Look After You {Completed}

Epilogue

~Six Months later~

            ~Mina~

            I stare at the gravestone before me, tears filling my eyes and pain gnawing at my heart.

            Did you really have to leave so early? I ask myself, choking back  a sob as I run a finger delicately over the carved letters.

            Collapsing down to the grass, I dig my fingers into the ground, the rough texture of dirt and the dewy wetness of grass tethering me to the ground.

            Life is to short

            ~*~

            “Are you ok?” he breathes, his lips brushing against my ear.

            Shivering slightly, I lean further into his embrace, gripping onto him tightly as my legs trembled.

            I was so tired.

            Pressing a delicate kiss to my forehead, Jace strokes my hair in comfort as he lowers the both of us to the ground. I continue to stare blankly at the tombstone before me.

            “What’s the best memory you have of her?” Jace asks me quietly, continuing to sooth me.

            I swallow a hard lump in my throat, my eyes watering.

            I was never close with my mother. After she left my dad and I, I pushed her away, not wanting anything to do with her.

            And now, I regret it.

            It took only one day, one hour and one second for me to lose my mother to a car crash.

            Choking back a sob, my shoulders shake and tears slip down my face.

            I felt so guilty.

            This feeling was the same feeling that I felt watching Jace slipping through that ice and thinking that I lost him forever.

            I almost really did lose Jace forever.

            Over the span of six months, Jace has recuperated and gotten better. A month after the incident, he was released from the ICU and then spent his time playing his guitar and spending time with me.

            I don’t know what I would have done with him.

            That sheer horror and panic I felt thinking that I lost Jace is a feeling that I wouldn’t want anyone to feel.

            Squeezing my shoulder, Jace snaps me out of my thoughts and I bury my face into his neck.

            “I pushed her away,” I mumble, hiccupping with a sob.

            “Don’t think about that,” he whispers back, his tight embrace the only thing holding me together.

            “I pushed her away just like how I pushed you away,” I spit out, bitterness and anger at myself burning within me.

            “Why do you even come back to me?” I whisper.

            Jace is silent and the warm night air wraps its coiled around us, the chirping of cicadas in the distance.

            “Because I love you,” he finally responds, tilting my chin to look at him. “Nobody is perfect. I come back to you time after time not because you are perfect, but because I love your imperfections and quirks. You wouldn’t be Mina- my love, with out them,” he says lowly.

            I take in a shaky breath.

            I loved this boy.

            “Do you think she ever hated me or never coming to visit her or talk to her?” I ask.

            Jace sighs, intertwining our fingers. “Never,” he vows. “How could she hate you?” he asks me. I shrug, tears continuing to fall.

            “For me, pushing everyone that ever tried to come close to me was easier than allowing myself to open up and be loved. Because in the back of my mind, I never felt worthy enough to be loved, that eventually everyone would leave,” I ramble.

            “You sound like me now, love,” Jace says with dry humor.

            Biting my lip, I don’t respond.

            “We’re both jagged imperfect puzzle pieces,” Jace notes. Staring up at the stars, Jace smiles secretly to himself.

            I didn’t even know how his comment did anything to help.

            “But together,” he continues, looking down to smile tenderly at me. “We fit perfectly.”

            I nod slowly, my heart fluttering at the intense look of love in his eyes.

            “Do you remember when I told you that the darker the night is, the brighter the stars shine?” Jace asks.

            I nod.

            “Think about this tragic event as the blackest of nights and the stars your love. Amidst this event, the stars will represent out love, your love for your mother and your love for your family. Show your mom that her death wasn’t in vain and that you’ll live a life full of love and happiness,” Jace tells me.

            I stare at him, his bright eyes, chiseled jaw and black-rimmed glasses sketching themselves in my mind. This was the boy that held my heart within his hands.

            Everything he said made sense. Life was to short and Jace taught me that.

            “We’ll live that life together?” I ask, picking up our entwined fingers.

            Jace laughs quietly, the corner of his eyes crinkling as he leans close to me, our lips millimeters apart so that his lips brush against mine as he speaks.

            “Forever and ever baby.”

~*~

 A/N- I've come to love this story so much. i had so much fun writing it and i hope you enjoyed it. thank you all your reads comments and votes! Check out my other works like Finding Aria and Gyre as well :)

love you all!