over his shoulder. A laugh bursts from my mouth, half joy and half nerves, and he carries me across the room, dropping me unceremoniously on the couch.
He lies down next to me, and I run my fingers over the flames wrapping around his rib cage. He is strong, and lithe, and certain.
And he is mine.
I fit my mouth to his.
I was so afraid that we would just keep colliding over and over again if we stayed together, and that eventually the impact would break me. But now I know I am like the blade and he is like the whetstone—
I am too strong to break so easily, and I become better, sharper, every time I touch him.
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
TOBIAS
THE FIRST THING I see when I wake, still on the couch in the hotel room, are the birds flying over her collarbone. Her shirt, retrieved from the floor in the middle of the night because of the cold, is pulled down on one side from where she's lying on it.
We have slept close to each other before, but this time feels different. Every other time we were there to comfort each other or to protect each other; this time we're here just because we want to be—and because we fell asleep before we could go back to the dormitory.
I stretch out my hand and touch my fingertips to her tattoos, and she opens her eyes.
She wraps an arm around me and pulls herself across the cushions so she's right up against me, warm and soft and pliable.
"Morning," I say.
"Shh," she says. "If you don't acknowledge it, maybe it will go away."
I draw her toward me, my hand on her hip. Her eyes are wide, alert, despite just having opened. I kiss her cheek, then her jaw, then her throat, lingering there for a few seconds. Her hands tighten around my waist, and she sighs into my ear.
My self-control is about to disappear in five, four, three . . .
"Tobias," she whispers, "I hate to say this, but . . . I think we have just a few things to do today."
"They can wait," I say against her shoulder, and I kiss the first tattoo, slowly.
"No, they can't!" she says.
I flop back onto the cushions, and I feel cold without her body parallel to mine. "Yeah. About that—I was thinking your brother could use some target practice. Just in case."
"That might be a good idea," she says quietly. "He's only fired a gun . . . what, once? Twice?"
"I can teach him," I say. "If there's one thing I'm good at, it's aiming. And it might make him feel better to do something."
"Thank you," she says. She sits up and puts her fingers through her hair to comb it. In the morning light its color looks brighter, like it's threaded with gold. "I know you don't like him, but . . ."
"But if you're going to let what he did go," I say, taking her hand, "then I'm going to try to do the same."
She smiles, and kisses my cheek.
I skim the lingering shower water from the back of my neck with my palm. Tris, Caleb, Christina, and I are in the training room in the GD area underground—it's cold and dim and full of equipment, training weapons and mats and helmets and targets, everything we could ever need. I select the right practice gun, the one about the size of a pistol, but bulkier, and offer it to Caleb.
Tris's fingers slide between mine. Everything comes easily this morning, every smile and every laugh, every word and every motion.
If we succeed in what we attempt tonight, tomorrow Chicago will be safe, the Bureau will be forever changed, and Tris and I will be able to build a new life for ourselves somewhere. Maybe it will even be a place where I trade my guns and knives for more productive tools, screwdrivers and nails and shovels. This morning I feel like I could be so fortunate. I could.
"It doesn't shoot real bullets," I say, "but it seems like they designed it so it would be as close as possible to one of the guns you'll be using. It feels real, anyway."
Caleb holds the gun with just his fingertips, like he's afraid it will shatter in his hands.
I laugh. "First lesson: Don't be afraid of it. Grab it. You've held one before, remember? You got us out of the Amity compound with that shot."
"That was just lucky," Caleb says, turning the gun over and over