||Say yes...please?|| {Unedited}

Chapter Thirty Two

"Shane Mason."

"And finally I am here, standing right infront of you."

It came out more like a question when Derek read the initials engraved on the tombstone in the middle of the barn.

SHANE MASON

1990 - 2014

"May the soul of yours find peace above, in the heaven."

He gaped like a fish who has been flung out of the water while staring back at the tombstone encrusted right above the grave at the centre of the barn. The truth that just has impended on him was not quite what he expected. Dead? He found himself throttled with just the mere thought of the loss of someone so dear to one's life. He know this feeling, the feeling of loss.

A whimper caught his attention and diverted it back to the girl, sitting with her legs pulled to her chest hugging them and whimpering slowly.

He looked down at Iris and felt a sudden ache in his heart. She had ducked her head into her lap and was sobbing lightly causing her shoulder to quiver.

He stared down at Iris and thought of all the times she had mentioned Shane along with everyone, who perhaps had known him, they talked about him with hope, with the certainty of his return. Like he is gone to a place from where he would return someday. But he will not, he is Dead.

He found his body going numb, losing a person cannot hurt less. Not even after a year or a century. It keeps boring into your heart like a prickle keeps reminding you about the emptiness in your life. You can't outrun it, it's just you start living your life with it, accepting it as a part of your life, accepting it as a beautiful memory of someone who had now gone.

But Iris hasn't even accepted it and that's what has been an obstacle, the chaos, all along. She is conflicted with it.

Derek's eyes moistened while gazing at Iris. He wanted to envelope her into his warmth but just couldn't find himself doing it right now. She had to go through it by herself, the stage of acceptance is harder but necessary.

He sat beside her and looked back to the tombstone in confusion, he never wanted to meet someone this much like he wanted to meet this guy, the guy that had imprinted his whole existence on others head with this much love, that they are reluctant to let him go.

"Who---"

"I met him when I was sixteen."

Iris's voice broke his reverie and pulled him into the reality.

He turned to look at Iris and his eyes softened with longing and love.

"It was a New Year Eve, when I saw him for the first time. Even with all the chattering and clattering around me, I could feel something indefinable in his presence, something that made my heart melt with the warmth that had been radiating from him. He was serene but chaotic in a way that you wanted to plunge yourself into that chaos and become a part of it. Alluring, it was. I was sixteen. All that thing made my head pound. I never felt like that, I have never felt anything that strong in someone's presence. It was my first."

A small laugh escaped her throat, "...and the most ironic part was that we didn't talk. We just stood there in the cold, gazing at the sky and maybe hoping and wishing for something.

"But as the midnight came near and the countdown started and nearly ended, he turned, turned to look at me with those blazing eyes, with that mere look there was something in my heart that ached. They were warm but cold, happy but sad. They were a symphony of emotions that was twirling in him something that grasp you and shake you from the reality and take you to the world that seems impossible to exist. They were simply beautiful. And I knew what I needed to wish for that year -happiness. Happiness for this soul."