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It starts snowing late Saturday afternoon. At first, it just drifts down in light flurries, glittering in the moonlight as it takes its time to hit the ground, melting almost as soon as it makes contact with the earth. Sometime overnight, it must gather strength; when we wake up the next morning, the entire front lawn is blanketed in snow. The primrose bushes Peeta had planted all along the perimeter of the house are barely visible under the deluge, with only the tips of its skinny, leafless twigs poking through.
This morning, when I draw the curtains and rub the moisture away from the window with my forearm, I see nothing but a blur of white. It reminds me of being high above the sky in a hovercraft, looking out into the misty clouds that shroud the world below, and I have to tell myself to snap out of it before I feel that clench in my stomach, that choking sensation that grabs hold of my throat.
It’s coming down hard outside. The roar of the wind actually manages to penetrate the double-paned glass, shaking the walls of the bedroom. Downstairs, the door creaks open, then slams shut again, and I hear Peeta’s heavy footfall come closer as he makes his way up the stairs. He stops at the halfway point, close enough to where I can hear him, and says, “It’s at least three feet deep. I could barely get the door open.”
I feel my shoulders slump. I reach around to the back of my neck to gather up my hair and tuck it into a hasty braid, then head downstairs, running into Peeta, who’s leaning against the railing.
“Did you hear me?”
“Yeah. They fixed my ear, remember?”
I say it a little too irritably, and I regret it right away when I see his cheeks flush noticeably in the next instant. My mouth starts to form the shape of, I’m sorry, but the words get lost along the way and what ends up coming out is silly and makes me even angrier at myself.
“I need to check on Buttercup.”
I slip past him and pad the rest of the way down, pulling the ends of my sleeves over my hands as I steel myself to touch the cold metal of the doorknob in the kitchen. The frigid air hits me with a force when I pull the door open. Snow has piled up even more in the few minutes since Peeta checked the front porch and it’s now at waist level. It’ll take an entire morning of shoveling it just to get outside the house today.
“I let him in last night.”
I feel the warmth of his breath on my exposed neck. He’s come up right behind me, but he hasn’t laid his hands on my shoulders the way he normally would, drawn me into him so my back rests on his chest and I can feel the drumming of his heartbeat on my shoulder blades. It’s such a natural motion that he must have consciously held back from it. He’s keeping his distance, and the guilt of having snapped at him knifes at me once more.
“I just wanted to make sure you saw how bad it was out there,” he says. Then I hear his feet shift and he’s already halfway across the kitchen by the time I turn around to face him again.
This is just like Peeta. Wanting to make sure I didn’t do something reckless like go out hunting in wretched weather. Always looking out for me when my first instinct is to jump headfirst without looking. I should really thank him for it. It’s what a decent human being would do, after all. A decent human being would be grateful to have someone who cares this much. But the only emotion I can muster up is resentment, a knee jerk reaction at being held up in this place when all I want to do is be outside and clear my head.
I don’t go after him as he crosses the threshold and leaves the room altogether.
# #
On the third day of the blizzard, I start to think that maybe I’m going crazy.
Haymitch, to the astonishment of everyone, is actually holding up relatively well in this weather, considering. He sleeps most of the day anyway, so I guess that helps. Peeta heads over once a day to check in on him, make sure he’s eating and hasn’t choked on his own vomit or something.
I, on the other hand, am coming out of my skin. I wander around the house in my slippers, curl up by the fire and toss scraps of paper into the flames—anything to keep my hands occupied because they’re aching to hold a bow and arrow so badly and they’ve been deprived of it for days now.
It’s easier for Peeta to keep busy. He bakes, even though there’s no one to deliver these treats to—other than Haymitch, whose idea of showing appreciation for them is stay sober long enough to slur his thanks. My kitchen counter piles up with walnut-and-raisin bread, iced cookies, delicate, flaky pastry. With the storm raging outside, this gives him something to do.
And it lets him steer clear of me.
He hasn’t left my house to go back to his own since it began snowing, but we’ve barely said a word to each other in all that time. At the table, we eat in testy silence, with only the sound of our forks scraping the plates filling the air. In bed, his arm slings over my waist, but he doesn’t pull me in towards his body, doesn’t curve his hips over mine in the way that cocoons me in his warmth, and we fall asleep without whispering good night. I shudder awake from a nightmare and he holds me until my trembling stops, but he doesn’t ask me what I dreamt about. And I don’t tell him.
I don’t tell him that I dream of being in the woods, running free and breathing the scent of dewy earth. But before I can take aim at my first shot, a cage falls over me and snatches me away, and I’m locked in a dark, windowless room where I can’t ever get out again.
I’m trapped.
It’s on that third night, when I wake up in a cold sweat, with the flimsy material of my nightgown clinging to my back, that he says to me, “Are you feeling smothered here?”
“What?”
There’s silence for a long time. Like maybe he regrets bringing it up. Like he’s opened up a door he’d rather not climb out of after all. Then he takes a breath and slides his arm out from underneath me.
“If you want me to go back to my house, I can do that-”
“No.”
The possessiveness in my voice surprises me. Maybe it surprises him, too. I feel the bed shift as he slides up to sitting.
“I was just thinking… maybe this is too much for you. Me being here all the time. If you need space-”
“I don’t.”
Sorry bubbles up in my chest again, working its way up to my throat. But once again, it dies there before I can let the word escape.
“If that’s what you think, then I’m… You shouldn’t think that.”
Silence. Then, “I don’t know what to think, Katniss.”
He says this softly, without accusation. There’s no intent to make me feel guilty, but I do anyway.
“Do you love me?”
The question blindsides me. I’m not prepared with an answer, and when I hesitate, he takes that as my response. I feel him slump down beside me.
“You know how I feel.”
In the darkness, I see him look down on me, see his hand tentatively reach for my forehead to brush away a lock of my hair.
“Then why don’t you ever say it?”
I pretend not to hear his voice crack. I pretend not to feel my own heart break at the sound of it.
“I say it all the time.”
“No, you don’t. I ask you—real or not real. And you tell me, real.” I hear him swallow hard, as though to steady his voice before going on. “It’s not the same.”
His words knock the wind out of me. I fumble for a reply when he bends down to place a kiss on my temple, then murmurs, “Good night, Katniss.”
# #
On the fourth day, the snow lets up a little. There’s a patch of blue sky for the first time in a long while, peeking through the drift of pregnant clouds. I wake up to an empty space beside me and listen for the sound of stirring downstairs, or the scrape of a shovel outside.
There’s nothing but stillness, though.
My hand wanders over to the other side of the mattress, but the indentation of his shape is gone, and the sheets are cool to the touch. He left some time ago.
Panic ratchets up my spine. Where did he go? Has he gone for good? My mind floods with irrational thoughts, regrets over words spoken last night.
Regrets over the ones that weren’t said out loud.
The last few days come back to me, the carelessness with which I’ve treated him, the steadiness he’s shown in simply sticking around, when anyone else—anyone else whose patience would have run out long before now—would have walked away from my madness.
It seems I’m always doing this to the boy. And yet he always stays.
Or at least, he did.
I slip out of bed and head down the stairs without even bothering to put my slippers on. My bare feet slap against the cold floor, but I don’t flinch. Inside the study, my clumsy fingers grab hold of the phone, and I’m about to punch in his number when I hear the front door open. I drop the earpiece and run into the living room.
Peeta comes in, brushing snow off his shoulders.
“You’re here. You came back.”
He looks baffled by the words. “I went to check on Haymitch,” he says.
“I thought… after last night, I thought…”
He stops unbuttoning his coat. I don’t know how he’s able to make sense of my babbling when I myself don’t know what I’m trying to say. But he does. Slowly, he raises his arms, a motion that reminds me of that first night on the train to the Quarter Quell. And just as I did then, I fling myself into his embrace. His arms tighten around me, fingers splayed over the small of my back. I feel his lips seek out my pulse point and he presses them there, forming the shape of my name.
“I’m not going anywhere.”
Tears leak out of my eyes. I squeeze them shut, trapping the tears there, and curl my hands over his shoulders, pressing him into me, desperate to close whatever remaining gap there is between us.
“I’m sorry,” I say. And then the rest of the words come spilling out, like a dam has broken. “I’m sorry I’ve been so terrible... I’m sorry that I can’t… I’m sorry I’m not what you deserve.”
He pulls back and slides his hands up to cup my face.
“What are you talking about?”
“You keep sticking around when I don’t give you any reason to stay.”
He opens his mouth, but I don’t let him get any words out.
“I push you away and I run and I can’t even…” My voice drops to a whisper. “I can’t even tell you what you want to hear.”
He lets our a breath and shakes his head. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have pressured you to-”
“Stop that. Stop saying you’re sorry. I’m the one who should be sorry. I’m the one who can’t seem ever pull myself together-”
“Hey…” He grabs hold of my face once more, lifting it up so our eyes meet. “Listen to me… ok? Just listen… We take turns. We each have our bad days. Some days, I have to carry you—and that’s ok, because you’ll have to carry me.”
“I-”
“And you’ll do it. I know you will. You already have.”
I reach up to touch his jaw, run my finger along the hard edge of it. He takes my hand and covers it with his own, brings it to his lips.
“I know how you feel,” he says. “You don’t have to say the words-”
“Yes. I do.”
“Katniss-”
I place a finger on his mouth to silence him. Inside me is a storm of a different kind, a swirl of fear, of insecurity. And something else, too.
Excitement. Giddiness. Foreign emotions that I could never put a name to before now. Because no one had ever drawn them out of me before Peeta did.
“I love you.”
“Katni-”
“I do, I love you. Please remember that, ok? Remember it when I’m… when I’m struggling and I can’t-”
He interrupts me with a kiss, fingers tangling in my hair. He presses his forehead to mine when we break apart, still holding my face, as though he’s afraid to let go.
“Always,” he says.
Outside, the snow has ceased at last. The sun has broken through, flooding the living room with its light. And I hold him, knowing that for the first time in days, I can go outside. I can go into the woods, where I’ve been longing to go for some time now. I’m free to go.
But I choose to say here. With him. And I know now this is the choice I will always make.