Red

63

I hold my breath and shake my head. "I don't know," I whisper.

Van chuckles, like he knew I wasn't telling the truth. It was probably obvious to him, he knew everything there was to know about me, even the things I didn't know.

"Don't, Tris," he says. His hand moves to my back and he traces his finger down to my lower back. "Don't keep up with those lies."

"But..." I say, my voice trailing off and I felt Van's fingers play with the waistband of my shorts. He was teasing me, and it was working. "I'm not?" My voice squeaks and my statement sounded more like a question.

"You are," he says. "I want the truth, darlin. You've gotta be honest with me. You've gotta be a good girl for me."

"I...I want to be a good girl," I say. I dare to look up at Van and see a smirk on his face as he looks out at the ocean.

"I know you do," he says, turning his head to face me, his eyes trailing from my face down to my shorts, then back to my face. "So tell me then."

"Van," I say, tears filling my eyes. "Van, I don't know how to tell. I want to so badly. I want to love you, but I don't want to say the wrong thing," I ramble, becoming more worked up as I continue speaking.

Van's smirk turns into a smile, a sad one, one full of pity. He felt bad for me, it was like he realized just how innocent I was to not know whether I loved him or not, to have never experienced love. "Relax, baby," he breathes out. "I didn't mean to work you up like that."

He holds my hands, ignoring the fact that they were clammy, and wipes a tear from my cheek.

I felt like a child as he does so. I was a child, that's how everyone saw me. That's how Bondy saw me, that's how Sam saw me. And that was how Van saw me. That's why he felt he need to look after me the day we crashed. He knew I needed the support, even if I didn't realize.

I didn't want to be so sensitive and naive to things like these, but I was, and I couldn't seem to help it. "Are you...s-still mad at me?" I ask with a nervous stutter.

"I'm not mad, no," he shakes his head. He looks back out toward the ocean for a few minutes, thinking, before taking his sweatshirt that I still haven't put on and looking at me with a certain look that I knew meant he was going to help me put it on, and I didn't have a choice.

He slides the hoodie over my head, waits for me to put my arms through the sleeves, and then helps me pull it down.

Van smiles at me and shakes his head. "Times like these I wish I had a charged phone so I could take a picture of you," he says with a subtle smile.

"Why?" I ask, biting my bottom lip and tilting my head to the side, trying to hide my own smile that was creeping onto my face. I already knew what his answer would be, but I wanted to hear him say it.

"Because you're the cutest girl I know. And I know you know that, silly," he says, amused with how I was trying to tease him. I wondered if he feels the same way that I do when he messes around with me, the same excited, anticipating feeling I feel. My smile that I was trying so hard to hide was now obvious.

He takes his T-shirt off and lays it down on the sand. "Tris, c'mere," he sighs as he lies down with his head resting on part of his shirt.

I move closer to him and lay down with my head on the other half of his shirt. Our faces were close, so close I could see the moonlight dancing in his eyes, so close I could see his eyes wander over my face, landing on my lips for a while before exploring other places.

"Do you want to know what I think?" He asks, his voice suddenly quieter, his eyes now staring into mine from only a a few inches away. "About whether you love me or not, that is."

"Yeah," I say, my voice not any louder than his. Only I was being quiet because I was nervous, he was being quiet because he knew I was nervous.

I already knew what he was going to say, we both knew what the answer was, but my heart still raced as I waited for him to speak.

"I may be a little biased," he says with a faint smile. He wraps his arm over me and places his hand on the back of my head, stroking my hair, twirling it around his fingers.

"That's ok," I shrug my shoulders and bring one of the strings from Van's hoodie up to my mouth, chewing on the end as I waited for the answer.

Van laughs and nods his head. "Tris, why don't you say it with me?" He suggests. "You say your answer and I'll say mine."

I hesitate and let the string from the hoodie fall out of my mouth. "Promise you'll say it with me?" I ask.

"I promise, darlin," he says. He puts his hand on my cheek, his fingertips ever so lightly tracing patterns on the side of my face.

"Okay," I whisper.

"On three, yeah?" He suggests.

I nod my head and look at Van as he counts up to three, watching his lips move as the numbers roll off his tongue.

"One...two...three," he says.

I squeeze my eyes shut. "I love you, Van," I breathe out. My voice was shaky, but I meant it, every word of it.

It took me a minute, too caught up in the words I had just said, to realize Van hadn't said anything at all. I open my eyes to see him still laying there, still looking at me, reading me, with a smile on his face.

A smile forms on my face, I felt sheepish, but I felt relived, like a weight I've been carrying on my shoulders since I met Van had been removed. "You didn't say anything," I whisper.

"Said it in my head, darling. I wanted to hear you say it, just you, just my Tris," he says. He pokes my nose when he says my name, and I scrunch my face up when he does.

I should have expected him to come up with some sort of excuse like that, part of me knew he would, part of me wanted him to. 

"Tris?" Van says. "You still there, love?"

I look back up at him. I must've zoned out thinking about him, about my love for him, our love we had for each other.

"Mhm?" I hum.

"Good," he says. "You've got something on your mind?"

I nod my head.

"And what's that?" He questions.

"You."