I hesitate, thrown by the chill in his tone. Was he always like this—this cold, this closed off? Whitney had been warmth incarnate, light spilling from her in every direction. How had she lived beside someone who seemed to absorb it?
“Why?” he asks when I don’t immediately respond.
For a moment, I can’t find the words. All I can think about is what Maverick told me—the debt, the motorcycle club, the quiet implication of something dangerous coiled beneath Phillip’spolished exterior. It colors everything now, every glance, every word.
“Well… Whitney was well-known here,” I manage finally, choosing each word carefully. “If her mother were able, I’m sure she’d organize something. Maybe something small. On the beach, or?—”
“I haven’t told her family.”
The interruption is abrupt, almost surgical.
I blink. “You haven’t?”
He shakes his head once, dismissive. “No point upsetting them when we don’t even know what happened. No body and all that.”
The phrasing lands wrong, cold in a way that makes my stomach tighten.
“They deserve to know,” I say, unable to keep the edge from my voice. “I’m surprised they haven’t heard anything already.”
“Whitney’s mother barely knows her own name after the stroke,” he replies flatly. “And her father…” He exhales, something like disdain flickering across his face. “Her father doesn’t give a shit about anything.”
I go still, absorbing the detachment in his voice.
He sounds nothing like a grieving husband.
Nothing like Bennett, who carries emotion in everything he does—even when he tries to hide it. Standing here now, I find myself wondering how Whitney endured this for so long, how much of herself she had to soften or reshape just to exist beside him. I wish, with a sudden sharpness, that I had asked her more directly how she was—reallywas—beneath the easy smiles and relentless optimism.
Regret sweeps through me, swift and punishing.
“I could do it,” I say, the words coming faster now, almost tripping over each other. “I could host something. Keep it small—my backyard, maybe,or?—”
“No.”
He moves to shut the door, decisive, final.
I reach out instinctively, my hand pressing flat against the wood to stop it.
“Please,” I say, my voice quieter now, but steadier. “Whitney was loved. There are people who need?—”
I falter.
Who need what?
Closure.
The word catches in my throat, heavy with implication.
“The people she loved need closure,” I finish, softer now.
“Closure?” His laugh is sharp, humorless. “How the fuck are any of us supposed to get closure when the coroner won’t even sign the death certificate?”
The anger in his voice crackles, but it feels misplaced—directed outward, not inward, not at the loss itself.
“Just something small,” I press, lowering my voice, as if gentleness might reach him where logic hasn’t. “A gathering. A celebration of life.”
He goes quiet, his gaze narrowing as he studies me more closely now, as if reassessing something he hadn’t bothered to look at before.
“I still don’t see the point,” he says at last.
