Page 27 of Open Water
"Youarethe wrong person."
"I was showing you the risk!"
"By being the risk?"
"Because you weren'tseeingit! Walking around campus with Moore like nobody was paying attention —"
"And the video? You recorded the race. You started the rumor."
His jaw tightened. Confirmation enough.
"The photo from the mixer?"
"I followed you. I knew what was happening." His voice dropped. "And I was right."
"You were stalking me."
"I wasprotectingyou!" The girl two tables over looked up. Marcus dropped his volume but not his intensity. "Someone had to. You weren't listening. Not when I tried to talk to you about Moore. Not when I told you he wasn't our kind of people. Not when I —"
He stopped. A door opening he hadn't meant to open.
"Not when you what?"
"Nothing."
"Marcus."
"Doesn't matter."
"What did you do?"
The fight drained out of his face.
"I called your father with my concerns."
The floor dropped out.
Not the texts. Not the photo. Not the intimidation campaign that had been grinding me down for months. Marcus had called my father. Had picked up the phone and called the man whose pressure Marcus himself had called toxic right before the scrimmage.
"You told me his opinion didn't matter. Right before the scrimmage against Riverside. You said 'fuck him.'"
Marcus flinched.
"And then you called him?"
"Those are two different things!" His voice cracked. "Your dad pressuring you about rowing? That's toxic. I meant what I said."
"But —"
"Butthis?" His hand cut through the air. "This isn't rowing. This is you throwing everything away over some kid from a public school who makes seven dollars an hour at a marina."
"Don't talk about him like that."
"Your father needed to know."
"What exactly did you tell him?"
"That you kissed Liam. That it was a phase. That you were experimenting and I was trying to help you through it."
