Her Safe Haven

Chapter 45 - The Beginning of The End

Previously on Her Safe Haven: Gray left for Las Vegas following his fight with Winter after her breakdown in St Louis. Winter went back to school and managed to distract herself with Lakeside Festival Preparation. Lakeside High hosted a party to celebrate the successful ongoing of the preparations of Lakeside Festival, and in the middle of the party, Gray returned, shocking everyone.

It was almost 11 p.m., and the crowd of partygoers were slowly dispersing as they returned to their homes or upstairs to the hotel rooms.

After Gray appeared that night, shocking everyone and giving Rohan dirty looks, he left their table without saying another word, Kai and Seth hot at his trail. Winter tried to approach him afterwards, but he didn't so much as look at her, so she took it as he still did not want to talk to her.

Which made her even angrier than before. Two weeks he disappeared to Las Vegas, two weeks after trying to control her life, all without saying a word — no texts nor calls, nothing. If anyone was supposed to be ignoring the other, it was her. She was the one with the right to be angry at him. She was the one who was supposed to be ignoring him, not the other way around.

Which was why when Gray came to her as she stood silently in the hotel's backyard to cool off some steam, she was surprised.

"Hey," he walked almost nonchalantly towards her, and his nonchalance made her almost smacked him in the head.

But she replied, anyway. 'Hey,' she waved without looking at him.

He stood next to her. "...How are you?"

'Good.'

Her short replies seemed to do its job at annoying him. So with a slight narrowing of his eyes he just looked at her. "Well," he said, and after a short silence and a sigh he decided to just give in this time. "Well, then. I'll see you around I guess."

'Bye.'

She was still so cold with her one-wave answers, still not looking at him. So in annoyance he turned back to look at her in the middle of walking away as he gritted out her name, "Winter."

But at that tone something in her seemed to snap, and she whirled back around to glare at him, her face hot with anger. 'What, Gray? Why, after two weeks of absolutely nothing. You decided to come now and talk to me? What do you want?'

Her outburst took him by surprise and he was at a loss for words. So he responded in the only way he knew how to avoid a potential trap: by walking away. "Never mind," he scoffed bitterly as he turned away from her. "Enjoy your night."

And she wanted to scream at him. Her brother was playing her like she meant nothing and she wanted to pull him back and slap him until he stopped being so unbearably stubborn.

But she didn't. So in her helpless place she could only hold her breath as tears started pouring out in anger, frustration, and hurt.

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She was supposed to go home with Seth or one of the girls, but she was too angry to see Gray at home, so she didn't.

Almost all of her friends had left an hour ago, and now only Kai, Riley, Rose and Tria were still there at the hotel roof swimming pool, along with some other students from their school who booked rooms at the hotel and were still enjoying some afterparty.

Winter sat at one of the benches at the corner, her knees pulled towards her. It was almost 1 a.m. She didn't know how she was supposed to go home now, and frankly, she didn't care. She could always stay with Tria and Rose in their room (not even with a gun to her head would she accept Kai's offer of bunking with him and Riley), and she just needed to be away from home. Away from Gray.