Just for a second.
And she smiled.
It was small, controlled, the kind of smile that asks you not to look any closer, not to question what sits just beneath it.
I’m fine. Don’t worry about me.
And I didn’t.
I let that be enough.
My throat tightens at the memory, and I press my lips together, willing the emotion back before it can fully surface, but it lingers anyway, sharp and insistent.
I should have asked. I should have pushed. I should have made it real instead of letting it stay in that quiet, unspoken place where it couldn’t be confronted.
Now she’s gone, and all that’s left are fragments that don’t quite fit together, pieces of something I should have understood when it still mattered.
I lean back against the headboard, my gaze fixed on the ceiling, my thoughts circling back to the same place no matter how far I try to push them.
Phillip’s voice.
That laugh.
That certainty.
Maybe it was nothing.
Maybe it was just another careless remark, another exaggerated version of himself that was easier to dismiss than to examine.
But maybe it wasn’t.
Maybe it meant something.
And maybe I missed it.
Bennett shifts beside me, his hand finding my arm in his sleep, warm and steady, grounding me in a way that almost makes the rest of it feel distant, but not enough to quiet it completely.
I close my eyes, focusing on that single point of contact, on the rhythm of his breathing, on anything that feels stable and real, but the thought remains, quiet and persistent.
I don’t know what’s real anymore.
I don’t know if I’m uncovering something that was always there or creating something out of guilt and grief and everything I failed to see.
But I do know this.
I’m not letting it go.
Not now.
Not when something is beginning to take shape.
No matter how far back I have to go or how carefully I have to pull it apart, I will find out what happened to Whitney.
I owe her that much.
I owe her the truth, whatever it turns out to be.
Chapter Twenty
