I hear my heartbeat. I have been looking at him too long, but then, he has been looking back, and I feel like we are both trying to say something the other can't hear, though I could be imagining it. Too long - and now even longer, my heart even louder, his tranquil eyes swallowing me whole.

You know what Abnegation used to say about pride?' 'Something unfavorable,I assume.' I laugh.' Obviously. They said it blinds people to the truth of what they are.

He pushes his hair, soaked from the snow, out of his eyes. "So what are we going to do, break a window? Look for a back door?" "I'm just going to walk in," I say. "I'm her son." "You also betrayed her and left the city when she forbade anyone from doing that," he says, "and she sent people after you to stop you. People with guns." "You can stay here if you want," I say. "Where the serum goes, I go," he says. "But if you get shot at, I'm going to grab it and run." "I don't expect anything more." He is a strange sort of person.

My heart beats so hard it hurts, and I can't scream and I can't breathe, but I also feel everything, every vein and every fiber, every bone and every nerve, all awake and buzzing in my body as if charged with electricity. I am pure adrenaline.

I am his, and he is mine, and it has been that way all along.

His fingers leave streaks of cold on my skin, invisible to the eye, and I think about wrapping his shirt around my fist and pulling him in to kiss me; I think about pressing myself against him, but I can't, because all our secrets would keep a space between us.

My Tris should look pale and small--she is pale and small, after all--but instead the room is full of her.