“Okay. What’s going on?”
He rubbed his hands together.
“Do you remember the rumor? The one in senior year that made you stop eating in the cafeteria?”
My body went rigid.
“Of course. You think I could ever forget something like that?”
“Tara, I saw what happened. The day it started. I saw him corner you, behind the gym, near the track field. I saw the way you looked at your… boyfriend when you walked away.”
My chest tightened.
“You knew?! You knew what happened and you didn’t say anything?”
“I didn’t know what to do,” he rushed. “I was 17, Tara. I froze. I thought… if I ignored it, maybe it would go away. I figured that you had it handled, you did date the guy after all. If anyone knew how manipulative he was… it would have been you.”
“But it didn’t. It followed me. It defined me.”
“I know.”
“You helped craft an image of me, Ryan. You just twisted it to give them a nickname for me. Whispers? What the hell was that?”
His voice broke.