Jared looked at her with wide, imploring eyes. “I understand that, but I need to know. If there’s more, please tell me?”
She shook her head, her chin trembling. “It won’t help,” she whispered.
“It’s my past,” Jared said in an equally quiet voice. “It’s my choice. Please.” He wasn’t sure he wanted to know any more. She was right. It was hurting him, but he had to find out his version of events—or the closest thing to it—for Jag.
“Fine,” she grated out. “After the kiss, they came around here and accused you of terrible things. They said that you’d ‘turned their son gay’, that it was your fault he’d lost his way and needed ‘help’.”
“The therapy,” Jared muttered.
His mother nodded. “We threw them out, of course, but the damage had already been done. You blamed yourself for Jeremy being sent to therapy.” Her voice broke, and she sobbed into her hand for a few seconds before clearing her throat and carrying on. “The whole, horrible situation crushed you.” She wiped tears from her eyes. “It was heartbreaking to watch.”
“It really was,” Bianca said in a dry tone.
“So I was expelled and then… What? We just stopped being friends?”
“You weren’t expelled,” his father said. “We withdrew you from the school so you wouldn’t have an expulsion on your school record. You’d donenothingwrong, and we weren’t going to let the Gales tarnish your impeccable record.” He rubbed his hands together. “But to achieve that, we had to agree to certain… conditions.”
“Conditions?”
“You weren’t allowed to have any contact with Jeremy.”
Jared’s eyes went wide. “And I agreed to that?”
“Of course not,” his mother said. Her eyes were red and becoming puffy. “So we had to force you to break contact with him.”
“Force me?” Jared’s chest clenched tight.
“We took your phone and limited your internet access. It was for your own good, Jared.” She sounded desperate, like she needed him to understand and forgive her.
“Wow.” Jared didn’t know what else to say.
“We wereprotectingyou,” she said in a hoarse voice. “You didn’t care that you couldn’t stand up to the Gales. You were willing to defy them, no matter what it cost you. We couldn’t let you ruin your future.”
Jared rubbed his temples with his forefingers, trying to stave off the headache that was quickly building.
“Are you okay, babe?” Kyrone asked.
“It’s a lot to take in,” he whispered. “Do you know what happened to him? Is he happy now?”
“He ran away,” his father said. “His parents came around here shouting accusations, blaming you, but obviously you had nothing to do with it.”
“But it broke your heart all over again,” his mother interjected. “During their tirade, they let slip that they’d sent him away somewhere for the summer for more of their fake therapy. If you ask me, it was no wonder he ran away. But of course you started blaming yourself all over again. You were convinced that if something bad were to happen to him, it would be your fault.”
“And he… never got in touch with me?”
“No, which destroyed you even more.”
“Why?”
“You thought he hated you,” his father said.
“Because I didn’t—couldn’t—communicate with him?”
His father nodded.
Jared hung his head. “It sounds like he was a huge part of my life.”
“He was,” his father agreed, rubbing his shoulder. “You decided to give up on your dream of being an architect to study law because of what Jeremy’s parents had put him through.”
