Tris's Contenders

Chapter 41

Tris POV

I woke up feeling his finger stroke my collarbone. A tired laugh slipped from my throat as he hit a ticklish spot just at the dip in my neck. "I missed the sound of your laugh." He brought my hand to his lips and kissed my fingertips. "I'm still trying to convince myself that this isn't a dream."

I sat up pinning the sheet with my fist covering my bare chest. "I'm still trying to convince myself the same thing." I reached for his face feeling the prickle of growth under my palm. "You're real?"

He smiled at me filling my core with excitement, like nervous butterflies banging against the walls of their prison-ed jar trying to fly free. "Yeah. I'm real." He leaned in and kissed me sweetly then pulled away giving me a sad look.

"What is it?"

"We have a lot to talk about." I didn't like his tone. It was sharp and sheer.

"About you and Cara?" I shot my hand to lips surprised by my sudden jealous lash.

"What?" His eyebrows drew together. "No. Well.."

Realization of last night hit me like a foul baseball. "Oh shit. You cheated on her with me didn't you?" His eyes closed slowly as he drew in a careful breath. I let out a struggled puff, "Of course. Of course, she was there with you and.."

"And I had told her to leave last night." He interjected.

I stood from the bed wrapping my naked body in his sheets, wearing it like a toga. "That makes it soooo much better." I said it loudly exaggerating and lengthening my words. "So she wasn't a part of the audience that saw our reunion." I stated it rather than asked.

"Compared to what happened here yeah that was a VERY little reunion." He was cracking a joke, at a time like this. I closed my mouth from my shocked appearance and reverted to a squinting glare.

"Not funny."

He held his fingers up in the air pinching at nothing. "It is a little." He chuckled making me feel the urge to do so too, so instead I grabbed one of his pillows and threw it at him. "Okay. Okay. I'll talk to her today."

"That's not the point. I don't like being that girl."

"You really think she hasn't heard about last night yet? She isn't stupid Tris. She knew."

I shook my head. "Cara. CARA? Really?" Something above and beyond jealousy was rising inside of me. "I mean...she was with Zeke. Remember that!?"

His eyes went from cobalt blue to navy. "YOU were with Eric at one point remember that?"

"Not like that and you know this is different." Silence stretched out as we starred at one another. "Forget it."

He reached for my wrist,"You don't think it killed me seeing the way looked at Levi? Knowing you were happy like that with someone other than me? For two years. I can only imagine how many other guys got more time with you then I did." He stood out of bed pulling on a pair of briefs. That's when I noticed the intricate beautiful lines scrawled across his back. Making a landscape of art to be seen by wondering eyes rather than a vision of mounted scars. I shuffled over to him placing my fingers along his spine. He froze and for a mere minute I went back to the first moment he showed me his father's last moments of wrath.

"Tobias."

"Eric did it for me. He's changed a lot. That's not saying that I'm okay with what he had done, but..."

"I know. I've talked to him." He turned around looking down at my mouth. "Look at us Tobias, we are already arguing." I shut my eyes. "I know there has been other girls.."