24. Erika
ERIKA
Erika woke to the moan of wind against shutters and a sky the color of wet slate. Rain tapped against the window in uneven bursts, and the palm outside her villa was bent nearly sideways.
Lils:
Storm upgraded. Shooting’s off for the day. Martin tried to overrule the weather and lost. Sleep in—you’ve earned it.
Lils:
Also Isabelle is “taking meetings” which means she’s interrogating people over room service. Stay in your villa if you can. I’ll run interference.
A whole day with no cameras. No Martin. She threw off the covers. The villa felt smaller than usual. Her gaze caught on the dresser—the sketchbook. She hadn’t opened it since arriving on the island. But she opened it now.
Outside, the storm had eased to a fine mist, the wind dying down to something almost gentle—a lull, not an ending.
The pool deck was deserted, the covered cabana at its edge the only dry spot on the property.
She settled into a lounge chair under it, opened to a blank page, and told herself it was practice.
She’d meant to draw the storm. That’s not what happened.
The broad sweep of shoulders emerged first, then the column of a throat. Water streaming down skin in rivulets. She worked in quick strokes, shading the planes of his chest. The jaw came easily, strong and stubborn, shadowed with stubble she could almost feel beneath her fingertips.
The mouth gave her trouble. How did you capture a smirk like his?
She erased twice, three times, before getting the curve of his lower lip right.
His eyes defeated her. She’d been studying them since week one.
Dark and knowing, with flecks of amber she’d only noticed when he stood close enough to blur.
“Interesting technique.”
She froze, then slammed the sketchbook shut so hard the pages crumpled, spinning to find Stefan standing there with coffee in hand and a grin that made her want to shove him into the pool.
“Do you just materialize out of thin air, or is sneaking up on people a hobby?”
“I walked across the entire deck. You were too busy to notice.” His gaze dropped to the sketchbook she was clutching. “Anatomy practice?”
“Figure drawing. Standard exercise.”
He raised an eyebrow and settled into the lounge chair beside hers, uninvited. “And you happened to choose my figure?”
Her neck went hot. “I was working from general memory. Of bodies. Not specifically yours.”
“Corazón, I saw my own abs. I know what they look like.” He sipped his coffee. “You got the proportions right, by the way. I’m flattered.”
“Don’t be. I’ve drawn hundreds of figure studies. You’re just . . .”
“Convenient.” That dimple appeared. “Is that what we’re calling it?”
He set his coffee down on the side table between the loungers, his voice going quiet. “You were really concentrating. I stood there for almost a minute before you noticed. Can I see more of the drawing?”
“No.” She clutched the sketchbook tighter.
“Why not?”
“Because it’s embarrassing and unfinished.”
“I won’t judge.” He nodded toward the sketchbook, where a corner of an older drawing was visible. “That’s not amateur hour. That’s real skill.”
She gripped tighter, exposed in a way that had nothing to do with the drawing of his half-naked body.
“You’ve seen me without my guard. Last night, by the pool, I don’t say things like that to people. About Isabelle. About any of it.” He held her gaze. “Fair’s fair.”
Instead, she opened the sketchbook and flipped past the drawing of him to the older work. A portrait of a cat mid-yawn, every whisker drawn in careful detail. Stefan didn’t grab the sketchbook. He waited for her to turn the pages.
“This one’s old.” She paused on the hills behind CalArts at dusk. “The lighting was a nightmare. I must have mixed that shadow color forty times.”
He leaned closer, and she caught coffee and soap and skin. “It looks like you could walk into it.” When she ran out of pages, neither of them spoke.
“Erika.” His voice was different now. “This is what you should be doing.”
“The art world disagrees.”
“Then the art world is full of idiots.” He reached out, fingers hovering over a watercolor study of her own hands. “This isn’t decoration. Every shadow in here is doing something. Most artists fake that. You didn’t.”
The words hit harder than they should have. “The galleries don’t care about shadows. They care about connections, whether your aesthetic is trending. I don’t have the right name or the right story. I’m nobody. I just share a face with someone famous.”
“Bullshit.” The word was sharp enough to make her look up. “You don't share a face with her. She shares a face with you. And whatever's making the two of us work on camera—that's you, not her.
She closed the sketchbook a little tighter. “Anyway . . . that’s usually where the story ends. Girl stops submitting. Girl gets a day job. Girl stops calling it art.”
“Why’d you stop?”
“The rejections piled up. After graduation, I sent my portfolio everywhere: galleries, studios, and agencies. They all said the same things. After a while, you hear no, no, no until it’s the only word that makes sense.”
She traced the edge of the sketchbook cover.
“Anneliese tried to help. She always does. But I needed to do it myself. She’s been carrying us since we were teenagers, since our parents died.
For once, I wanted to be the one who made it on my own merit.
But the rejections kept coming, and it felt .
. .” She exhaled. “Easier to put the portfolio away than to keep sending it out.”
Stefan didn’t offer advice. He sat with her, his shoulder almost touching hers.
“My father thought I was a clown,” he said. “A payaso. Back in Cudillero, acting isn’t a career. It’s what children do before they get real jobs.”
He stared at the water.
“When I dropped out of university for my first telenovela, he didn’t speak to me for six months. Didn’t answer calls, didn’t open letters.” Something closed in his face. “I sent him reviews, press clippings, the show was the biggest hit of the season. He sent it all back unopened.”
“Stefan . . .”
“And the irony?” He laughed, bitter. “Hollywood still only sees one thing. The Latin lover. The exotic love interest. Every script wants me shirtless by page ten. Every interviewer asks about my ‘passionate Spanish temperament.’”
He shook his head. “He died thinking I was a joke. Hollywood thinks I’m a stereotype. Neither sees me.”
“I know exactly what that feels like.” She pulled her knees tighter. “Being reduced to one thing. The version of you people decided on before you walked in the room.”
The wind gusted stronger, lifting the sketchbook pages. Neither of them moved.
“You’re not invisible to me,” he said. “You never were.”
“That first week on set, I knew something was off. You looked at the world differently than she does.” His mouth curved.
“At the PLUMP party, you were sitting alone watching a waiter balance a tray like it was the most fascinating thing in the room. Anneliese would never sit still that long without an audience.”
A laugh escaped her, surprised and watery. “You clocked me because I was watching a waiter?”
"I clocked you because you were the only person in that room who wasn't performing." He tucked wind-blown hair behind her ear. "She performs for the world. You hide from it. But when you think no one's watching . . ." His thumb traced her cheekbone. "There you are."
Rain fell steadily, dimpling the pool just beyond the cabana's edge, but she couldn't move. His hand cradled her face.
“Stefan.” She wasn’t sure if it was a warning or an invitation.
“I know there are a hundred reasons we shouldn’t—”
“A hundred and twelve. I counted.”
His laugh was soft. “Of course you did.”
“Erika.” Her name, rough and wanting. “Dime que pare. Tell me to stop.”
“I don’t want you to stop,” she whispered.
She kissed him.
Not falling into him. Choosing him. Her hand came up to the back of his neck and held on, and he made a sound against her mouth that she felt in her spine. His hand slid into her hair. Somewhere past the cabana's edge, the storm was getting louder, but neither of them moved.
When they broke apart, she was still holding his shirt.
He pressed his forehead to hers, breathing unsteady. Neither of them spoke. The wind had picked up—she could feel it now, the temperature dropping, the sky doing something different overhead.
“Storm’s coming.” His voice was rough.
“I know.”
Neither of them moved.
Thunder cracked directly overhead, so violent the pool deck shuddered beneath them. The rain came sideways in the same second—instant and blinding—and neither of them stepped back under the cabana roof.
“There you two are!” Lily appeared at the edge of the pool deck, already drenched. “Storm’s escalating. Everyone’s confined to villas. I need you. Now.”
Erika stumbled up from the lounge chair. The sketchbook lay forgotten on the lounge behind her. She looked back at Stefan—his expression doing something she couldn't quite make out, his face blurring like a wet charcoal line—and then Lily had her arm and was pulling her toward the villa.
She didn’t look back again. She didn’t need to.