Her Safe Haven

Chapter 47 - As The Deer

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...

Jonah was on a late dinner date with Helena, and he was in the middle of telling another funny story to a now uncontrollably laughing Helena when the call came.

He considered ignoring it, but when he saw Caleb's name on his screen he furrowed his eyebrows. Caleb never called him unless it's about—

"Hello?" Jonah answered, and after a while his brows creased further as he tried to catch on to what Caleb was trying to tell him. "Caleb, slow down! What?"

And at once Helena could watch it: the way Jonah's eyes widened, the way his lips fell open and his hands fell limp.

She could not hear what Caleb was saying, but deep in her heart she could feel it: a premonition. A coming of a heartbreak. She did not know how she knew, but she just knew.

After Jonah hung up the phone he was staring at her wide-eyed, almost pleadingly, and at once she was calm, and she smiled sadly at him, because she knew what it was about. "It's always been her, isn't it?"

Jonah did not know what to do, he was panicking from the news Caleb just told him, but Helena was always warm and kind and patient, and he was really going to hell for this.

"I'm sorry... She needs me right now, I— I don't want to leave you, but she—"

Jonah stopped then, because Helena stood up from her chair and pulled him up. She did not seem angry, but that made him furious because she should be.

But she only smiled at him, because Helena had watched Jonah enough over the years to know him. And he said nothing but she knew he had to go. So in that moment she kissed him, the kiss so soft and sad, and Jonah was surprised and confused and terrified but her kiss grounded him, so he calmed down and closed his eyes.

When he opened them again Helena was smiling at him again, this time so sad his conscience almost killed him for what he was about to do.

"Go get her, Jonah."

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Where there was light, there was always a shadow.

Winter supposed the price to having such a bright personality, as people had always told her she had, was that there will always be that shadow behind her that cannot be taken out, that cannot be exorcised, no matter what she or anyone else did.

In times like this, she thought that shadow would swallow her whole. In times where she could think about nothing else other than dying, other than the voices from the ghosts of her childhood, other than the fact that she will always be alone, the only thing she could think about was that she was beyond redemption — she will always be stuck feeling this way for the rest of her life, and there was nothing that could safe her from this darkness within.

"If you talk, you are dead," were the words she kept hearing being repeated in times like this. When she felt the darkness clawing at her insides to get out, those words that she did not even remember where she had heard it were the only ones she could hear:

"If you talk, you are dead."

+++

Jonah drove across the town in panic.