26. Stefan
STEFAN
The tarp snapped overhead, but it held. Small mercies. Isabelle had pulled him into this gap between storage units five minutes ago, her grip on his arm urgent in a way he hadn’t seen since Cabo. He knew now.
“Two weeks.” Isabelle’s voice was low, barely audible over the storm. “Her lawyers confirmed it this morning. The NDA expires, and she’s ready to go public.”
Stefan exhaled. Stasia Larke, the actress who’d walked off Martin’s last production and vanished. Eight years of silence, and she was finally ready to tell people why.
“Stasia’s certain?” he asked.
“She’s terrified, but she’ll go on record.” Isabelle’s hand found his forearm. “We need to keep this airtight until Stasia’s ready to go public. If Martin finds out before we have everything in place, he buries it. He buries her. Everything Stasia’s built toward—gone.”
He thought of Martin yesterday on set, and the familiar cold anger moved through him. The same patterns. The same techniques he’d used on Stasia.
“The Morgan situation complicates the timeline,” he said. “Martin’s obsessed with her. Watches her constantly, finds excuses to be alone with her. If anyone finds out what she’s been hiding before we’re ready—”
“Her performance issues?” Isabelle arched an eyebrow.
“Call it that.” He wasn’t about to explain the twin switch. Isabelle didn’t need to know, and the fewer people who did, the safer Erika was. “Martin’s paranoid. On edge. If he suspects we’re building a case, he’ll bury the evidence and disappear to some country without extradition.”
“Then we move carefully.” Isabelle’s hand was firm on his shoulder. “Two weeks, Stefan. That’s all we need.”
Joder. He needed to find her before the ferry left.
Isabelle must have read his face, because she laughed. “Go. Find your actress. Just remember what’s at stake.”
“I know what’s at stake.”
Isabelle studied him for a moment. Then she nodded, something like respect flickering in her eyes. “Two weeks. Keep your head down and your eyes open. And Stefan? Whatever's happening with the Morgan girl—keep it off his radar. Martin circles things he wants to take apart.”
She disappeared into the downpour, and Stefan stepped out from under the tarp into the storm.
He scanned the chaos: crew members sprinting toward the dock, equipment cases dragged through the mud, someone shouting about a generator. He pulled out his phone, shielding the screen with his hand.
Stefan:
Have you seen Erika? She’s not at the dock.
Lilliana:
She was heading there and then went rogue. Something about her sketchbook at your villa. I told her the ferry won’t wait and she stopped responding.
Lilliana:
Stefan. She was crying. Not the cute kind. The kind where someone’s holding themselves together with both hands and losing.
Stefan:
Which direction?
Lilliana:
North toward your villa. Ten minutes ago. If you find her, don’t let her do anything stupid. And get her to that dock.
Hostia. Ten minutes was enough time to get to his villa and back if she’d actually gone there.
He started running. The path to the villas had turned to a river, mud sucking at his shoes with every stride. He ran anyway, heart hammering with something that felt too much like fear.
Mierda. He ran faster, and then he saw the golf cart, dead on the path, fifty yards from his villa, headlights dark.
She was hunched in the driver’s seat, arms wrapped around something pressed to her chest. Her sketchbook. She looked small and frozen, alone.
Relief hit him first. She was here, she was safe.
“Erika.” He closed the distance between them, raising his voice over the wind. “ The ferry’s leaving in—”
She didn’t answer. Didn’t even look up.
He stopped beside the cart. Her honey-blonde hair hung in dark wet ropes around her jaw. And she was clutching that ruined sketchbook.
He leaned his shoulder against hers, trying to shield her from the wind. For a single, heavy heartbeat, she didn’t move away. She actually caved, her head falling against his shoulder. Her breath hitched. The dampness of her hair pressed against his neck, and he held his breath.
“We’ll dry them out,” he said, looking down at the ink-stained pages. “We can save them.”
He reached for her arm to lead her out of the storm—
She flinched back like he’d burned her.
His hand hung in the air between them. Everything in her face had closed—the warmth from this morning, the almost-laugh, the way she’d looked at him. Gone.
“Erika, what happened?”
“Leave me alone!” Her voice cracked over the thunder. “Just go away, Stefan! I don’t want you here!”
She tried to push him away, her hands clumsy and weak, but her voice was a knife. He didn’t move. He just took the verbal hit and waited. Ten seconds later, the fire went out. She slumped.
She looked at him, and the hollow fury in her eyes made his stomach drop. “I heard you. Under the tarp. You and Isabelle, figuring out what to do with the Morgan situation.”
She threw his own words back at him. She’d been there. She’d heard fragments.
“Whatever you heard wasn’t about you.”
“I know what I heard.” She was shaking harder now. “‘The Morgan situation.’ ‘Keep her safe.’ Like I’m a problem to be contained.” Her voice cracked. “Was any of it real? Or have you been managing me this whole time?”
She stared at him like he’d just confirmed everything Martin had planted in her head.
“Isabelle doesn’t know about you and Anneliese. I haven’t told anyone. That conversation was about someone else entirely.”
“And ‘the Morgan situation’? That was about someone else too?”
He opened his mouth and closed it. The truth was trapped behind eight years of someone else’s silence, and he couldn’t break it open without destroying what Isabelle had built. But Erika was standing in front of him looking at him like he was just another man who’d used her, and he had to choose.
“There’s another woman.” The words came out before he could stop them. “Someone Martin hurt. Years ago. That’s who we were talking about.”
Erika went still.
“I can’t tell you her name. I can’t tell you the details, it’s not my story to tell.” He took a step closer. “But Isabelle’s been building a case against him. That’s what you heard. Keeping her safe until the lawyers are ready.”
“And the Morgan situation?”
He exhaled. “Martin’s obsessed with you. It’s making him paranoid. Harder to catch. That’s all I meant.”
She stared at him, and he couldn’t read what was happening behind her eyes. “Why should I trust you?” Her voice was small. Wounded. “You could be saying exactly what I need to hear to keep me quiet.”
“Because the last time someone needed protection from Martin, I failed. I knew what he was. I said nothing. And I’ve spent years regretting it.”
Erika’s lips parted. The hollow look in her eyes cracked, the first flicker of wanting to believe.
“I’m not making that mistake again. Not with you.”
"You didn't even like me a month ago."
"I've never once not liked you." A short, humorless laugh.
"I liked you in that restaurant before I knew your real name.
I liked you while we fought in our training sequences.
Even when I didn't realize it was you. Some idiot part of me clocked it before the rest of me caught up—that you weren't performing, not really, not even when you were trying to be her.
I just didn't have anywhere to put it yet. "
The silence stretched between them, filled with wind and the weight of everything he’d just admitted. She was searching his face, her eyes moving over his features.
He held still and let her look.
“You’re freezing,” he said finally. “Whatever you decide about me, you need to get warm. Please.”
“I’m not asking you to trust me.” He pulled off his jacket—soaked through, but it was something—and held it out to her. “I’m asking you to not die of hypothermia while you figure out whether I’m worth trusting.”
A sound escaped her. Something close to a laugh.
“That’s your argument? Don’t freeze to death?”
“It’s a good argument. Very practical.”
She stared at the jacket, then at him. He kept his arm extended.
“Everything I’ve done since I got here has been to protect you. Not Anneliese. Not the production. You.” He swallowed. “And I don’t know when it stopped being about the secret and started being about you. But it did. And I can’t take that back.”
Her breath caught, a slight hitch in her breath. Her grip on the sketchbook loosened.
“Everyone lies to me.” Her voice cracked. “Anneliese lies to me, Martin lies to me, the whole industry is built on lies. And you’re an actor. It’s literally your job to make people believe things that aren’t real.”
“You’re right,” he said. “I get paid to lie. I’m good at it. But I’m not lying now. And I don’t know how to prove that except to stand here and let you decide.”
She exhaled. The sketchbook slipped from her grip and landed in the mud, and she didn’t look down. The wind hadn't let up.
“I’m so tired of being smart.” Her voice cracked on the last word, and her expression shifted. The fight drained out of her. “I’m so tired of protecting myself from things that might hurt me. I’ve been doing it my whole life, and I’m still—” She stopped. “I’m still so alone.”
Joder. He wanted to reach for her. Wanted to pull her against him. Promise her she’d never be alone again. But this had to be her choice. He couldn’t take it from her.
“You’re not alone,” he said. “Not anymore. Not if you don’t want to be.”
She stared at him. Water caught in her lashes, slid over lips he'd been thinking about for weeks.
“For what it’s worth,” he said, water dripping from his jaw, “you’re not alone right now. You’re stranded in a hurricane with a washed-up actor who can’t feel his feet.” His voice softened. “Could be worse.”
“Could be better,” she said. But her mouth was doing something it hadn’t done since he’d found her, almost smiling.
She stepped out of the cart and crossed the distance between them in three strides, fisted her hand in his soaked shirt, and yanked him toward her.
Not running. Coming back. Her other hand came up to grip the back of his neck, and she pulled his mouth down to hers.
It wasn’t like the pool—that had been quiet, a question asked and answered.
This was everything that had happened since, compressed into contact.
Cold. She was so cold—her mouth, her fingers, the soaked fabric of her clothes pressing against his chest. But underneath the cold was heat, desperate and hungry, and when she opened her mouth against his, he stopped thinking about temperature.
His hands found her waist, her back, hauling her closer until there was no space left between them. She made a sound against his mouth—half gasp, half sob—and he swallowed it, felt her fingers dig into his shoulders like she was afraid he’d disappear.
Her teeth caught his lower lip. His hand slid into her wet hair, tilting her head back so he could kiss her deeper. She arched into him, and what she gave him hit low and sharp.
The storm could have leveled the island around them. He wouldn’t have noticed. When they finally broke apart, both gasping, her forehead dropped against his chin. Her fingers were still tangled in his shirt, still holding on like she wasn’t ready to let go.
Then, in the distance, cutting through the wind—the ferry horn. Long. Final.
Erika stiffened in his arms. They both turned to watch the lights slide into the gray until only the storm remained.
She turned back to him. Her lips were swollen, her eyes still red, and she was shaking harder than before.
“I can’t feel my hands,” she said.
“I know.” He was already steering her toward the villa, one arm around her shoulders, shielding her from the wind. “You’ve been sitting in that cart long enough to qualify as a medical emergency. We’re getting you inside.”
She let him steer her.
“You can figure out what this means tomorrow. Right now, you need to be warm.” He tightened his grip against a gust that nearly knocked them sideways. “One thing at a time. You can yell at me more once we’re inside”
“I wasn’t yelling earlier,” she said. Her voice was raw, barely there. She was shivering so hard the words came out staccato.
“You were absolutely yelling. It was terrifying.” He tucked her tighter against his side, his tone light but his eyes focused on the door ahead. “Come on. Move.”
Getting her inside was harder than it should have been, the wind fighting them every step, and by the time he got the door open and pulled her through, they were both gasping. The door slammed shut. Sudden silence, the storm muffled to a distant roar. Then the lights flickered. Once. Twice. Died.
Cono.
He found candles in the kitchen drawer, lit enough to cast the room in flickering gold. When he turned back, Erika hadn’t moved—still standing where he’d left her, arms wrapped around herself, water pooling at her feet.
“My sketchbook,” she said. “I left it in the mud.”
“I know.” He didn’t offer to go back for it. “I’m sorry.”
She nodded once. He found dry clothes for both of them. She emerged in his shirt, blonde dye streaked, looking nothing like the polished actress the world thought they knew.
“Come here,” he said.
She crossed the room slowly and folded onto the couch beside him, pulling her knees to her chest. He lifted the blanket, an invitation. She leaned into him, her head finding the hollow of his shoulder. He pulled the blanket over them both. Her shivering slowly eased.
“I wanted to be wrong about you,” she whispered. “I wanted so badly to be wrong.”
He tightened his arms around her and pressed his lips to her hair. “You were.”
Her fingers curled into his shirt. Within minutes, her breathing had evened out. Asleep. Trusting him enough to fall asleep in his arms after everything.
He stared at the candlelight on the ceiling and didn’t move for a long time.