t give her permission. I don’t tell her to leave, either.
I just sit there, trembling, and let the silence settle between us like ash.
Katniss crosses the room in two slow steps, then sits beside me on the bed – careful, deliberate, like she’s approaching a wild animal. Maybe she is.
I don’t look at her. I can’t. If I see her face, I might pull her in again. Or push her harder this time. I don’t know which is worse.
She doesn’t touch me, not at first. Just sits close enough that I can feel her warmth like a phantom against my side. The silence stretches, heavy as lead.
I expect her to speak. To explain. To justify herself. But she doesn’t.
Instead, she draws her knees to her chest and rests her head lightly against my shoulder. Not pressing. Just there.
It’s enough to make my hands clench into fists.
“I still dream about the arena,” she says softly, after a long while. “About the cannon. About Rue. About you bleeding out by the lake.”
My breath catches. I hadn’t known she still dreamed of me. Not like that.
“I don’t know how to be okay,” she goes on. “But when I’m with you, I feel closer to it. Like I can breathe, even if it hurts.”
I close my eyes, jaw tight. Every word she says sinks into me like shrapnel. I want to believe her.
But the poison left in me keeps whispering: She’s manipulating you. She’ll let you believe she loves you and then twist the knife.
Still, I don’t move. I let her stay.
“I’m sorry,” she whispers. “For everything you remember, and everything you don’t.”
That’s when I finally look at her. Just a glance. Her eyes are rimmed red, but steady. She’s not asking for forgiveness. She’s offering herself. Raw and exposed.
It terrifies me.
“You always knew how to hurt me,” I say, voice low, bitter. “Even before the Capitol rewired my brain.” I mean it. I know how unfair it is unfair as I say it.
She nods slowly, accepting it. “I know. But I never wanted to.”
I laugh once—dry, hollow. “Wanting doesn’t matter anymore.”
When I grab her, I don’t know if it’s to push her away or pull her under me. My hands clamp around her arms—hard, too hard—but she doesn’t resist. Her eyes widen, not in fear, but in expectation. There’s grief there.
And want.
That decides me. I roll her beneath me, hovering over her, trembling with something I can’t name. My breath comes in short, ragged bursts. She lies still beneath me, her eyes never leaving mine.
I kiss her—desperate, unrelenting, angry with her for being here, for breaking me open. Angry with myself for letting her. I pour everything into it: rage, grief, hunger, love.
She moans against my mouth, her body shifting beneath mine, hips rising instinctively to meet me.
I pin her wrists over her head, holding myself above her with iron tension so our bodies barely touch, only our mouths meeting, clashing. Her breath hitches and she arches again, wordless.
Is this real? Does she want this? Or is she waiting for me to slip, to make myself vulnerable so she can finish what the Capitol started?
I grind against her, needing more contact, needing to drown that thought before it drowns me. I break the kiss to watch her face. She gasps, lips parting, pupils huge in the dim light.
“Tell me,” I rasp. “Tell me what this is.”
She blinks up at me, her chest rising fast, her lips swollen. “It’s real. I want you.”
I let go of one of her wrists, ready for her to strike me. She doesn’t move. I slide my hand down, over the curve of her breast. She arches into it, her eyes fluttering shut. I knead gently, then harder, feeding off her breathless whimpers.
Her silence isn’t fear – it’s surrender. A kind of penance. A kind of offering.
I reach beneath her shirt, finding bare skin and aching heat. I roll her nipple between my fingers, and she shudders, back arching again. When I move to the other, she exhales my name like a prayer.
“Peeta…”
Her voice brings me back—just a little. Enough to ease the grip on her other arm. She doesn’t move, doesn’t run. Instead, she brings her hands to my face, her thumb brushing the corner of my mouth.
“Don’t stop,” she whispers.
I strip the shirt over her head. She lets it fall away without hesitation. Her chest is bare now, flushed and rising fast with every breath. She holds my gaze, unflinching.
I press my forehead to hers. Our noses touch. My hand trembles as I stroke down her side. She used to do this. Before—before everything. When she didn’t have the words, she’d rest her head against mine and just breathe. Like she was anchoring us both. My memory is ragged, but this—this I remember.
“I don’t know what’s real,” I confess.
“This is,” she whispers. “This. Us.”
We stare at each other. Her face is flushed, but open to me. The desire is clear, but underneath is hope and fear fighting it out. Like I know my own emotions are fighting on my face.
“Kiss me,” she says. I do, more gently than before, but with a measure of desperation.
Her hands slide under my shirt, up over my stomach and chest. The contact is light, gentle, but it burns me.
But it also feels familiar. I think—no, I know—she’s touched me like this before. In the dark. After another nightmare. My breath caught then, too. I wanted her just as badly then as I do now. I remember her whispering my name into my skin.
I pull away, afraid of becoming overwhelmed by the sensation, by the memory. She watches me; patience, love, concern all written clear on her face. I believe her.
I pull my shirt off over my head and return to her. She welcomes me, opening her legs so I can settle between them. I’ve been here before. Not this bed. Not this time. But this closeness. Her thighs against my hips. Her hands in my hair. I remember the quiet moans. The feel of her chest pressed to mine. I remember needing her like this. I just don’t know when I lost those memories—or why I didn’t fight harder to keep them.
I wrap my arm around her back to pull her up to me so we’re flush, skin on skin. She gasps and reaches for me for the first time. Her hands tangle in my hair to pull my head down to hers. Our lips meet in a frenzied kiss.
I break away and trail my lips down her jaw, nipping and sucking on her neck, down her chest until I reach her nipple. I lay the flat of my tongue against it and she nearly screams. I wrap my lips around it and suckle. She knots her fingers in my hair. The pain of it spurs me on to the other side where I repeat the process.
She’s whispering my name over and over, her voice breathy and light.
I’m painfully hard now.
I lay her back down and kiss a trail down her stomach. When I reach the waistband of her shorts, I look up at her.
She’s watching me intently, her eyes soft and steady. She nods at the silent question in mine, and I peel her shorts and underwear down past her hips, past her knees, until she kicks them off.
Now she’s completely naked beneath me.
She’s so beautiful. So open. Laid out before me like she trusts me with every part of her. Her eyes plead for something I almost remember giving her—comfort, love, something real.
You think this is real? the other Peeta hisses. You think she didn’t lie under Gale like this a hundred times in the woods? Think again. You’re not special. You’re just the boy she let survive.
The memory disintegrates. The warmth, the trust, the rightness of this moment—it all twists.
I freeze.
I want to finish what we started. I want to believe her. But the voice won’t stop—taunting me with things I don’t even remember, planting images I can’t scrub away.
She wants you weak. She wants you exposed. That’s when she’ll strike.
I stand abruptly, groaning, clutching my head in both hands like I can rip the voice out if I try hard enough.
I turn away from her, shaking, choking on the sudden wave of guilt and fury and fear.Tears sting my eyes, but I keep them shut. If I open them now, I might see her as the mutt again.
And I can’t bear that.
“I’m so sorry, Peeta,” she says quietly, her voice raw. I turn back. She’s kneeling now, arms crossed tightly over her chest, shielding herself. “It was selfish of me to come here.”
Her eyes shimmer. She swallows hard before continuing.
“I miss you so much it physically hurts, but I didn’t stop to think how much it hurts you to see me. To look at me and remember. To feel everything – love, hate, all of it – at once.” She falters, blinking against the tears trailing down her cheeks. “I know part of you still cares, but even that must hurt. You were right. I’m always hurting you. I’m sorry.”
She shifts off the bed, being careful to move slowly and give me plenty of space.
“I’ll go,” she whispers. “I won’t come back unless you ask me to.” A breath shakes loose from her chest. “I hope you will.”
My legs don’t want to hold me, so I sit down heavily on the bed.
The silence that follows wraps around us, heavy and fragile. I can hear the blood in my ears. My heart pounding.
Without thinking, I reach out. My fingers brush her wrist. She startles slightly but doesn’t pull away.
“Stay,” I murmur. My voice is hoarse. “Please.”
She hesitates.
Now she’s the one torn in two—caught between the desire to stay and the instinct to protect us both by walking away. I can see it in her eyes: she wants to be here. Wants to hold on. But there’s fear, too. Not of me—I believe that, right now. She doesn’t want to hurt me. I believe her.
Somehow, the mutt in my head is quiet. Her indecision doesn’t trigger it—it soothes it. For the first time in what feels like years, I feel like me again.
The want wins.
She steps back to me, standing between my knees where I sit on the edge of the bed. I reach for her, hands gliding down her arms until I find her fingers and twine them with mine. We just look at each other for a long moment. Quiet, close, trying to breathe in the same air.
Then she leans in. Her bare skin brushes mine, her lips tentative at first. I pull her closer, hands sliding across the smooth skin at the small of her back. Her fingers slip into my hair, her kiss deepening with urgency. When her tongue finds mine, I lose the thread of time.
We stay there for what could be hours.
When we finally break apart, I’m panting against her neck. She’s stroking the nape of mine, her hands moving slowly down my back, across my shoulders. Then she lifts my chin gently, guiding my eyes back to hers.
“Are you sure you want this?” she asks, barely above a whisper. “Tell me if it’s too much.”
It is too much. And somehow, not nearly enough.
The boy I used to be lived for this—her touch, her trust, the way she reaches for me like I’m still hers. The man I am now is bruised and broken and unsure if he even deserves it.
But the want wins.
I rise and pull her tightly against me, lifting her into my arms. She wraps around me without hesitation, her limbs curling like she belongs there. My hands are full of her—her warmth, her weight, her need. Her legs tighten around me, drawing us closer.
She presses hot, desperate kisses to my neck, my jaw, my cheek. Her mouth finds my ear, and when her lips close around the lobe, I feel myself harden against her again.
I turn, guiding her back onto the bed. Her cheeks are flushed, her hair falling wild around her face. She looks up at me with nothing but trust. And want.
And right now, that’s enough to believe in.
I move to join her on the bed, but she sits up and puts a hand on my stomach. It drops to the waistband of my pajamas, two fingers curling beneath the fabric. She looks at me, gauging my reaction. I swallow hard and nod. She tugs at them, and I help her to pull them down and off.
Now we’re both fully exposed to each other. It’s terrifying. It’s glorious.
She lies back, her breath quickening as her eyes travel over my body.
I follow her – like I always have. Like I always will.