I am posting. I left a cliff hanger and now I feel bad. PLEASE REVIEW

Chapter Thirty-Eight

Aaron POV-

I open my eyes to see a plain white ceiling. I roll over and fall onto the ground on my stomach and groan. What a great way to wake up. I get up and see that I was sleeping on the couch. Memories of the night before come back to me and immediately I feel grateful of what last-night-me did. After Will kissed me we sat down at the kitchen counter n his friend's apartment and talked almost all night about Finick and things we remembered. I told him about what my initiate trainer and he told me every detail he knew about Tris and her cancer and her relationship with Four. It was nice to have a friend to talk to. After Finick died we hadn't really had a conversation.

"Morning." Will says and I turn around to see Will making coffee in the kitchen.

"Why are you up? It's only 8." I say glancing at the clock.

"Four came by and said Tris woke up about an hour ago. He has to go to work so I was going to bring you to meet her. She's the only one who knows besides us." He says.

"So the solution to our problems is for me to bother your dying cancer friend?" I ask pouring myself a cup of coffee.

"She wants to meet you, she said she needs to meet you in order to choose sides when Christina finds out." He explains to me.

"Fine. But I don't have any other clothes." I say glancing down at my ratty black jeans and loose black shirt.

"She said you could borrow some of her stuff if it fits, it's all too big on her now anyways. It's in the dresser over there." Will says pointing at a large wooden dresser.

I take a pair of comfy jean shorts and a reasonably fitting black shirt. I go into the bathroom and change into them and I'm shocked. The shirt's awfully small and Will said it was too big on her. God, this girl must be really tiny. I saw her last night but I didn't get a very good look at her and I wasn't even in her room. I walk out of the bathroom and finish my coffee before following Will through the Pit and into the hospital.

He leads me into a room with more dreary grey walls and a girl lying in the bed. He walks out and shuts the door behind him. I look at the girl lying in front of me. She looks pale and short and small. Her grey-blue eyes make it her look beautiful nonetheless. Her hair is growing in a little around her face but there's a huge scar I saw earlier on the side of her head. Her lips are pale pink and cracked and she has tubes and cords and wires coming from all around her. She lies with her legs under a blanket, propped up with pillows as she was last night but this time there's no tube coming from her chest. The hospital gown is loose and shows a bump over her collar bone. Her blue eyes examine me and I stand still. She looks small but the determined look in her eyes makes her look strong and wise.

"Sit." She says gesturing to the chair by her bed. She sits up a little more and I sit beside her bed.

"Will said you wanted to meet me so I came although I'm oblivious as to why you'd want to meet me considering I'm the one who's destroying your best friend's relationship with your other friend." I say and it comes out with an accent. I always do that when I'm nervous.

She doesn't respond.

"I heard you almost died." I blurt out. I'm making a fool of myself, as usual. Is it too much to ask to be normal for five minutes?
"Things were getting dull and I like suspense. I was never going to go that easy." She says and I smile, she's actually quite funny.

"I feel really bad. Christina's a really sweet girl." I say and Tris stifles a laugh.

"I love Christina and I hate her sometimes but she means the world to me and it is my job to protect her from people like you." Tris says in a suddenly cold voice.

"I know, I feel really-," Tris holds up her hand to silence me.

"I'm sure you're a very good person, Will wouldn't have liked so much if you weren't. But I'm dying, and I'm exhausted. I don't have the time to deal with shit like this. I'm tired and it takes too much out of me to hate an innocent person. So please, for me, just stop being so nice. Be a bitch and fall in love with someone besides Will. Christina doesn't need this. Make this easy and just stop being so nice." She says tiredly and I nod.

"I wish I could tell you that I'm going back to the fence, and I won't take my weeks off because there's nothing I need here. But I can't go back to the place where the love of my life died. The place where I destroyed my best friend's relationship with his fiancé. I can't do that. Could you?" I tell her and immediately look down at my hands.

I can't face her. I don't want to hear what she has to say because she's right. She's right and she hasn't even said anything. She just had this look in her eyes, a look that told me that Will had it 10 times worse than me because he'd lost his best friend and he was about to lose another friend and the love of his life. And then he would lose Tris. He was losing everything. And I had taken little pieces because I thought I had it hard. I thought what I was experiencing was painful. And he was about to lose literally everything. His home, his friends, the love of his life, all of it. Everything that mattered was going to be gone.

"Go to the fence. Fall in love. And stay the hell away from all of us. You seem sweet, but from what you've seen in Dauntless, do you think anyone cares about sweet? He is losing everything and we all know it. None of us can help our share of the breaking but you. You had a choice. You could've let him be happy and no one else got that choice! Christina won't get that choice! If I could stay with him I sure as hell would but you are the only one who could've helped yourself." She yells the last part and for a moment I can't help but marvel that someone so small and weak looking could hurt someone so easily.

And in that moment I feel something inside me switch. This is my moment of clarity in the chaos of my life. This is the moment where I can chose the right, or wrong, choice. I can leave Will and go to the fence and forget him. Or I can stay with him and destroy his relationship with everyone he loves. But both those options hurt him. And in that moment I know exactly what I should do, what I need to do. I need to stay, but not as his lover, as his friend. I need to fight for him when Christina finds out. I have to show her how much he loves her so she doesn't leave them. If that fails, I'll leave.

I look into Tris' eyes and smile at her. I thought she was just being mean but I was wrong, she did this. She gave me this moment in which I've decided the best possible way to handle this situation. I thought she'd pushed me too far but she pushed me just far enough. This was her goal. Damn. She is a genius.

"I'm going to go get an apartment." I say rising to my feet. I start to walk away but she grasps my wrist tightly. Her hold on me is loose and her hands are cold and soft against the skin of my wrist.

"Stay at mine until I get back. I have one you can use. Just have Four come here to the hospital when you get there, would you?" She asks letting me go.

"Sure." I say gently and I leave the room.

Will is sitting in the waiting room and I walk over to him. When he sees me he offers me a smile which doesn't reach his eyes. He gets to his feet and we walk out.

"How'd it go?" Will asks casually and I stop walking and look him dead in the eyes.

"I don't love you." I blurt out. He frowns. "At least not in the way I wanted to. It would be so much easier for Christina if we loved each other in that way and I tried so hard. While I packed my stuff to come to the compound I kept repeating in my mind that I loved you. If we loved each other it would've been simple for Christina. She could move on easily because you wouldn't love her, you would love me. She wouldn't have to choose between looking you in the eyes knowing you cheated and trying not to care or leaving you. But I don't love you. And I'm staying in the compound. I was offered a job like you were and I'm going to try and fix what I have broken so carelessly. If it's better I'll tell her, even."

Will wraps his arms around me and hugs me. I stiffen. I had expected him to be pissed at me for staying when I obviously have no reason to be with him since we don't love each other. I hug him back for a moment and then he lets me go. I reach for his hand and we walk together back to Tris' apartment.

Tris POV-

Maybe I should've been meaner. The girl did just destroy Christina and Will's life. But once I'm gone he's going to need a friend. I can't believe I'm supplying this girl with an apartment that I don't have. Zayn and Lena live there. What was I thinking? I press the nurse's button and Addison walks into my hospital room.

"You're not dying." She observes and I grin.

"I've noticed." I say back.

"What do you want me to do against the rules now?" She asks with a smile. Addison is so sweet. I never thought of her as Dauntless but whenever someone's dying she is bad ass.

"You know me so well. I want to call someone and I don't have a phone." I say and she tosses me her phone from her pocket. After all the times I've been with her I almost think of her as I friend now. I dial a number and wait.

"Hello?" A voice asks.

"Hey Lena," I say as lively as I can. I don't want to sound weak to her even though she's no longer my initiate.

"I was meaning to call you, Zayn and I are moving out. We painted Zayn's apartment and now we're moving there." She says cheerfully.

"Great, just thought I'd say hi." I hang up and hand Addison her phone. It feels heavier than it did when she had handed it to me and I almost drop it but she catches it before it reaches the ground.

"You need sleep. You're tired." She says. She fixes my pillows so I'm lying and turns off the lights in my room. She leaves and I let myself drift off.

Christina POV-

I wake up alone in what's supposed to be Will and I's apartment, but he's never here. Even now that he's back he hasn't slept here. What if he found someone else? What if he no longer loves me? I push that thought as far away as I can. He loves me. He would never do that. I look at the time and see its 4 pm. If he wasn't cheating and he still loved me then where is he?

I sigh and leave to go visit Tris at the hospital. She was supposed to leave an hour ago but they're keeping her there and she won't tell us why. What if her condition is worse? I can't lose her. I hate being excluded from all these things. Four probably knows. His name brings a frown to my face. I need to push away my jealousy for him and go see Tris. I spend all my time being a bitch and whining about how Tris is always with Four and not me. Maybe it's that way because instead of getting off my ass and seeing her I complain and whine.

When I get inside I lock eyes with Addison who leads me to Tris' room. Tris sits on her bed and there's another chair pulled up to the other side of the bed next to a table with a cup of ice chips on it. Addison must've been feeding her ice chips. Tris looks pale and her lips her chapped and cracked. I sit in the other chair and Addison hands me the ice chips before leaving.

"I don't need them. Addison insists on me being pampered though." Tris says and her voice is scratchy and tired.

"Are you okay? I mean you'd be home if you were, so why are you here?" I ask and Tris looks down at her hands.

"I'm fine but and I'll be fine, but you need to hold it together." Tris says and I scoff. She thinks that I'm heartbroken over her. She was never this selfish, she was always a little Abnegation and even now. I'm kind of shocked she would say something that self-obsessed. As if my life revolves around her.

"Since when were you so selfish?" I spit at her and wince as her face looks up to mine. She looks paler then she was before. She looks sicker than I've ever seen her. But worst of all she doesn't look hurt, her face is smooth and her expression is full of sorrow. I can't look into her eyes which are usually a sweet, warming blue but are instead a crisp, cold grey. As if someone had frozen them.

"You need to talk to Will." It's all she says and I know that's all she's going to give me.

I know her so well.

But perhaps

I don't know her,

at all.

I hope you like it. PLEASE REVIEW