Her Safe Haven

Chapter 23 - Climax Part I: Escalation

Previously on Her Safe Haven: It was Spring break, and for a Spring Break Exchange Programme, some Lakeside student councillors were chosen to attend Dews High's Spring Sports Festival for two weeks. Rohan completely disappeared and started to avoid Winter again after he heard that his father was home. When Winter went to confront him, he attacked her and threatened her with a knife. Lennox and Jacob then saved her and told her that Rohan had Double Personality Disorder. Rohan became more resolute to stay away from Winter to protect her from himself. Winter became tired of it and took a stand to start avoiding him first instead of being avoided, and will continue to do so until he realise his mistake and look for her first.

Light.

Blood. A crash. Screaming. Ringing in his ears.

That house was never his home, so he supposed in that regard he was just as homeless as men on the street with their dirt, smell, and sweaty palms, yet contentment he had never known.

More blood.

Thud. Crash. More screaming. Get. out.

More light.

Her face before the light. Her smile. Her long red hair. She was smiling.

He didn't know her.

He had only seen her in pictures, and perhaps in some deep subconscious memory he had as someone who had spent nine months in her womb.

Protected.

She was calling out to him.

He never knew how her voice sounded like, but her lips was open, and she was smiling at him, both her arms open.

Calling him home.

...

He woke up sweating, on his bed with his hand reaching up above to nothing.

+++

They were still in a very bad state.

She had not talked to him in days, and he did not seem to care, but she did care and it was driving her crazy and she was frustrated because he was being stubborn and stupid and so was she; and at this point in time nothing was making sense.

So he had a disorder she didn't know about until he threatened her with a knife.

Ironically, that fact alone was the only one she had. All other things were still a mystery. Like the Garrisons' estranged father, for example. And Rohan lying about having a 'maternal uncle' (she had confirmed with Lennox that their mother only had sisters). And what she saw in the Garrisons' private quarter when Rohan was changing his clothes.

There were too many things she didn't know and couldn't understand, and it was driving her mad because Lennox and Jacob wouldn't answer, and Rohan wouldn't talk to her, yet she was resolute in not talking to him first. She felt that the guy was being a jerk — wasn't he being a jerk? — and no way in hell was she losing to his persistence. He needed help, and instead of reaching out to her, he pushed her away. Threw her away. Now she had taken a stand to stop chasing him and let him come to her, because he needed to realise it for himself that he wanted someone to be there for him. Needed someone to be there for him.

And she was there.

But the stubborn jerk refused to just open his eyes and see her there.

She realised that she might be acting selfish and childish, but Winter found that at the state that she was in now — trying to solve all the mysteries surrounding the mysterious brooding redhead that was her latest object of obsession all the while trying hard to ignore the fact that they were on bad terms with each other — she had no energy left to give a rat's ass about her own moral compass.