Mica

“I don’t …” I sound like I am being strangled. “My family is all dead, or traitors; how can I …”
I am not making any sense. The sobs take over my body, my mind, everything. He gathers me to him, and bathwater soaks my legs. His
hold is tight. I listen to his heartbeat and, after a while, find a way to let the rhythm calm me.
“I’ll be your family now,” he says.
“I love you,” I say.
I said that once, before I went to Erudite headquarters, but he was asleep then. I don’t know why I didn’t say it when he could hear it.
Maybe I was afraid to trust him with something so personal as my devotion. Or afraid that I did not know what it was to love someone. But now I
think the scary thing was not saying it before it was almost too late. Not saying it before it was almost too late for me.
I am his, and he is mine, and it has been that way all along.
He stares at me. I wait with my hands clutching his arms for stability as he considers his response.
He frowns at me. “Say it again.”
“Tobias,” I say, “I love you.”
His skin is slippery with water and he smells like sweat and my shirt sticks to his arms when he slides them around me. He presses his
face to my neck and kisses me right above the collarbone, kisses my cheek, kisses my lips.
“I love you, too,” he says.”
― Veronica Roth, Insurgent

“Let the guilt teach you how to behave next time,”
― Veronica Roth, Insurgent

“You're too important to just... die.”
― Veronica Roth, Insurgent

“I think he came to die with me," I say. I clamp my hand over my mouth to stifle a sob. If I can keep breathing, I can stop crying. I didn't need or want him to die with me. I wanted to keep him safe. What an idiot, I think, but my heart isn't in it.
"That's ridiculous," he says. "That doesn't make any sense. He's eighteen; he'll find another girlfriend once you're dead. And he's stupid if he doesn't know that."
Tears run down my cheeks, hot at first and then cold. I close my eyes. "If you think that's what it's about..." I swallow another sob. "...you're the stupid one.”
― Veronica Roth, Insurgent