AN: Your reviews make me so happy! Happy update day to you all, I hope you enjoy this chapter. Can't wait to hear your thoughts, and I'll see you all on Tuesday. :)

My phone ringing as soon as my head hits the pillow is not what I expected at all, as it is well after midnight. I notice the number of the prison on the caller ID and I answer, expecting the prerecorded messages I normally hear when accepting a call.

"Please don't hang up." Eric's voice is low, but unmistakably him.

"How are you calling me?" I reply.

"Hector is letting me use the unit phone. I only have a few minutes, can you please come here tonight?" He asks.

"Eric, it's after midnight..."

"I mean later. I was approved for a private visit from seven to ten tonight. Please." He hurries.

"A conjugal?" I ask, irritation evident in my voice, "You can't be fucking serious."

"Tris, please hear me out. I'm not asking for some cheap fuck, I'm asking for us to be able to talk, alone, uninterrupted and without cameras. I already know that you and Jo are done with my case, there's nothing inappropriate about you being here. Please."

"It's inappropriate, and Miles..."

"I already talked to Jo about it during my personal phone time, you can ask her yourself later. It's allowed, and she said she and Pedro would watch Miles. Please just try. I have to go, but if you can make it just go to the main desk like you always did for our therapy appointments. They'll check you in."

Then there's just a click, a dial tone, and I'm left staring at my phone in disbelief. I don't get much sleep after his call, and in the morning when I'm scrambling some eggs for Miles he notices my distraction.

"What's wrong mom?" He asks from his perch at the kitchen island.

"Just tired." I reply with a smile.

"You work too much." He replies with his own grin and I pass him a plate of eggs and toast, "Maybe I'll get a job."

"I'm pretty sure you can't do that just yet." I reply as I begin eating my own eggs.

"Yeah, dad said I have to wait until I'm a teenager. Mom, can I ask you something?" His grey eyes meet mine and I nod my head, "Why won't you come with me anymore to see my dad?"

"I wanted the rest of our family to have time with your dad too." I reply, giving him the standard answer I always do ever since my falling out with Eric two months ago.

"You don't talk to him anymore, either." Miles presses.

"You're right, and I really should talk to him. I've been extremely busy with work, but that's not an excuse to not make time for your dad. He actually called me last night and asked if I would see him tonight, but since it would be a late visit I needed to talk to you first."

His face lights up, "Can I stay at Grampy and Nana's? Grampy and I are supposed to play Rocket League with some of my friends online, please mom…." He grins and I shake my head.

"I have no idea what any of that means, but yes, I will text your Nana now to make sure it's ok. Finish getting ready so we can get you to the bus on time, please."

I exchange some texts with Johanna, and as Eric mentioned she is already aware of his request to see me tonight. Much to my surprise, she is completely supportive, and even sends me a link to the prison's website to prepare myself for what to expect.

My mother figure never ceases to amaze me.

My day goes by rather quickly, even with the displeasure of meeting with Evelyn Johnson. Johanna and I have both been meeting with the complicated woman, but each time I work with her I feel like I need a mental scrub. I picked over the dinner I shared with Jo, Pedro and Miles at the Reyes house, and now I am being escorted into an area of the prison I've never seen. It's very hotel-like in structure, with the only exception being that we will be locked inside of the room for the entirety of the visit.

The door opens and Eric is led in, unchained and left inside unceremoniously.

"I thought they were just fucking with me when they picked me up from my room tonight and told me I had a visitor. You came." He says with a smile.

"I did." I nod.

"I'm glad you're here. I've missed you." He says.

"I've missed you too."

I awkwardly sit on the small sofa inside the room and Eric sits down next to me. The silence is almost deafening, and the awkwardness between us is at an all time high.

"Johanna and I finished our last session yesterday. It's actually weird to think this whole thing is done. She did say I could keep seeing her after I'm out though, or even if I'm still in here." He says carefully.

"Do you think you'll continue seeing her?" I ask and he nods.

"Yeah. It's been helpful, and it's easier to talk about things now I guess. You know if it hadn't of been for you, I wouldn't have ever been able to open up to her, and as much as I wanted to keep seeing you, I knew that I crossed a line the last time we were together."

I try to change the subject, "We had to turn in our final recommendations yesterday, and your hearing is in less than three weeks. It's so close."

"Yeah." He says without emotion.

"What's wrong?"

"I've been so scared, Tris. I'm afraid of hoping. I'm afraid they're going to find some loophole to keep me in here for another five or even ten years, and that our son is going to be a man before I get out. I'm afraid that I won't see him graduate. I'm afraid that he's going to resent me if we don't win this parole hearing." He says softly. I can see the tears slip out of his eyes and down his cheeks.

"Eric, no matter what happens during that hearing, Miles is going to always love you. If we have to visit every weekend for the next ten years that's what we do."

"I don't want to raise my son from inside a prison." He chokes out, "I've never wanted to be out of here before. I never dreamed there was going to be anything outside of these walls for me, and now that it's so close I'm fucking terrified." He says. "I don't want to lose it. I'm so close to having everything I could have ever wanted and I'm fucking scared they're just going to see who I was ten years ago and make me sit here because I was so fucked up back then." He cries a little harder.

"Please stop crying, please. Let's think about something else, please." I beg, wiping my own tears away, I scoot towards him on the couch and wrap my arms around him. He buries his face in my neck and starts speaking again.

"Sorry, I'm stuck in my head right now. I don't think you realize how much thought I've given this. When I was locked in solitary, it was so fucking bad. I seriously dreamed up an entire future for us. That's how my head would get, how stupid was I to get fixated on the one girl I slept with, but it happened. Thinking of that experience with you got me through some tough times. I know my earlier comments cheapened it, but I never meant for it to." He says in a calmer voice.

"It's not at all unusual to fixate on a positive experience that happened during a traumatic time. You went through a lot in a short amount of time, finding out how evil your mother actually was, losing Lainie, coming up with a plan to rescue me, almost dying at the hands of the factionless, a trial where all of your secrets were laid bare, it was a lot for anyone to deal with, much less an eighteen year old." I reply gently.

"You think I'm doing it again, don't you?" He asks.

I did it ten years ago when I married Tobias, I think to myself.

"I don't know." I finally reply quietly, "You've had a lot hit you these past six months."

He leans away from me slightly, but he doesn't let me go and I don't want him to.

"I'm not, Tris. I may have romanticized our intimacy, I'll admit that. I'll admit that I was pissed that you wouldn't even come see me when I was held in Candor before the trial, I mean I almost fucking died for you and back then it felt like you couldn't tear yourself away from fucking Four long enough to see me, and that I felt rejected by you as a result. I admit all of that and I lay myself bare for you, but you need to admit to your own feelings too."

"Eric, do you remember the day I was supposed to meet you in your office to talk in Dauntless? The day I ended up getting attacked." I ask.

"You mean the incident at the chasm... I hate that you and Four hid that shit from me..."

"I know, but I wanted to ask you if you remembered what you were going to talk to me about." I interrupt.

"Yeah, it was to clear the air about the kiss." He replies.

"What were you going to say?" I ask.

"I was going to do what was expected, give you the 'I'm a leader and you're an initiate' speech, we talked about that before." He sighs and moves one of his arms from around me, and pushes my hair behind my ear, "Besides, I wasn't in a good place back then."

"Did you know that you were my first kiss?" I ask him, catching him off guard based on the breath I hear him draw in.

"I had no idea." He replies.

"You were, and after that day in the training room I started dreaming up my own scenarios for us. I mean, even without you telling me, I already knew I couldn't possibly date a leader while I was an initiate, but for those few precious days after it happened I surely entertained the thought of you wanting to go out with me. Typical teenage stuff, right?" I ask.

"I guess." He says gruffly.

I decide today is the right time for me to finally let him in.

"Teenagers get stuck in their head that they're madly in love when they have no idea what it is. Eric, when I married Tobias, I didn't love him. I thought I did, but we were caught in the middle of a war, one where I lost everyone I cared about. My parents, my brother, my best friend when I killed her boyfriend, and I thought I had lost you. I didn't call him to Amity, Johanna did, and she thought she was doing what was right for me. He shows up, and he tries to fix me. His way was for us to get married, and I thought that was great, because just like you Eric I desperately wanted someone to love me. It was all a reaction to the trauma I had been through, from losing everyone, from the torture from Jeanine, from watching someone kill you in front of me, from everything. Your reaction to the trauma you had been put through was to punish yourself by guaranteeing a prison sentence. My reaction to the trauma I had been put through was to force myself to love someone because they were in front of me. When I said I shouldn't have ever married Four, that is what I meant. I married him because I was deeply traumatized, not because I loved him. I just didn't want to be alone, because I was terrified of my own thoughts."

"Tris, I didn't know..." He whispers.

"It's not something I've discussed with anyone other than Johanna, she became my therapist the day he left me. I wasn't upset that he left, I was relieved. I never loved him, and even though I hurt him by cheating on him, I saved us both from a future of resenting each other. Tobias isn't a bad person, but he and I were never right for each other. When we got married we were just grasping at the only thing that felt familiar, and we thought we could fix each other. When we separated I thought about you so much. Especially when I could feel our baby kicking, and when I first laid eyes on him and saw your beautiful grey eyes staring back at me, and every day since. When I saw Miles, I saw you, and it broke my heart thinking about how different our lives could have been if we had of both made it to Amity. You're not the only one who has gone through every emotion humanly possible when thinking about what could have been, for us and for our son. Now that you are here, so close to my heart, I needed time to sort through my feelings. I'm no longer doubting your feelings, I believe everything you're telling me because you have also shown me."

"And what about your feelings, Tris?"

This time, it's me who reaches for his hands, and he quickly entwines his fingers with mine, "I didn't remove myself from your case because of your feelings, Eric, I removed myself because of my own feelings for you," His grip on my hands tightens, "I knew I couldn't continue to treat you without jeopardizing your case. I wouldn't be able to live with myself if I caused you to have to spend any more time here. I'm sorry for the way I reacted, and I'm sorry for refusing to talk to you for so long. I needed to make sure that I kept my distance to give you the best possible chance of being paroled."

"Johanna helped me to understand why you were keeping your distance. As you can probably imagine, it wasn't too easy for me to accept at first. I was pretty sure I had completely fucked everything up when you left the way you did, and even more so once I realized you weren't willing to talk to me at all." He replies carefully.

"I needed to know that you were focused on Miles, and getting out of prison, not on any type of relationship with me."

"I know that I crossed professional lines that last session, and for that I'm sorry Tris. You may not be ready to hear it, but I meant what I said that day." He says.

"Eric, I need your help with something." I finally say, changing the subject, "Four wants to see me. I can't go into many details, but there is a reason that caused us to run into each other. He asked that I have lunch with him one day so we can talk about things."

"What do you want to do, Tris?" Eric asks evenly.

"I don't know. I believe we could provide each other with some answers." I shrug weakly.

"Regarding the circumstances of your marriage ending?" He presses.

"Yes. It was pretty awful. I found out yesterday that there may have been some interference from someone else in his life that influenced the decisions he made."

"His mother." Eric interrupts and my eyes widen, "I know she's here now, and deduced that she was your new client. You don't have to confirm anything." He sighs, "You need closure."

"I don't know why I would, it's been ten years." I argue.

"Because you thought that you loved him, as much as you thought you could at sixteen, and when you got married you thought it would be forever. You were raised to believe that love and marriage wouldn't ever die. He was too, which is why it's so much harder when he left the way he did. I know as an adult you've come to the realization that you weren't in love, but it doesn't take the pain of abandonment away. You cared about Four, and it hurt you when someone who promised to be your family when he was all you thought you had left just vanished on you. You deserve answers, and he does too, because even if he wouldn't have made the same choices you did in that moment he needs to at least understand why you decided to go through with it." Eric explains.

"Thank you." I reply and he smiles, "I didn't think you'd be so understanding, especially since you're still unsure about his place in your life."

"I'm not going to let the petty jealously I've had regarding him screw up your chance to get closure. I need to let shit from the past go." He shrugs, "Besides, for us to be together, we need to both be whole, and for either of us to make progress with Four, you need to be sure of his place in your life as well."

"I'm proud of you Eric," I say quietly and he quirks his eyebrows at me, "You've come so far. Our first session you were so angry at me, and him, and it felt like those first couple of weeks for every step forward we'd take several backwards, but you never gave up. I'm so proud of the progress you've made. I'm proud of the father you are." I trace my fingers up and down his hands, and into the mazes on his arms, "I never thought we'd be here."

"It's you." He answers quietly, "I've always needed you, and you gave me the greatest gift of all in our son. You never gave up on me."

"And I never will." I reply.

I stand up, needing a little space and to clear my head slightly, and walk to the small kitchenette and grab a bottle of water out of the mini fridge. I can feel Eric behind me, and I shiver involuntarily.

"It's a different day, and a different time," Eric says as he moves my hair to one shoulder. I can feel his breath on my neck, before he ghosts his lips there. I tilt my neck and he finally presses his lips to my skin. He kisses his way up to my ear and then whispers, "Tell me you don't want this, and I'll stop."

"I want it." I whisper and turn around and he leans his head down towards mine. When our lips finally meet, it's like fire, and what begins as a chaste kiss turns into one of passion.

He sucks on my bottom lip and nibbles gently until I open my mouth for him, our tongues dancing and then fighting for dominance. His hands work their way into my shirt and I pull away from him just enough for him to lift it over my head. He lifts me by the back of my thighs and I automatically wrap my legs around him and allow him to carry me to the bed.

"Are you sure?" I ask. I need him to feel comfortable and to lead this. His chest is heaving, and I can see his excitement straining against his prison scrubs. He lifts his own shirt over his head and I just look at him. He's broader and heavier than I remember, but his dark tattoos and creamy pale skin are familiar.

"I'm sure." He breathes out, and I help him to remove my bra. He immediately latches on to my nipples, alternating between licking and sucking. He kisses his way down my stomach, where my light stretch marks are still visible. "You are so perfect." He sighs happily. He unbuttons my pants and slides them and my panties down my legs. He keeps his eyes on me as he pulls his scrub pants off, then his boxers, and then crawls back up my body, kissing every inch on his way to my lips.

I rub against him for friction and he whispers in my ear, "I'm not going to last long at all, can I taste you? I want to try," I nod my head and he works his way back down, spreading my legs open and looking at me. "I've wanted this for so long," He growls before his mouth latches onto my sensitive bud, and I cry out from the contact. He licks and sucks before entering two fingers inside of me. I am overwhelmed by the sensation, and when his fingers curl inside of me a moan rips from my lips and I fall apart, pulsing around his fingers.

He withdraws his fingers, and puts them into his mouth. I am a panting mess below him when he lines up and presses slowly into me.

"Fuck babe..." He growls, "Protection?" He asks as he stops moving.

"Clean, on shot," I breathe out.

He's too worked up to have any restraint, and I wouldn't want him to anyway, I encourage him to go faster and harder and he pounds into me.

"Baby I'm gonna…" he cries out my name as he releases inside of me, I can feel the warmth from his seed and his body collapses on top of mine.

He kisses me deeply, much like he did after our first time, but this time he's working his way up to a round two. I reach down for his semi-erect member, making eye contact with him, waiting for his consent to the touch. He nods and I pump my hands up and down his length while he explores my mouth with his tongue. Within minutes, he has entered me again, and this time his mouth doesn't leave mine while he slowly moves in and out of me. He's no longer frantic, he's slow and sensual and making love to me.

"Tris…." He moans.

"Eric, can we try something?" I ask him and he stills. His grey eyes swim with emotion and he nods, "I need you to lie down on your back."

He pulls out of me and does as I ask, when I move to straddle him he closes his eyes briefly.

"Baby, it's me, and if any of this is too much please tell me," I say quietly. He opens his beautiful eyes and stares at me.

"I trust you. I am safe with you," He whispers. I lean down and kiss him, and his hands return to my body.

I move against him, giving him time to be comfortable and he begins to relax against me. Our kisses get frantic again, and I'm aware of Eric's pull and push on my hips. I make a slight adjustment, and press his tip against my entrance, finally sheathing him completely inside of me.

"Baby, you feel so good..." He moans.

I flex around him, moving my hips with his with a passion I've never had. I've never taken a man in this way, but with him everything feels primal and raw. I lean back and put my hands on his upper thighs for stability, his hands move back to my hips to help guide me up and down, and I know there will be bruises there tomorrow from his rough grip.

"Eric…." I whine as my second orgasm rips through me, and I feel him filling me once again when his release chases after.

I collapse on top of him, my body feels boneless and we both are sweating and out of breath. I feel him tracing his fingers up and down my spine and I can hear the pounding of his heart.

Our pulses finally stop racing, and our breathing returns to normal, so I slowly slide off of him and he tucks me into his side.

"Are you okay?" I ask.

"That was amazing," He says quietly before he presses his lips to my bare shoulder, "Everything with you is so natural. I promise you I didn't bring you here tonight for that to happen, but I'm not sorry that it did."

"I'm not either," I reply. I press my lips to his chest and he sighs against me.

"I know we have a lot to figure out, Tris, but I want this with you. I know that I can't ask you for a committed relationship while I'm still here working on either an appeal case or to be paroled, but if I can get out of here I want to be with you, and I want to come home to my family."

A knock on the door brings us out of our little bubble, and the guard shouts that it is our ten minute warning. Eric and I get cleaned up, and dressed, and share kisses and touches along the way. We get our two minute warning, and I turn to face him.

"I'm in love with you Eric." I finally say, "I'm committed to you, and to us. We will figure this out, together, no matter what."

"You mean it?" He asks.

"Yes, I love you, and I'm sorry it took me this long to say it."

He leans down and kisses me, and I melt against his body. This is right, and this intimacy is what I've waited my whole life for. When the door opens, we break apart and Eric waits patiently while he's being chained up.

"I love you too, Tris." He says before they lead him from the room.