Chapter Text
She’s sorting the silverware when she finds the first note, wedged in the back of the utensil drawer. Judging by the pristine edges and the lack of smudging, she assumes it’s relatively new.
Gale,
If I had a flower for every time I thought of you, I could walk in my garden forever.
–PM
Her first thought is, Who the hell is PM? Her second thought is of Gale, and how he should be thanking his lucky stars he isn’t home, because if he was, she’d be putting the butter knife in her hand to good use.
Over dinner, the folded parchment burns through her pocket, making her leg bounce. She watches Gale and tries to pinpoint a change in his mannerisms, shift in demeanor, or any sort of indication that there’s someone else. But she finds nothing, which terrifies her more than if there’d been something obvious.
As he skewers his cucumber slices, she opens her mouth. The question stings like acid on her tongue. Her fingers slip into her pocket, dancing along the edge of the note.
But when his eyes cut to her across the table, his brow arching, she sinks back against her chair, her empty hand falling to her side.
“You have something to say?” he grunts.
Yes, she wants to scream, who is she?
Instead, all that comes out is, “How do you like the salad?”
In the two hours between her coming home from her job and Gale returning from his, she begins to take up an obscene amount of household chores. She convinces herself it’s because the house is a pigsty. Not because she wants to see if there are more notes, no, of course not.
So she should be surprised when she finds another slip of paper poking out from underneath the coasters on the coffee table, and then a third in between her copies of Little Women and Night. But she isn’t surprised. Instead, she’s outright furious.
She makes sense of it all in her head, outlining the logistics. She goes into the lab at seven in the morning, whereas he doesn’t leave for the office until at least nine. Both of their daily itineraries are reliably constant, so he could’ve been sneaking PM over in the mornings for years without her knowing.
Instead of preparing dinner as she usually does, she sits hunched at the kitchen table, waiting for Gale to return. All the notes she’s found are spread across the surface, neatly arranged like a science fair exhibition. She’s impatient for his explanation – if he has one – and in the meantime, she fumes.
She chooses to be angry, her circuitous thoughts stoking her fire with each elapsing minute, because she doesn’t know how she’d handle the alternative. Being furious with Gale is a lot more manageable than being heartbroken, so she keeps her jaw locked, her fists clenched.
“She—she isn’t important,” Gale says, tugging at his hair.
Katniss has the love notes fanned in her fingers like playing cards. “Well, she sure as hell seems to think you’re the world, Gale!”
“Look, I—” But he just shakes his head. He must know there isn’t any way to rationalize himself out of this mess.
Katniss slaps the paper onto the table. She watches him pace. She feels everything in her body disintegrate.
“How long has it been going on, Gale?”
Her voice is barely a whisper, which seems to shock him as much as it startles her. He stills, his wild eyes pinning on her.
He refuses to look away as he murmurs:
“Seven months.”
Her fingernails claw at the chair’s veneer, and she refuses to let go, because she knows if she does, Gale’s flesh will be replacing the wood. Bile rises in her throat. Her eyes sting brutally.
“Seven—” she chokes, her hand flying to her collar. “Seven months?”
“I wanted to tell you—”
“I want you to leave.” She refuses to look at him now, refuses to catch the eyes that are nearly identical to hers.
His feet shuffle. “Katniss…”
“Get out of this house.” Her voice is stronger now, which she finds remarkable, considering how her body has never felt so frail. “Now.”
She’s no stranger to Gale’s fiery protests, considering their six-year marriage was filled with about four-years’ worth of butting heads. So she expects him to grow angry, to violently dispute his punishment, to throw things, to yell.
But all she receives is the sound of heavy footsteps trailing from the kitchen, the metallic clink of car keys, and the slam of their front door.
She crumples against the table.
After her appointment with her divorce lawyer, Katniss returns home to pack Gale’s things. She’s called him only twice since that night, the first time to tell him he could come grab his belongings in a week, and the second time to announce she’d have the papers ready when he arrived. It was then that he began to fight it, began to plead for time to figure things out, to which she reminded him that seven months is plenty of time , and slammed her phone against the wall receiver.
Prim meets her at the house, helping her shove Gale’s clothes into poorly-assembled boxes.
“Do you know who she is?” Prim asks.
Katniss punches one of his folded polo shirts deeper into the box, wishing his chest was under the fabric. “I don’t want to know.”
“Why not?”
With an exasperated sigh, Katniss leans back on her haunches, glaring at her sister.
“This isn’t about her, Prim. It’s about Gale. It doesn’t matter if she’s a prostitute or the fucking First Lady, because she wasn’t the one who stood across from me at the altar and promised to be faithful.”
Prim’s silent for a while, her finger idly grazing the edge of one box. And then, after a few moments have passed, she inches closer to her sister.
“I’m proud of you,” she says, finally, reaching out to touch Katniss’s knee. “You’re being brave.”
But Katniss has never been one for accepting compliments.
“I’m being realistic,” she rebuffs. “Even if he apologizes a million times, and buys me the sun and the moon, I still won’t be able to look at him again.”
She’s always been disinclined to forgive, which is one of the many things she has in common with Gale. So, of all the things she’s doing, he should understand her wrath the most.
When he comes to retrieve his things, she forks over the papers before indignantly folding her arms. Her eyes focus on the sidewalk, their shoes, a rabbit darting across the street behind him, anything , everything but the man who was her childhood best friend, her first lover, her only lover, and her promised endgame.
After all, she knows if she meets his eyes, she’ll find what she fell in love with in the first place. She doesn’t want to be reminded.
On account of the ample evidence proving Gale’s betrayal, Katniss winds up with nearly everything. She keeps the house, most of their money, and a lifetime supply of harbored resentment. Because Gale’s a high-end contractor, they were able to buy a decent-sized house after only two years of marriage, which seemed spacious even when there was two of them.
Now that there’s one, Katniss feels like the empty halls are swallowing her whole.
Instead of selling the damn thing, she decides a little project can alleviate the loneliness. A few days of careful thought lead her to the conclusion that a yoga room will do just this. She needs something to help her relax, anyhow, and if peace of mind can be achieved by way of renovating a room just for herself, then so be it.
And, just to stick it to Gale, she decides that the perfect room for this will be his old study.
On her lunch break at the lab, she calls Gale’s firm. Not only does she trust his company and know she can weasel her way into some sort of discount, but she’s also mildly entertained by the notion of Gale’s reaction to her hiring his associates to demolish his home office.
When the man she speaks to over the phone asks if she has any special requests, she smiles smugly to herself.
“Make sure you have your best man on the job,” she says, “and don’t let Gale Hawthorne touch this project.”
“I want hardwood floors,” she tells the lead contractor, a soft-eyed man with even softer blonde curls. “And that entire back wall, the one there – it should be windows.”
He nods, notating her wishes on his clipboard. Her eyes follow the motions of his hand, and she finds herself mesmerized by the gentle sweeps of his pen. His hands are big, calloused, but they look so steady.
“That’ll be beautiful,” he tells her when he looks up from his clipboard, his eyes cutting into hers. Blue, blue, blue. “With the trees and all.”
The back of their house is angled toward the woods, and she can imagine the view from this second story room will be breathtaking when the back wall is replaced by glass panels. Who says she needs to do yoga? She’ll be happy to curl up at the edge with a cup of tea, watching the sky melt as the sun sinks.
“We can start on Monday,” the contractor tells her. She fishes around in her short-term memory, searching for his name. He told her when he entered, but she hadn’t been paying attention. She doesn’t think he’ll respond enthusiastically to Mr. Blue Eyes.
“I’m usually at work around seven, so are you okay with letting yourselves in? I’d take the day off work, but I’ve already used up a lot of my vacation days, what with the—” Her heart plugs her throat, stopping herself from saying the forbidden ‘D’ word.
Mr. Blue Eyes is one of Gale’s partners at the firm, meaning he’s probably familiar with the gist of her situation. At least, that’d explain the sympathetic smile cinching up his lips and webbing in the corners of his eyes.
“Her name’s Piper,” Johanna blurts.
Completely oblivious to what her coworker’s talking about, Katniss just adjusts her slide under the microscope. “Hmm?”
“The other woman. Her name’s Piper,” she says. “Piper Mellark.”
PM.
Her fingers jolt on the revolving nosepiece, her image slipping out of focus. She peers up from the microscope, glaring at Johanna, who’s standing across her work station, arms folded.
While her mutual friends with Gale have all unanimously sided with her in the split, she’s learned their loyalty comes with an asterisk. Just because they, like her, are infuriated with him, that doesn’t mean they’ve also elected to use the silent treatment as punishment. Most of them still speak with him, actually, even though she refuses.
When it comes to Johanna, the pattern doesn’t break, because the woman isn’t merely Katniss’s coworker. She used to be her roommate, too, before Katniss got engaged to Gale. The three of them were thick as thieves for so long, so it shouldn’t surprise her that Johanna still keeps up contact with her now-ex, although she’d be lying if she said it didn’t hurt a little. Gale broke her heart. He shouldn’t also get to keep their friends, especially not ones as important as Jo.
“I don’t care who she is,” Katniss says indignantly, gripping her microscope’s arm.
“You’re going to have to confront it eventually, Kat.”
“Yeah, in ten years, when I see the news of their infidelity-caused divorce in the paper.”
“This town is big, but it’s not bottomless. You’ll run into him eventually, you know. Or worse, you’ll run into them.”
If this means that Gale’s still with this Piper girl – and why wouldn’t he be? – she doesn’t want to hear about it.
But Johanna misinterprets her silence as acquiescence, leaning forward on the counter, digging her elbows into the surface.
“She’s one of the firm’s attorneys. Apparently new.” Johanna sighs. “Meaning this wasn’t years in the making, Katniss. He fucked you over, but at least he hasn’t been doing it for that long.”
Her blood sears her veins, electrifying her nerve endings. “You’re defending him?” she hisses.
But Johanna holds up her hands innocently. “No, no, what he did was inexcusable. All I’m saying is, if you were worried that he’s been lusting after this woman since he got to the firm, don’t beat yourself up.”
Oh, Katniss surely isn’t beating herself up. Her anger still has yet to give way to any semblance of grief – in due course, she suspects she’ll have to confront the ache, or the feelings of inadequacy, or the loss of her best friend, not just the loss her husband. But for now, she refuses to express anything beyond a smoldering resentment.
Katniss’s body feels like clay as she slumps against the side of the counter.
“Hey Jo?”
Her friend cocks an eyebrow. “Yeah?”
“Did you, uh…” Her heart thumps slowly, as if it’s becoming too lazy to keep time. “Did you know about it?”
The jagged edges in Johanna’s gaze grow soft. Her lips flatten.
“No one did, Katniss. We had no idea he’d do this to you.”
Per usual, Katniss returns from work to an empty house, only this time, the upstairs study is taped off. She has half a mind to peek inside, to survey the damage, but as soon as she tip-toes to the closed door, she’s stopped by the sight of a note taped to the plywood.
So far, so good. Call the firm if you have any questions.
-PM
Her skin prickles.
PM?
The delicate handwriting drags her back to just a few weeks prior, when she found the network of love notes stashed away in her home. Immediately, her whole body begins to blaze, shards of red and black slicing behind her lids.
She doesn’t even know what she’s doing until she’s in the parking lot outside the firm, but even when she’s yanking the keys from the ignition, she can’t stop herself. She feels like a boiling pot of pasta capped off with a lid, her rage bubbling up higher and higher under the surface, making the cover rattle.
She’s going to explode. She knows it. And she can’t stop it.
Her whole body is trembling as she throws open the door to the firm. Behind the front desk sit Bristel and Leevy, the two secretaries she’s become well acquainted with over the years, since it wasn’t uncommon for her to visit Gale at the office on her lunch break.
They blanche when they see her. They must know.
“Katniss!” Leevy calls out, a nervous smile plastered on her red-slicked lips. “What a—a pleasant surprise—”
“Where are they?’ she snarls. A waiflike image of Gale fucking a faceless body on his work desk snaps through her head, burning into her retinas. They could be together, right now, just four floors above her.
She doesn’t miss how Bristel mutters something into her earpiece as Katniss stares Leevy down. Probably calling security, she realizes.
“Please, would you calm down, Mrs. Hawthorne—”
Oh, no. That won’t do.
Her bones blaze as she relentlessly carves her glare into Leevy’s face.
“Don’t. You. Dare. Call. Me. That.”
There are voices down the hall, and she turns to see two men in dark shirts approaching, their coiled walkies poking over the top of their belts.
“Do you know where they are?” she snaps at the men as they meet her in the lobby.
“Miss, we’re going to have to ask you to leave.”
“I’m not leaving until I know where they are,” she snarls, pointing angrily at the ceiling. “She was in my house! She left me a note!”
When she demanded that the firm keep her ex-husband off the job, she hadn’t realized they’d stick the other woman on. What the firm’s attorney was doing on site, she couldn’t guess, but she was there, in the home she tore apart, and that’s all that matters.
Katniss wants to scream.
“Miss, we’ll have to escort you out.”
“I’m not going anywhere.” Her voice rips its way through her throat, leaving her lungs feeling raw with flame. “Not until I tell her to stay the fuck away from my house.”
One of the security guards reaches for her arm, but she jolts back. She’s never done this before – caused such a scene – and she knows she’ll be the talk of the office for weeks, but in the moment, she doesn’t care. In some twisted way, she’s almost proud. Her reputation here no longer matters, but the fact that his ex-wife tore into his office to throw a temper tantrum will certainly be a stain on Gale’s.
The other security guard is reaching in his belt when she hears the front door open, followed by a thin gasp.
“Hey, hey, what’s going on?”
With the guards stalled, she whirls around and nearly buckles over. In the doorway stands a startled Mr. Blue Eyes, his fingers curled around the handle of a Chinese takeout bag.
For a moment, she’s almost excited to see him, before that eagerness quickly dissolves into fury. She gave him the keys to her house.
He must’ve let Piper Mellark in.
She has half a mind to stalk across the lobby and smack that pink flush straight out of his cheeks, but she manages to hold back, thrusting an angry pointer finger in his direction.
“You,” she snarls. “You let her in.”
“Her?” His brow is creased in confusion, and bravely, he takes a step forward. “What are you talking about?”
“The note! The fucking note, just like the ones she left scattered all over my damn house! She left one on the door, because you let her come into my home—”
His eyes widen to the size of quarters, his disorientation morphing to outright fear.
And then, suddenly, he flushes madly. With a tortured groan, his palm slaps over his forehead.
“Shit, Katniss, that isn’t it.” He approaches her slowly, much like a zookeeper would approach a rampant rhino, his hands held out in a desperate plea. “Look, I should’ve known better. I wasn’t thinking.”
“You weren’t thinking, so you let my husband’s mistress come into my house?”
“No, she wasn’t there,” he promises, apology pouring out of his eyes and placating hands. “She didn’t leave the note. I did.”
Katniss shakes her head, her temples throbbing. What?
“But the initials. PM.”
“Those are mine,” he clarifies.
“But those are—those are the ones—”
“I know,” he whispers, and by the way his eyes glint, she realizes that his simple I know means I know everything. Not just about Gale’s infidelity, or the woman he was sleeping with, but about how the marriage dissolved in a series of notes in just a matter of days.
She suddenly feels cold. Her body tingles with exposure, as if her bones are bared to the world. As all the gazes in the lobby rake over her – Leevy’s, Brisel’s, the guards’, and most importantly, Mr. Blue Eyes’ – she feels herself grow smaller, shrinking into nothing but an embarrassment, an idiot, and a slave to her wrath.
For the first time since she found out about Gale, she wants to cry.
“Hey,” Mr. Blue Eyes whispers, reaching out to touch her shoulder. Despite its awkwardness, the gesture is remotely soothing. “Look, I’ve got some takeout here, and enough crab rangoons to feed an entire army. How about you come up to my office and help me tackle all this food?”
With a pathetic sniffle, she nods.
“It’s okay,” he tells Leevy, Bristel, and the security guards as he leads her away. “We’ll walk it off.”
She appreciates that he, unlike the others, isn’t treating her like a feral animal, even though she just acted like one.
After he’s directed her into the elevator, and the doors have closed, she pushes her hair out of her face and looks to the floor.
“I’m so sorry,” she whispers.
He nudges her shoulder. “Don’t be. If I was in your position, I probably wouldn’t have acted much differently.”
“But I didn’t think.” Her throat is thick, and she wills herself not to cry. “I didn’t even try to stop myself. I knew I was being irrational, but once I saw the note, I just…”
“I’ll spell out my name next time,” he offers with a gentle smile. “Then we won’t have anything to worry about.”
She feels awful for asking this, but after how sweet he’s being, she knows she must.
“I feel like an idiot, but… what is your name?”
He chuckles as the elevator dings to a stop, and he tells her, “Peeta.”
It’s odd. But she likes it, the way its sound curls against her ear drums.
When they step onto the fourth floor, she ducks her head. “If he’s here,” she whispers, “I don’t want to see him.”
“No problem.” He steps closer and adds, “I can be your human body shield. Years of mildly-used gym memberships have trained me for this moment.”
Some strange sound bubbles in her throat, and she’s startled to discover it’s a giggle. She can’t remember the last time she laughed, the noise dusting off the cobwebs in her lungs, making them ache.
Thankfully, Peeta’s office is on the opposite side of the wing from Gale’s, so with careful maneuvering, they slip into his unseen. For good measure, Peeta closes the blinds.
Once he’s parked in the swivel chair behind his desk, she takes the seat across from him, pulling it up to the edge. His workspace is already in pristine condition, so to clear off the space between them, all he does is shuffle around a few papers.
“Take your pick,” he says when he unbags the takeout cartons. “Beef lo mein, cashew chicken, firecracker shrimp. Oh, and at least two tons of fried rice.”
She gives him a shy smile as she picks at the seal of the cashew chicken box. “Were you planning on eating this all by yourself?”
He splays his palms over his flat abdomen. “Can’t you tell?” he jokes. And then, handing her a pair of chopsticks: “No, I usually buy plenty extra, since some of the interns overwork themselves and forget to take a lunch break.”
She ogles the carton of chicken, her face flushing red. “So basically, I’m weaseling a poor kid out of their dinner?”
“If it’s just for tonight, I’m sure one won’t mind tiding themselves over with vending machine trail mix.” Then he grins at her. “Especially if I tell them they sacrificed it to a pretty girl.”
She shoves her chopstick into the mound of chicken before his words settle in.
What?
But when she glances up, he isn’t looking at her, instead focused on delicately prying apart his crab rangoon.
“So, you’re into yoga?” he asks.
Still disoriented, she spatters out, “Excuse me?”
“The yoga room?” His chin lifts as he looks at her. “I mean, you must be pretty serious if you’re dedicating a whole room to it.”
“Oh.” She scratches her ear. “I’ve taken a few classes, and it helps me relax, I guess. Really, I just needed to do something to that house.”
“Positive change,” he adds, pointing a chopstick in her direction. “Not that my opinion matters, but I think it’s a good idea. Making a space all for yourself, I mean.”
She nods absently. Her chest pulses with a hollow throb, and she tries not to think about why.
A few moments of silence trickle between them before she looks up, finding that his eyes are already pegged on her. They’re so startlingly blue, and also startlingly sad.
Before she can ask why, his shoulders slump.
“I’m really sorry, Katniss,” he murmurs.
“Sorry?”
He’s setting his chopsticks down with one hand, pinching the bridge of his nose with the other. “About the note. I—I should’ve known better.”
Half out of bravery, and half out of mortification, she asks, “How much do you know?”
The implicit about the divorce hangs between them. She watches as he leans back in his chair.
“Too much,” he says eventually. “But if you don’t want to talk about it, I’ll keep my lips sealed. I know how personal that stuff is. And, while I haven’t gone through anything like it myself… I know it hurts.”
As sweet as his reassurances are, she can’t focus on anything else beyond his too much.
“Does everyone here know?” she rasps. “About…”
“About what Gale did?” His chest rises. “I mean, everyone knows about… about him and Piper.” Her name sears Katniss’s chest like a hot plate, and she swallows a thick knot in her throat. “But that’s it. I think the only person who knows the gory details is me.”
Billows of pink bloom in her cheeks.
“Why you?” she asks, the words coming out far sharper than intended.
His own face begins to flush, but his eyes are courageous as they remain locked with hers.
“Well, it’s more than a coincidence that she and I share the same initials.” He leans forward, the corner of his lips quirking in a rueful smile. “Piper Mellark is my sister.”