Her Safe Haven

Chapter 48 - The Death Knell Had Sounded

Previously on Her Safe Haven: Rohan found out about Winter needing to move to St. Louis after summer and got upset, the two haven't spoken after their fight in Four Season's Hotel after the combined Lakeside-Dews party. There was still tension between Gray and Winter and the two still fought a lot. Following Caleb and Winter's conversation about Winter not coping with her deteriorating mental health, Winter ran away and sat for hours under the rain on the side of the road in the middle of nowhere. A car passed by after hours and Winter thought about throwing herself in front of it so everything can finally end...

AUTHOR'S NOTES: I usually never do this, but the song "Flightless Bird, American Mouth" by Iron & Wine is what inspired the first part of this chapter (before the "+++" chapter mark), and "Turning Page" by Sleeping at Last is what inspired the second part of it (I was DEFINITELY not a Twilight fan back in the days...). Feel free to listen to these two songs as you read this chapter!

What made her realise his arrival was not when her view of the road and the car was suddenly blocked, but because the car had stopped, and the hard merciless rain that had been falling on her suddenly stopped even though it was still raining.

There was an umbrella over her. The car was his, and the sedan stopped right there — in the middle of the road, in front of her — the door still open, and he came running towards her with an umbrella, and now he was standing in front of her and she could hear his breath: loud, clear, and very much alive. So unlike her.

She did not look up.

"How long have you been here?"

He was panting, because he had been running and panicking, and now he got no relief because she was sitting on a stone on the side of the road, soaked from the rain, her chin on her hands, and her eyes empty as he had never seen them before. She was so pale she could have been dead.

She shrugged. 'One, two hours. Maybe ten.'

The rain was suddenly hitting her head again, but it was only for a few seconds and in those seconds she was suddenly wrapped by a warm fabric, and then the umbrella was over her head again, and Jonah was kneeling in front of her, his other hand forcing close the orange jacket he just wrapped on her.

"You're cold," he said, trying to search her eyes but he still found nothing. "Let me take you home."

After a few minutes, he thought she was just not going to reply, but just after he thought that there was suddenly something in her eyes, and it was like it was the first time she actually looked at him, and realised that he was there, Jonah was there.

But looking at him made her think of Gray and Rohan, and suddenly everything came crashing at her again, and she was not sobbing but her eyes were blurry and like the rain, her tears started to fall.

She did not know how, but suddenly she was on his back. Umbrella now forgotten as they walked in the rain, and her eyes were still blurry because she was just so tired of crying, but it was not her decision to make, and they were only under the rain for a bit before she realised she was in a car. His car because it smelled like him.

She had no idea how, or how long she had cried on his front seat with him repeating over and over and over again that everything was going to be okay, but when she came to she was no longer in his car, and she was no longer wet, from her clothes, her hair, to her underwear. She was aware enough to tell she was in his warm too-big clothes, and she was tucked in a bed, and as she slowly opened her eyes, she realised she was in his room.