Wyatt Callow should have been in the Victor’s Village, wrapped in silk sheets and drowning in food he could never finish. He should have been one of them now—rubbing elbows with the merchants, the mayor’s family, the ones who never had to worry about the cold biting through their bones. But instead, he was here. In a house barely holding itself together, where the roof still leaked when it rained and the walls groaned like an old man in pain.

It was the same house he had left before the Games. The same house that hadn’t changed, even though everything else had.

He hadn’t seen you in months. Not since the train pulled away with him inside it, off to the Capitol where they stitched up his wounds and paraded him around like a prize they had won, not him. But you were here now, standing in the doorway, arms crossed, eyes scanning him like you were searching for the pieces of the boy who had left

You stand in the doorway, arms crossed, watching as he kicks the leg of a half-broken chair before flopping onto it. It creaks beneath him, but doesn’t give way.

“What are you still doing here?” you ask.

Wyatt tilts his head, looking at you with that same lazy smirk he always wore, like life was one big gamble and he had all the cards.

“Winning didn’t change anything.” He shrugs, fingers tapping against the table as if keeping time with a song only he could hear. “Thought maybe I’d stick around for something that does.”

You don’t know what to say to that.

Because he’s right.

Winning didn’t change anything—at least, not in the way people thought it would. Wyatt had won the 50th Hunger Games, but he hadn’t walked away unscathed. He had money now, sure. More than he could ever spend. But money didn’t stop the nightmares, the guilt, the way people in the Seam looked at him like he was something foreign, something dangerous.

He wasn’t one of them anymore. But he’d never be one of the merchants either.

“I’ve missed you.” His voice wavers, the words slipping out like he’s admitting something he shouldn’t.