The Bachelor's Matt James recalls the "hard conversation" he had with Rachael Kirkconnell after her Antebellum party photos surfaced

E! Online

In his new book First Impressions: Off-Screen Conversations With a Bachelor on Race, Family, and Forgiveness, James detailed his and Kirkconnell's reaction to the racial controversy that made headlines during his season of The Bachelor. "She mentioned that some things about her past had popped up on the web, but I shrugged it off and told her not to worry about it," he writes in an excerpt published by Cosmopolitan. "The Twitter mob would have a new target soon enough. Then the picture dropped." James wrote Rachael called him "immediately" about the photos, but he was be her side from the start. "I knew the woman I'd chosen to be with. Celebrity gossip, no matter how sensitive, wouldn't shape my opinion of her," he wrote. "Her voice on the other end was strained and unsteady...I assured her that I knew who she was." But they were in different states. "I needed to see Rachael's face for the hard conversation ahead," he wrote. "I hadn't felt so nervous to see Rachael since handing her the final rose. We'd come a long way, even since then, but there was a formalness to our meeting this time that felt unfamiliar and uneasy."