And if I’m right, if I’m even close to right, then I’m no longer just looking for answers.
I’m standing in the middle of something that could get me killed.
A quiet awareness settles in, steady and unshakable.
I don’t have a choice now.
I see this through.
For Whitney.
No matter what it costs.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Phillip looms over me, hatred radiating from every line of his body, from the fists flexing at his sides to the snarl curling his mouth.
“You killed her,” I say, my voice low and vicious. “I know you did. This is all your fault. Stop lying.”
He looks almost animal in his rage, the kind of man who has spent so long controlling his temper that when it finally slips, it becomes something feral.
Fear flashes hot through my system, chased immediately by adrenaline so sharp it leaves a thin sheen of sweat across my skin. I can see the hate on his face, and some awful part of me recognizes it because it mirrors my own. I know this man took my best friend’s life. I know it with the kind of certainty that lives in the bones. And for the first time, I understand that Whitney must have seen this side of him too, must have stood where I’m standing now and realized too late who she had married. I wish I had known. I wish I had been there for her while she was still alive. I wish I had gone with her that day, because maybe then I could have saved her from the watery grave that swallowed her whole.
Then his hands are on my throat.
They lock around my neck with brutal force, thumbs digging in as the pressure closes off my windpipe. I gasp and claw at his wrists, trying to wrench myself free, but his grip only tightens. Panic explodes inside me. I wonder wildly, stupidly, if this is how Whitney felt in her final moments, her last breaths filled with the terror of realizing the man she trusted was the one killing her.
“Mind your own business, you fucking bitch,” he spits, and then his hands tighten harder, crushing my throat between them.
I try to scream, but nothing comes out. Tears flood my eyes as the room narrows, blackness pressing in at the edges. This is it, I think. This is how it ends.
“Don’t touch me,” I finally choke out, my body rigid with the desperate, useless fight for air.
“Babe. Are you okay?”
Bennett’s voice cuts through the dark.
I jolt upright with a ragged gasp, my heart slamming against my ribs as I claw my way back into the room. The dream dissolves in fragments, but not quickly enough. The terror lingers, alive and electric in my body, making it hard to separate what was imagined from what still feels physically real.
“Bad dream?” Bennett asks, his voice gravelly with sleep.
I nod, tears already spilling down my cheeks. “The worst.”
He reaches for me instinctively, rubbing a hand over my back in an effort to calm me, but I flinch before I can stop myself. My nerves are lit up, every part of me still bracing for violence. The fear in the nightmare had felt so immediate, so complete, that even now I can feel its aftershocks moving through me.
“Another one about Phillip?” he asks after a moment, his hand gentler now as it moves to my hair. He always does thatwhen I’m upset, smoothing my hair back, grounding me with touch. Usually it works. Usually nothing soothes me faster than Bennett.
As my breathing slowly begins to even out, I fold myself into him, tucking close against the steady wall of his body. “I’m sorry for waking you.”
“Don’t be,” he murmurs. “These last few weeks have been brutal.”
I swallow hard before I finally say it. “I had a dream that Phillip was choking me. And he kept saying I killed Whitney.”
Bennett lets out a quiet huff, but says nothing right away. He just keeps stroking my hair, and the steady rhythm of it, combined with the warm beat of his heart beneath my cheek, begins to pull me back from the edge in a way nothing else can.
“Well,” he says after a moment, his tone lighter than I expect, “if anything ever happens, I can defend your honor. I have a gun.”
I lift my head so fast it makes me dizzy. “What?”
