He’d responded? I hadn’t even looked at my phone since hanging up with my dad. Where was my phone? Still in the car?
I shook my head. “I saw Michael at the store. Did he tell you?”
“No,” Elijah said, a wariness in his voice. “Was he being stupid?”
I thought about the things he and Fake Dr. Franklin were talking about. How I was temporary. That’s what Elijah had told him, obviously, if Michael was repeating it. I was temporary. He didn’t want a long-distance, scheduled relationship with me. What was I even doing here? “He was with Dr. Franklin.”
Elijah’s brows went down, his eyes squinting in thought. “What do you mean? He decided to do therapy?”
Was he trying to come up with an excuse? I wouldn’t let him think about it any longer. “No, he didn’t. She wasn’t actually Dr. Franklin.”
“What?” He was confused.
“Dr. Franklin, the person we know as Dr. Franklin, isn’t actually a doctor. She was posing as her sister and Michael was hanging out with her, talking about us.”
He was silent for a moment, maybe trying to piece together what I had just said.
“Did you know all this? Did you know she wasn’t a therapist?”
“What? No.”
“Did you know Michael knew her?”
“Michael knew her?”
“Yes,” I said. “They were hanging out like friends. Just now.”
“I didn’t know. I swear.”
“He wanted to win the bet. He knew her sister was a therapist. He somehow convinced this woman to impersonate her own sister.” At least that was my theory. It was a damn good one. Really the only possible one.
He shook his head. “That competitive asshole.”
“I find it hard to believe that you two don’t know the same people.”
“It’s probably one of his college friends. We didn’t go to the same one.” A smirk was coming onto his face as if he found this all funny as well.
“She lied to us,” I said.
“We were lying to her too.”
“I told Michael I’d give him twenty-four hours to tell Tara he lied, but I’m going to tell her now.”
“Wait, what?”
“So he doesn’t have time to spin this.”
“Spin it?”
“Use his pretty words and his charm to make it seem less serious than it is.”
Elijah stood up and walked to where I was pacing on the far side of the coffee table. He grabbed my arm as I passed him and pulled me against his chest. “I thought we were going to stay out of their relationship from now on.”
I narrowed my eyes at him. “You don’t want to tell Tara at all? You want to let your brother get away with this?”
“Get away with what exactly?”
“Making us go to therapy so he could get out of it. He obviously needs some serious therapy. Why aren’t you mad about this?”
