We walk to the car in silence, and I put my meager belongings into the trunk. After I close it, I grab Tris and pull her to me, capturing her lips with my own.
"I'm free, Tris. Free." I breathe against her.
We stand in that parking lot, holding onto each other for a long time.
"We should get you some stuff, right? Clothes, toiletries, um stuff." She says once we're inside of the car.
"Oh, I have a check that the prison made out to you, it was to close out my commissary. It's not a lot, but it's something." I reply.
"Eric, I don't need the money, I've got this."
"I don't want you to have to pay for everything, Tris." I argue.
"Eric, I was given money after the war, a lot of money, none of which I asked for. There was this thing called a hero fund, where the federal government basically cashed out the surplus that was being held by the city of Chicago. They awarded it to several of us who they felt were key in stopping the war." She replies.
"That should be for you, for Miles, for people who actually stopped Jeanine." I argue.
"Eric, you are the reason I'm here. You did help to stop the war, and your son has a trust fund with what would have likely been your portion, had you not been sent to prison. You were recognized as someone who did work towards ending the war, even if you don't want to acknowledge it yourself. Miles is set, his education is paid for, and he has a sizable trust that will be his when he turns twenty-six." She replies, "I don't have to work, but I do because I love what I do. We will never have to worry about money." She explains gently.
"Okay." I relent. I don't know how to make her understand why I'm having an issue accepting this, because I don't yet seem to understand it myself.
Our shopping trip is actually quite nice, and even playful as Tris makes me try on new clothes for her. We get all of the boring stuff, but even that is something new for me because I've not shopped an actual store in so long.
Over lunch, we talk about the logistics of getting us home to Chicago, which we realize is going to be quite the journey. I have no valid form of identification, which rules out all methods of transportation except Tris having to drive me almost fifteen hundred miles alone. Something I am not looking forward to because I am no help at all to her.
"I don't thank you enough, for all you do." I say quietly as we linger in the restaurant, drinking iced tea and enjoying the weather outside.
"You've done a lot for me too Eric without even realizing it." She replies, "I never realized how much we needed you. Miles and I have had a great relationship and life, we have friends who became our family, but having you really just completes it. I missed you, but it also felt like I never had you to start with, so it was hard to know just how incomplete we were until you came into our lives."
Once we're back at the hotel, I FaceTime with Miles using Tris' phone and his excitement over seeing me out of prison is one of the best things I've ever experienced.
When we're done, I start wandering around the hotel suite, which is set up like a one bedroom apartment.
"Have you seen the size of that shower?" I ask once I make my way back into the living area.
"I've been using it for almost a month now, so yeah." She smirks.
"Wanna use it with me?" I take my shirt off and toss it at her.
"Wanna get dirty first?" She asks me as she runs her fingernails gently up and down my chest.
Tris starts shedding her clothes as she makes it to the bedroom and I follow her lead, tossing my clothes to the side in the short hallway. I pick her up and playfully toss her down on the bed, and in the soft evening light I can see her watching me.
"Can I touch you?" She asks me quietly and when I nod she pulls me closer to the bed.
Her hand on my dick is almost enough to make me lose control and she strokes me up and down lazily.
"Baby, can I taste you?" She asks me.
"I trust you. I am safe with you. Yes, I want you to try." I whisper.
She runs her tongue around my head and I can't suppress the moan that slips out. She's looking up at me through her lashes, with the head of my cock in her warm mouth, and I swear I've never seen anything as sexy as her.
"More." I beg.
She absolutely gives me more. She's using her hands, her mouth and the way her tongue is swirling around gives me a sensation I've never experienced. I wrap my hands around her head and hold her still, trying to hold on to my release for as long as possible. I can feel her swallowing around my cock and I'm about to lose control.
"Goddamn…" I whisper before letting up on the pressure on her head.
She lets me move her, only using her mouth and I am losing myself in the sensation. When she adds her hands, I lose all control.
"Tris, I'm going to cum…" I try to move her but she stays put, swallowing everything I give her.
My legs feel like jello, so I fall into the bed next to her and pull her close.
"Everything with you is so fucking good, every part of this, you always… everything." I pant.
She has a leg thrown over me, and she's moving her core against my thigh while I grip her hip in my hand.
My girl wants more.
I flip us over quickly, and I begin to slide my cock between her wet folds, just like we were doing back in Erudite.
"Feels familiar, doesn't it?"
"God yes…" She whines.
"You wanted me so badly back in Erudite, didn't you baby?"
"I did." She breathes.
"Remind me…" I say before dropping my lips to hers.
I feel her lift her hips up, just like she did back then and I thrust inside of her. I thread our hands together, and pull our entwined hands over her head while I continue to swivel my hips against her.
"I'm so close…" She moans.
Me too.
I adjust my angle just slightly, and then I feel her pulsing around me, and it pulls me over the edge as well. She's kissing me passionately the same way she did during our first time.
I collapse on top of her, but try to hold my weight on my elbows so I don't crush her. She's running her hands up and down my back, relaxing me.
"I think I've always been in love with you, Tris." I whisper against her neck before placing an open mouth kiss there, and swiping her sweaty skin with my tongue, "Is that crazy to think?"
"No. I'm sure I loved you well before I ever admitted it to myself."
"Ready for that shower?" I ask and she chuckles below me.
We wash each other thoroughly, enjoying our freedom to explore each other's bodies, and when we exit the shower and are wrapped in towels she looks up at me in the mirror.
"Eric, what are we?" She blurts out.
"What are we? Well we are entirely too old to be having an uncomfortable conversation about defining our relationship," I chuckle and she swats my ass through the towel, "We're in love. You're mine. I'm yours. We are in a committed relationship. We are Miles parents. Maybe we'll be someone else's parents down the line. I was thinking adoption, or fostering. For now, you're my girlfriend, but in the future I would like for us to get married. Just not before I am settled and am independent. I don't want you to have support me, hero fund or not, I want to be an equal contributor to our family, and when I finally ask you to marry me it'll be with a ring that I buy myself."
"Money, and who supports who, none of that matters to me." She argues.
"It does to me. I've always been under someone else's thumb, Tris." I finally admit.
"Does this mean you'd prefer to live on your own once we're back in Chicago?" She asks nervously.
I brush her hair away from her face with my hand, "Hey, none of that awkwardness or hesitation with me, babe. I want to live with you and Miles, but I want you to be comfortable with that too. You've had the hesitation in our relationship, not me."
"That's not exactly fair, I was treating you." She argues.
"You were also hesitant to start anything with me. You seemed to think that my focus on you was because you magically fixed my issues with intimacy. Do you not see how that may have hurt me?" I ask.
"How?"
"You dismissed my feelings. You basically said as soon as I was out of prison I'd want all of these other women and not you. You accused me of being focused only on what was in front of me, and not anything else, like my son. You didn't believe that I could have possibly began falling for you ten years ago, and absolutely be in love with you now."
"You're right, and I am sorry for that." She replies.
"Why didn't you believe me?" I press.
"I projected." She says slowly.
"Projected?" I furrow my brow at her.
"I projected my own insecurities and feelings onto you. It's a lot to explain."
"We have time babe, please." I prod and she begins to talk.
She explains how she was also confused when we were both back in Dauntless, and that her conflicted feelings for me manifested in arguing and attitude towards me. She looked at Four as her protector, because as a sheltered sixteen year old from Abnegation, who is taught that women should always be subservient to men, felt she needed a man to protect her. When that role shifted to me, she was even more confused, because she felt things for me that she never felt in her own relationship. The trauma from losing her parents, the torture she endured in Erudite, and the connection she and I had established changed her. When she was forced to leave me to die on the train, she shut down completely, and no longer felt she was actually control of anything in her life. She went through a marriage, pregnancy and even the first part of Miles' life on auto-pilot, and she jumped into a relationship with Jack in order to force herself to believe that she felt nothing for me. Once I had denied her repeatedly, she wanted to forget me.
I can't blame her for any of that.
"I guess because I wasn't mature enough to figure out how I actually felt about you without being with other people, maybe I thought you'd need that too. I projected that onto you, and I'm so very sorry." She finally says.
"I accept your apology."
"That's it? You're not angry with me?" She asks.
"No. We've lost ten years of our life together and I'm not going to waste a second of what we have left. You dealt with our situation by trying to be with other people in an effort to forget. I dealt with it by being angry, and sending myself to prison. We're similar in the way's we've dealt with our personal traumas. I'm not angry at you, I'm relieved that you trust me enough to tell me all of that, and I'm grateful that it led us here. Especially with how hot you look in just a towel." I smirk.
"You're grateful that is led us to be sitting in a damp towel on a bed in a hotel in El Paso?" She asks cheekily.
"The towels are very optional at this point." I sit up slightly and yank mine off, dropping it next to our bed.
Tris does the same and moves so she's straddling my lap. I move her slightly so I can bury myself inside of her again. We make love until we're both spent, and when she's curled up beside me I press a kiss to her forehead.
"What are you thinking about?" I ask her.
"Everything and nothing at all." She sighs happily.
"Can I ask you something?"
She turns on her side so she can face me, and I do the same, resting my hand on her hip, "Are you sure you want to do this with me?"
"What do you mean?"
"I'm going to work on the issues I have, I promise you that, but I've been following orders for my entire life. Living a normal, and unregimented life is not something I've ever done. You've had years of freedom, years of therapy, and just years of normal. I don't know how difficult this is going to be for you, or for Miles." I sigh.
"If there was any part of me that worried about you being around our son there is no way I'd allow you to come home with me. I've treated you, my mother figure has treated you, my father figure has spent hours with you, and so has Jack. My family, as unconventional as we all are, have all spent time with you. They love and trust you too. We all know that adjusting to a life outside of prison is going to be hard for you, especially when the world you're coming home to isn't the one you left, but we are all going to be there for you. We are your family. As long as you are committed to your own improvement, we are all committed to helping you figure it out."
"I love you." I whisper before leaning towards her and pressing my lips to hers.
"I love you too, and I promise you we will navigate all of this together." She replies.
It doesn't take too long for us to put that promise to its first test when Tris informs me that Four wants to fly out to El Paso to help her drive me home. Apprehensive doesn't even touch the surface when it comes to him, he's her ex, someone I've spent a lot of my life despising, who I now know is the only blood family besides Miles I have left. He and I have never had a single personal conversation, outside of when we first transferred to Dauntless, and it's possible that his weird obsession with monitoring me was because he knew I was his brother.
Stick us in a car for multiple hours with the woman we both went to our own extremes for, what could possibly go wrong?
But, she's doing this alone, and she deserves so much better than the situation we're in. I'll do it for her, and for my son, so that maybe one day he can know his own uncle and cousins. So that I can give my future wife and children a chance at a life I never had.
I'll do it for them.