“Delusion?” I repeat. “You mean you haven’t…” I raise my eyebrows. “Oh. Oh. I just assumed…” That because I am so absorbed by him, everyone else must be too. “Um. You know.”
“Well, you assumed wrong.” He looks away. His cheeks are bright, like he’s embarrassed. “You can tell me anything, you know,” he says. He takes my face in his hands, his fingertips cold and his palms warm. “I am kinder than I seemed in training. I promise.”
I believe him. But this has nothing to do with his kindness.
He kisses me between the eyebrows, and on the tip of my nose, and then carefully fits his mouth to mine. I am on edge. I have electricity coursing through my veins instead of blood. I want him to kiss me, I want him to; I am afraid of where it might go.
His hands shift to my shoulders, and his fingers brush over the edge of my bandage. He pulls back with a puckered brow.
“Are you hurt?” he asks.
“No. It’s another tattoo. It’s healed, I just…wanted to keep it covered up.”
“Can I see?”
I nod, my throat tight. I pull my sleeve down and slip my shoulder out of it. He stares down at my shoulder for a second, and then runs his fingers over it. They rise and fall with my bones, which stick out farther than I’d like. When he touches me, I feel like everywhere his skin meets mine is changed by the connection. It sends a thrill through my stomach. Not just fear. Something else, too. A wanting.
He peels the corner of the bandage away. His eyes roam over the symbol of Abnegation, and he smiles.
“I have the same one,” he says, laughing. “On my back.”
“Really? Can I see it?”
He presses the bandage over the tattoo and pulls my shirt back over my shoulder.
“Are you asking me to undress, Tris?”
A nervous laugh gurgles from my throat. “Only…partially.”
He nods, his smile suddenly fading. He lifts his eyes to mine and unzips his sweatshirt. It slides from his shoulders, and he tosses it onto the desk chair. I don’t feel like laughing now. All I can do is stare at him.
His eyebrows pull to the center of his forehead, and he grabs the hem of his T-shirt. In one swift motion, he pulls it over his head.
A patch of Dauntless flames covers his right side, but other than that, his chest is unmarked. He averts his eyes.
“What is it?” I ask, frowning. He looks…uncomfortable.
“I don’t invite many people to look at me,” he says. “Any people, actually.”
“I can’t imagine why,” I say softly. “I mean, look at you.”
I walk slowly around him. On his back is more ink than skin. The symbols of each faction are drawn there—Dauntless at the top of his spine, Abnegation just below it, and the other three, smaller, beneath them. For a few seconds I look at the scales that represent Candor, the eye that stands for Erudite, and the tree that symbolizes Amity. It makes sense that he would tattoo himself with the symbol of Dauntless, his refuge, and even the symbol of Abnegation, his place of origin, like I did. But the other three?
“I think we’ve made a mistake,” he says softly. “We’ve all started to put down the virtues of the other factions in the process of bolstering our own. I don’t want to do that. I want to be brave, and selfless, and smart, and kind, and honest.” He clears his throat. “I continually struggle with kindness.”
“No one’s perfect,” I whisper. “It doesn’t work that way. One bad thing goes away, and another bad thing replaces it.”
I traded cowardice for cruelty; I traded weakness for ferocity.
I brush over Abnegation’s symbol with my fingertips. “We have to warn them, you know. Soon.”
“I know,” he says. “We will.”
He turns toward me. I want to touch him, but I’m afraid of his bareness; afraid that he will make me bare too.
“Is this scaring you, Tris?”
“No,” I croak. I clear my throat. “Not really. I’m only…afraid of what I want.”
“What do you want?” Then his face tightens. “Me?”
Slowly I nod.
He nods too, and takes my hands in his gently. He guides my palms to his stomach. His eyes lowered, he pushes my hands up, over his abdomen and over his chest, and holds them against his neck. My palms tingle with the feel of his skin, smooth, warm. My face is hot, but I shiver anyway. He looks at me.
“Someday,” he says, “if you still want me, we can…” He pauses, clears his throat. “We can…”
I smile a little and wrap my arms around him before he finishes, pressing the side of my face to his chest. I feel his heartbeat against my cheek, as fast as my own.
“Are you afraid of me, too, Tobias?”
“Terrified,” he replies with a smile.
I turn my head and kiss the hollow beneath his throat.
“Maybe you won’t be in my fear landscape anymore,” I murmur.
He bends his head and kisses me slowly.
“Then everyone can call you Six.”
“Four and Six,” I say.
We kiss again, and this time, it feels familiar. I know exactly how we fit together, his arm around my waist, my hands on his chest, the pressure of his lips on mine. We have each other memorized.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
I WATCH TOBIAS’S face carefully as we walk to the dining hall, searching for any sign of disappointment. We spent the two hours lying on his bed, talking and kissing and eventually dozing until we heard shouts in the hallway—people on their way to the banquet.
If anything, he seems lighter now than he was before. He smiles more, anyway.
When we reach the entrance, we separate. I go in first, and run to the table I share with Will and Christina. He enters second, a minute later, and sits down next to Zeke, who hands him a dark bottle. He waves it away.
“Where did you go?” asks Christina. “Everyone else went back to the dormitory.”
“I just wandered around,” I say. “I was too nervous to talk to everyone else about it.”
“You have no reason to be nervous,” Christina says, shaking her head. “I turned around to talk to Will for one second, and you were already done.”
I detect a note of jealousy in her voice, and again, I wish I could explain that I was well prepared for the simulation, because of what I am. Instead I just shrug.
“What job are you going to pick?” I ask her.
“I’m thinking I might want a job like Four’s. Training initiates,” she says. “Scaring the living daylights out of them. You know, fun stuff. What about you?”
I was so focused on getting through initiation that I barely thought about it. I could work for the Dauntless leaders—but they would kill me if they discover what I am. What else is there?
“I guess…I could be an ambassador to the other factions,” I say. “I think being a transfer would help me.”
“I was so hoping you would say Dauntless-leader-in-training,” sighs Christina. “Because that’s what Peter wants. He couldn’t shut up about it in the dorm earlier.”
“And it’s what I want,” adds Will. “Hopefully I ranked higher than him…oh, and all the Dauntless-born initiates. Forgot about them.” He groans. “Oh God. This is going to be impossible.”