The Way Back

Chapter 31

I follow her gaze to my partial pinkie finger, which is still wrapped in a dirty, recently torn bandage that I haven't bothered to remove—or haven't had the guts to.

"Yeah," I reply. "It got caught in a train handle today. I had to rip it free."

She purses her lips as she stares at it. "Tobias?"

"Hmm?"

We both turn to look at each other. Her eyes, while not exactly pitiful, do show sympathy that does not give off the feeling that she thinks any less of me.

"It's time."

The unspoken meaning behind those words rings through my ears; she means, of course, that it is time to remove the bandage that I have hidden my deformed finger behind for too long. And I know she is right, but I'm still self-conscious enough about it that I would rather stand on the tallest building in Chicago right now than expose it.

I sigh and agree, "I know."

To make it easier, she offers, "I can take it off for you, if you'd like."

I nod in compliance. Maybe it won't be as uncomfortable if she does it. After all, she always gives me the strength I need.

Tris reaches for the shredded edge of the bandage that isn't doing much to keep it all wrapped together. With deft fingers, she unwinds the soft material from around my palm and my pinkie finger. I keep my eyes trained on the wall in front of me the entire time, clenching my jaw. As much as I know this has to be done, I'm still not happy about it.

When air hits my finger for the first time in a while, she says, "I think it looks great."

I scoff because after being coerced into something I was loathing, I'm upset. "Tris, half my finger is gone, and that's somehow going to convince me that it's okay? Like I'm going to be pleasantly surprised and people aren't going to stare?"

"I didn't say that," she corrects me. "I'm saying it healed pretty well, and it's seriously not as bad as you probably thought."

It gets me to take a glance. My plan is to peek and look away immediately, but then I am sucked into examining it because how can a person not stare at a place where a body part is missing?

My partial finger is strange, of course, but it is not repulsive like I believed it would be. It doesn't look much different than if I would have folded over my finger, except there are red marks at the top where the stitches that held it together used to be. Soon they will fade into white scars, so at least I have that going for me.

Curiously, I move it up and down to see if the action looks similar to how it is supposed to look. It still moves normally, though a little robotically because I don't know what to do with it.

"See? I told you," Tris laughs.

"You don't think it's that noticeable?" I ask hopefully, still wiggling my half-finger around.

She shakes her head. "Not really at all. Though I do think it's cool."

"Cool?" Is she serious?

"Yeah. It reminds me that you gave it up to save me, and I see it as a mark of bravery."

I never thought of it that way before. And I don't tend to think of myself or the things I have done in war as brave, but I do have to admit that losing my finger to protect her was courageous.

She reaches over and presses her palm to the top of my hand, her fingers sliding in between mine. My partial finger doesn't make a difference in our hand-holding.

"It makes you unique, it's a part of you," she continues. "And if anything I love that you are missing most of your finger because I love you."

My heart stops. My eyes fly up to meet hers. We almost hit heads because of my carelessness.