The Wrong Name, The Wrong Love novel · Chapter 7 of 24
Chapter 7: What He Knew
"Say it," Eli said. "Whatever it is."
I stood in the work light with my arms folded over my phone.
"Last night she walked out on your stage in my words," I said. "You knew she wasn't me. You kissed her cheek and thanked her."
"I did."
"She had a sign with her face on it, and kids screaming her name, and you could have stopped the whole thing with one sentence."
"I could have."
"Why didn't you?"
He did not make excuses, which made it harder.
He got down off the stage and stood below me in the pit, so that for once I was the taller one.
"Because one of your letters said, 'Please don't try to find me,'" Eli said. "You wrote it that first winter. You said you liked being a person nobody knew."
My mouth went dry.
"If I stopped the show and said, this woman is a fake, what happens next?" he asked. "The label hires people. A blog finds her friends. Somebody sits outside your clinic with a camera. You'd have been in every feed by morning, and you had asked me not to."
"So you let her use my name instead."
"I let her use it for a few nights, to see who she'd lead me to." He shook his head. "I should have found a better way. I didn't. I thought if the real T. was out there, she'd be watching the same show I was."
"I was watching it," I said. "From the lot, in Columbus. I listened to the whole thing through the wall."
His face changed.
"You were there."
"At Gate C. With a ticket that wouldn't scan." The words came out cold. "Now Connor sits in your VIP row, and you let her put him there."
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