Chapter 43
Chapter Forty-Three
Ithink about another morning, another version of us, seated across from each other at our favorite table at La Madeleine while the scent of fresh croissants and strong coffee curled through the air.
The café was full, as it always was, with well-dressed women trading polished smiles over cappuccinos and men in tailored suits pretending their breakfast meetings weren’t business.
Usually the hum of it all would have delighted Whitney, and maybe even amused me, but that morning the noise receded until it became little more than background.
My mind was somewhere else entirely, tangled up in the strangeness of my new life, my new marriage, and the low, persistent unease I couldn’t seem to quiet.
Whitney sat across from me, stirring her cappuccino with absent grace, her engagement ring catching the light each time her hand moved.
Tiny rainbows skipped across the white tablecloth and disappeared again.
She looked exactly the way Whitney always looked: composed, expensive, luminous without trying too hard.
A cream Chanel sweater skimmed her frame, her hair was perfect, and her expression held that sharp intelligence I had come to rely on so completely.
Whitney had always been able to read me faster than I could read myself.
She could hear something unraveling before I’d even found the words for it.
“So,” she said at last, raising one eyebrow as she lifted her cup, “how’s the new house? Tigertail Beach Estates is a pretty dramatic upgrade from university housing.”
I smiled, or tried to. Even then it felt thin.
“It’s beautiful,” I said, and that part was true.
The house was stunning in a way that felt almost absurd to say out loud.
Seven bedrooms. A pool that seemed to spill toward the ocean.
A tennis court I would probably never use.
It was the kind of house I used to see in glossy magazines as a girl and assume belonged to another species of person entirely.
And now I lived in it. I wandered its polished hallways in silk and bare feet and still half expected someone to stop me and ask what I thought I was doing there.
“It’s just… a lot,” I admitted, lowering my voice though no one around us was listening.
“I’m twenty-six, Whitney. Twenty-six, and I’m living in a house worth more than anything I could have imagined when I was a kid.
We have a six-car garage.” I gave a short laugh that didn’t feel like humor.
“I don’t even think I know how to start half of them. ”
Whitney laughed, light and easy, the sound floating over the table like it had no weight to it at all. “McCullough, you hit the jackpot. You married Bennett fucking McMaster, who worships you and has more money than God. You should be celebrating, not looking for reasons to feel guilty.”
“I know.” I wrapped both hands around my coffee cup, letting the warmth settle into my palms. “I know that’s what it looks like.
But where does all this money actually come from?
Bennett is always so vague when I ask about work, and I feel like I’m walking around blindfolded.
I grew up comfortable, sure, but not like this.
Not yacht-club, private-jet, buy-an-island-if-you-feel-like-it rich.
Half the time I feel like I wandered into someone else’s life and they just haven’t noticed yet. ”
Whitney’s gaze softened, but not in a pitying way.
More like she was humoring a fear she found fundamentally unnecessary.
“That’s imposter syndrome,” she said. “And it’s boring.
You belong exactly where you are. You were raised in money too, McCullough.
Maybe not this kind of money, but you’ve been adjacent to wealth your whole life.
You know how these people think. You know how to move in this world. ”
I nodded, but the guilt stayed where it was, lodged low and hard in my chest. “That’s not really it.
” I looked down at the tablecloth, tracing the edge of my saucer with one finger.
“My father still lives on the reservation. He’s still struggling.
And I know, logically, that none of that is my fault, but sometimes it feels like I was lifted out of one life and dropped into another so completely that I’m pretending now.
Like I’m dressed in someone else’s costume and everyone can somehow tell. ”
Whitney reached across the table and took my hand, her grip warm and steady.
“That’s exactly where the guilt is coming from,” she said quietly.
“You’re still letting the past decide what you’re allowed to have.
But you deserve this life just as much as anyone else sitting in this café.
Bennett loves you. He wants to give you everything.
You have to let yourself receive it without turning it into a moral crisis. ”
I squeezed her hand back, grateful for the steadiness in her voice even if it didn’t quite fix what was wrong.
“It’s just overwhelming,” I said. “The travel, the clothes, the house, the way money seems to appear wherever it’s needed without anyone ever talking about what had to happen to make it appear.
And now you’re telling me Phillip and Bennett are talking about doing business together? That doesn’t exactly help.”
Whitney released my hand and leaned back in her chair, crossing one leg over the other.
“Phillip mentioned it, yes. They’re both successful.
They’re both ambitious. Of course it makes sense that they’d be interested in each other’s ventures.
” She took another sip of her cappuccino, then added, more casually, “And no, that doesn’t automatically mean anything shady is happening.
Business is business. Men like that have lawyers for a reason.
Contracts, protection, liability, all of it.
That doesn’t make them corrupt. It means they know how the game is played. ”
Her words were meant to soothe, but they only sharpened something in me.
Maybe because I had already started to suspect that my ignorance wasn’t innocence, it was choice.
I had chosen not to ask. Chosen not to look too closely.
Chosen to let Bennett handle everything while I floated above it in cashmere and gratitude.
Whitney must have sensed the shift in me, because her smile turned gentler.
“You’re overthinking it,” she said. “You won the lottery the day you married Bennett. You need to stop apologizing for that and start enjoying it. Honestly, any woman in this place would kill to have what you have. Maybe we’re both lucky.
Maybe we’ve earned it. Maybe whatever hell we lived through before this was the price of admission. ”
That made me look up at her.
Before.
The word sat between us without being spoken.
“Remember the debutante ball?” she asked softly.
The memory moved through me like cold water.
There was no stopping it, no softening the edges.
Blood on white silk. Bruises blooming beneath my collarbone.
My pulse hammering in my ears while the scent of gardenia and seawater and fear tangled in the dark.
We were supposed to be girls that night, expensive girls in expensive dresses, stepping into a world of chandeliers and champagne and society approval.
Instead I went somewhere I’ve never really come back from.
“I remember,” I said, and my voice had gone so quiet I could barely hear it myself. “I’ll never forget.”
Whitney’s expression changed then, the lightness dropping away.
She reached for my hand again, turning both of our wrists up to reveal the matching ’til death do us part tattoos we got when we graduated.
“We’ve been through more than most people ever will,” she said.
“Maybe that’s exactly why we ended up here.
Maybe we do deserve comfort. Maybe we do deserve security.
And Bennett is part of that for you. He gave you a life most people would spend their entire lives trying to get close to.
Don’t let guilt or doubt or anyone else’s projections take that from you. ”
I swallowed hard and nodded, because I wanted to believe her. More than that, I wanted her certainty to become mine. She had a way of making things feel cleaner than they were, of drawing a bright line through the middle of a moral gray area and insisting it had always been obvious where to stand.
As we finished our coffee and started gathering our things, Whitney glanced down at the ring on her finger and smiled, the seriousness lifting from her face all at once.
“Speaking of weddings,” she said, her voice bright again, “I still can’t believe I get you as maid of honor next month.
I swear, mine is going to be just as beautiful as yours. Better, maybe.”
I laughed despite myself. “Absolutely not. I refuse to be outdone.”
“That’s the spirit,” she said, linking her arm through mine as we stood.
We walked out of the café together into a morning so beautiful it almost felt staged, sunlight spilling over the cobblestones, the bay glittering beyond the palms, the whole island dressed up like it had something to prove.
Whitney tucked herself against my side with such easy affection that for a moment the unease quieted.
For a moment, I let myself believe what she wanted me to believe: that maybe we had survived enough to deserve this.
That maybe luxury was not a lie, just a reward that had finally arrived.
That maybe paradise, if you held it carefully enough, could stay clean.
But even then, with Whitney laughing beside me and the sun warm on our skin, I felt it.
The shadow of unease creeping back in, reminding me that even in paradise, there are always secrets lurking just beneath the surface.