it. A hot pain races up my arm to my elbow. I grit my teeth and pull as hard as I can. Marcus loses his grip, so I unwrap the belt and grab it by the buckle.
I swing my arm as fast as I can, my shoulder socket burning from the sudden motion, and the belt strikes Marcus’s shoulder. He yells and lunges at me with outstretched hands, with fingernails that look like claws. Tobias pushes me behind him so he stands between me and Marcus. He looks angry, not afraid.
All the Marcuses vanish. The lights come on, revealing a long, narrow room with busted brick walls and a cement floor.
“That’s it?” I say. “Those were your worst fears? Why do you only have four…” My voice trails off. Only four fears.
“Oh.” I look over my shoulder at him. “That’s why they call you—”
The words leave me when I see his expression. His eyes are wide and seem almost vulnerable under the room’s lights. His lips are parted. If we were not here, I would describe the look as awe. But I don’t understand why he would be looking at me in awe.
He wraps his hand around my elbow, his thumb pressing to the soft skin above my forearm, and tugs me toward him. The skin around my wrist still stings, like the belt was real, but it is as pale as the rest of me. His lips slowly move against my cheek, then his arms tighten around my shoulders, and he buries his face in my neck, breathing against my collarbone.
I stand stiffly for a second and then loop my arms around him and sigh.
“Hey,” I say softly. “We got through it.”
He lifts his head and slips his fingers through my hair, tucking it behind my ear. We stare at each other in silence. His fingers move absently over a lock of my hair.
“You got me through it,” he says finally.
“Well.” My throat is dry. I try to ignore the nervous electricity that pulses through me every second he touches me. “It’s easy to be brave when they’re not my fears.”
I let my hands drop and casually wipe them on my jeans, hoping he doesn’t notice.
If he does, he doesn’t say so. He laces his fingers with mine.
“Come on,” he says. “I have something else to show you.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
HAND IN HAND, we walk toward the Pit. I monitor the pressure of my hand carefully. One minute, I feel like I’m not gripping hard enough, and the next, I’m squeezing too hard. I never used to understand why people bothered to hold hands as they walked, but then he runs one of his fingertips down my palm, and I shiver and understand it completely.
“So…” I latch on to the last logical thought I remember. “Four fears.”
“Four fears then; four fears now,” he says, nodding. “They haven’t changed, so I keep going in there, but…I still haven’t made any progress.”
“You can’t be fearless, remember?” I say. “Because you still care about things. About your life.”
“I know.”
We walk along the edge of the Pit on a narrow path that leads to the rocks at the bottom of the chasm. I’ve never noticed it before—it blended in with the rock wall. But Tobias seems to know it well.
I don’t want to ruin the moment, but I have to know about his aptitude test. I have to know if he’s Divergent.
“You were going to tell me about your aptitude test results,” I say.
“Ah.” He scratches the back of his neck with his free hand. “Does it matter?”
“Yes. I want to know.”
“How demanding you are.” He smiles.
We reach the end of the path and stand at the bottom of the chasm, where the rocks form unsteady ground, rising up at harsh angles from the rushing water. He leads me up and down, across small gaps and over angular ridges. My shoes cling to the rough rock. The soles of my shoes mark each rock with a wet footprint.
He finds a relatively flat rock near the side, where the current isn’t strong, and sits down, his feet dangling over the edge. I sit beside him. He seems comfortable here, inches above the hazardous water.
He releases my hand. I look at the jagged edge of the rock.
“These are things I don’t tell people, you know. Not even my friends,” he says.
I lace my fingers together and clench. This is the perfect place for him to tell me that he is Divergent, if indeed that’s what he is.