Waiting Four You

Chapter 21 (Tobias)

"You told her?" I ask through my ragged, panicky breaths.

"She kind of guessed. Apparently she's been paying extra close attention to me at meals. Although you weren't her first guess." She responds. She must hear how ragged my breathing has gotten because she next asks, "Are you okay, Tobias?"

"Are you human, Tris? Being up this high..." I gulp. "It doesn't scare you at all?"

Suddenly a gust of wind hits her left side and throws off her balance. She gasps clinging to the rungs of the ladder, and I instinctively reach out a hand to steady her. The height doesn't matter now, all that matters is that Tris doesn't fall. My hand grabs her hip one finger finding a strip of bare skin just below her t-shirt. I hear her audible intake of breath from the physical contact. Shifting her weight back to the left, I restore her balance and remove my hand.

"You okay?" I ask worried that she might have gotten hurt when she shifted.

"Yes," she replies in a strained voice.

She resumes climbing silently until we reach the platform at the middle of the wheel. She sits down and scoots to the end so that I can fit "comfortably" on the platform with her. She puts her legs over the side causing me to worry about her safety, but I can only get myself to crouch with my back pressed against the metal support, still breathing heavily.

"Are you afraid of heights, Tobias?" she asks me with concern. "How do you survive in the Dauntless compound?"

"I ignore my fear," I respond simply. "When I make decisions, I pretend it doesn't exist."

She stares at me as if trying to determine how I manage to ignore the panic that sets in when I realize how high up I am from the bottom of the Pit when I walk around the compound.

"So who was her first guess?" I ask trying to use conversation to calm my racing heart.

She laughs a little. "You wouldn't believe it even if I told you."

I raise my eyebrow waiting for the answer.

"She guessed Zeke."

I laugh at that too. The idea of Tris and Zeke was just too ridiculous to even imagine.

"How did you respond to that?" I ask an amused smile on my face.

She shakes her head, "I told her that I wouldn't want to get on Shauna's bad side with that one. And then when I told her who Shauna is, she said that she thought Shauna was with you."

I shake my head, "I couldn't even in my wildest dreams. Shauna is like a sister to me."

She looks away from me as if trying to focus on the reason we climbed up here in the first place.

My stomach drops at the next thing she says. "We're not high enough."

She looks up at the tangle of white bars.

"I'm going to climb," she says finally, standing up. She grabs one of the bars above her head and pulls herself up.

"For God's sake, Tris," I groan.

"You don't have to follow me, Tobias," she says staring at the bars above her focusing on where she can grab next.

"Yes, I do," I respond. There is no way I'm letting her go into danger without me being close enough to possibly save her.

She continues to climb making me more and more uneasy as I follow her higher and higher.

When she finally stops looking over the city, I climb a little more until I'm right behind her, my chin on her shoulder.