Almaa

“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

“What is it with you today?” says Christina on the way to breakfast. Her eyes are still
swollen from sleep and her tangled hair forms a fuzzy halo around her face.
“Oh, you know,” I say. “Sun shining. Birds chirping.”
She raises an eyebrow at me, as if reminding me that we are in an underground
tunnel.”
― Veronica Roth, Divergent

“We're all right, you know,' he says quietly. 'You and me. Okay?' My chest aches, and I nod. 'Nothing else is all right.' His whisper tickles my cheek. 'But we are.”
― Veronica Roth, Insurgent

“So, the thing we’re all not talking about,” he says. He gestures to me. “You almost died, a sadistic pansycake saved you, and now we’re all waging some serious war with the factionless as allies.”
“Pansycake?” says Christina.
“Dauntless slang.” Lynn smirks. “Supposed to be a huge insult, only no one uses it anymore.”
“Because it’s so offensive,” says Uriah, nodding.
“No. Because it’s so stupid no Dauntless with any sense would speak it, let alone think it. Pansycake. What are you, twelve?”
“And a half,” he says.”
― Veronica Roth, Insurgent