No Games Left to Play

16: We Remain

It's been a little over a few months since Peeta and I got married, and while I want to say it's changed everything, nothing really has. The only difference that's occurred happened during our first week or two of being a married couple. Peeta would be there in the morning, whether it was in bed with me or downstairs preparing breakfast, he was there. Somedays he would go into the bakery in the afternoon, others he wouldn't. Peeta promised me some time together just the two of us after our wedding and he gave it to me.

We talked about going on a trip, but I didn't think it was necessary. I was happy just spending the day with him. Even if we didn't share a single word with each other.

My favorite memory from those first two weeks was a morning Peeta and I were in his art studio. I sat in a chair reading a book while he painted a picture. Every now and then I would glance up from my book to see his progress. I would watch his face as he concentrated on each stroke, perfecting his subject to capture them in just the right way. He was glancing away from his canvas periodically to watch me as well. I know this because at the same moment he was turning his attention to me, I peered my eyes off the page of my book to check on him. Realizing what we had just done, he smiled. We didn't go back to our activities right then. We just stared at each other, locking our gaze on each other's eyes. The window to our souls.

My father told me as a little girl that when I found someone I wanted to spend forever with, I should fall in love with their eyes because the eyes are the only things that don't age. So if I fell in love with their eyes, I would be in love forever.

I never realized it before, but Peeta's light blue irises are one of the things I love most about him. I could get lost in his eyes and never be truly lost.

But everything has to come to an end. Which meant our days spent without a care were over. He needed to return to the bakery and I get that. If I didn't know better, I would think he loved that bakery more than me. It's his baby and he loves what he does. It would be selfish of me to ask him to spend every waking second of the day with me.

After his return to the bakery, I got back into my hunting routine and started trading game more regularly. Sometimes when I got tired of being cramped up in the house and I missed Peeta desperately I would wander to the bakery and steal a moment of his time. I would bring him lunch and we would share a moment alone in his office. During one of my visits I just couldn't leave Peeta's arms. I came up with so many excuses just to spend another minute in his embrace. I even tried seducing him, at which point Peeta suggested we waited until the end of the work day. That night was the first time we were intimate somewhere other than our bedroom.

Towards the end of that first month of being married I had gotten my period. I don't think I had ever been so happy for it to be my time of the month. It was a sigh of relief to know I wouldn't be taking a journey through something I was nowhere near ready for.

However it didn't sit well with Peeta. Our conversation the night after running into Gale really opened Peeta's eyes. It made him realize I wasn't going to cave in for a very, very long time. He knew his only hope of getting a child in the very near future would have been on our wedding night. The way he made love to me that night of our conversation showed it. He had gone harder than ever before. It was like he was determined to have his seed fight the pill and win. He was going to put a baby in me and not let some measly Capitol medicine stop him. Unfortunately for him, that didn't happen. 

He didn't talk to me for the rest of the weekend. He moped around the house, only talking to me when a response was required. His grip around me at night loosened, his affection was nonexistent. He barely looked at me. This attitude toward me only continued to be carried out. The weekend carrying into the third week of him ignoring my existence, I'd had enough. He was acting like a child and I was fed up. He knew how I felt about children. We had the same conversation over and over again well before we got married. I even elaborated more on why I felt so strongly about not wanting kids. We were married. He didn't deserve the brief explanation anymore, he needed to know full well why having children wasn't an option for me. And I didn't deserve the silent treatment he was giving me. So that weekend, when I was so desperate for him to talk to me, I decided to pull a stunt I knew would get him to talk to me.