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He’s alive. He’s alive.
Peeta is alive.
Everything narrows. Defocuses. Then centers.
My hand. Pressed just right of his chest. Fingers catching his collar. Palm over his heart.
It’s beating. His heart is actually beating.
“You were dead,” my whisper breaks. From the rawness of my throat or the tidal wave of pain, who could tell. I spent hours sobbing. Screaming. Pleading. At least that's what Madge and Thresh told my sister. Who told my parents.
“She tried to throw herself out of a window” Prim murmurs like I couldn’t hear from three paces behind, trailing through the car park at LAX.
It’s not like I remember. And so what if I did?
What does it matter?
Whatever existed between us is gone.
He’s gone. Unreachable forever.
Thick darkness settles in me. I’m gasping, sucking for air. The weight is pulling me into the abyss, muscles taut, seized. Tendrils of pain spread from the gaping hole in my chest. I curl down.
“He’s gone! He’s gone! He’s dead!”
“M'am you’re gonna have to calm her down or else I have to alert the police.”
“Katniss. Katniss, honey, you’ve got to stop screaming.”
I’m weightless. Lifted from the ground. Held in a lap, rocked gently. Soothed with humming.
I taper to whimpers.
My mother and father exchange a look. But I don't see it. I can’t see it. All I can see, all I want to ever see, is in my mind. Peeta’s shy smile when I agreed to go on a date. Peeta blushing the first time we held hands. Peeta’s eyes as I admitted my love for him. Peeta’s face over and over, every day, through the years. As he watches a movie. As he paints. As he laughs. As he wrestles. As he leans in for a kiss. As he takes a drink. As he wakes in the morning. As he cums.
I’ll never see any of that again. I’ll never feel any of that again. It’s gone.
He’s gone.
Peeta lies there letting the shock ricochet and settle.
“I was. My heart stopped twice. I died twice.” He can hardly speak through the pain and the haze of narcotics.
My hand steels itself, desperate to preserve the beat of his heart, but he flinches. “Careful.”
Right. He just had two surgeries after being struck by a car and thrown into a brick wall.
“But I’m alive. I came back.” A tear slips from one eye. “I couldn’t leave you.”
A glow is washing through me, warming the anguish of the last thirty six hours. I don’t try to contain my disbelief. I trace his shoulder and up his neck. There’s so many stitches. Everywhere, there are stitches. Bruises, too, of every shade. It’s hard to find places to touch him but I have to touch him.
I maneuver myself closer, eyes still flitting across his body, taking in his injuries. My fingertips map his jaw and cheeks, slide above his brows. The hand of his unbroken arm finds my wrist. His touch is light, weak I realize, but steady as he guides me, letting me linger as I need. But I need more.
I adjust the bed sheet so it won’t rub my face. I’m torn though, between my fear of not having him in sight and the desire to hear evidence of his existence. Proof that this is real.
Carefully, I settle my ear against his chest, to the spot where I always rest my head, where I know I will hear the strong and steady beat of his heart.
“Its all right, Katniss.”