32. Stefan
STEFAN
Stefan couldn’t remember the last time he’d been nervous about a woman. And yet here he was, adjusting the heat under his grandmother’s paella for the third time in ten minutes, checking the clock like it might have moved backward.
Seven forty-two. Eighteen minutes.
He’d changed the music twice—too moody, then too obvious, now acoustic and Spanish, like Tita’s kitchen on Sunday afternoons. He’d opened the wine to let it breathe, then worried it was breathing too much, then poured himself a glass.
Cálmate, idiota. He’d made this dish a hundred times.
But not for her. Never for someone who saw past the version he sold. He’d invited her here to see him, and now he was terrified she actually would.
The knock came at exactly eight o’clock. He wiped his hands on a dish towel, took a breath that did nothing, and crossed to the door.
Dios mío. He was in so much trouble.
Every woman he’d ever taken to dinner had shown up in something designed to be seen—heels, jewelry, strategic necklines.
Erika stood on his threshold in a faded Radiohead shirt with a hole near the collar, a black skirt that stopped above her knees, and bare feet.
No armor. No Anneliese. Just her, tugging at the hem like she wasn’t sure she’d gotten the assignment right.
She’d gotten it exactly right. And the fact she didn’t know that made him off-balance in a way he didn’t know what to do with.
“It’s a fifteen-year-old T-shirt,” she started, reading his face wrong. “I can go change—”
He pulled her inside by the hand, kicked the door shut, and kissed her before she could finish the sentence. Not hard—just enough to stop the apology in her throat. When he pulled back, her eyes were wide.
“You look like someone I want to cook dinner for,” he offered. “That’s the highest compliment my Tita ever gave anyone.”
The uncertainty on her face cracked into a smile. “Your grandmother rated people by whether she’d feed them?”
“She had a very strict hierarchy. Family, then priests, then anyone who brought wine.” He took her hand and led her toward the kitchen. “You brought yourself, which puts you above the clergy.”
She laughed, and the nervousness that had been coiling in his stomach all evening finally eased. She was here. She was real. The rest of it—the film, the secrets, Martin—could wait until tomorrow.
The villa smelled of saffron and garlic, and Erika’s stomach growled loud enough for him to hear.
She hoisted herself onto the counter beside the stove, bare legs swinging, and stole his wine glass.
She took a long sip, surveying the scene—the candles on the terrace, the music drifting from somewhere, the careful arrangement of ingredients beside the stove.
“You cook like you act,” she said. “Everything’s placed just so. The lighting, the music—” She tilted her head toward the speaker. “Is that accordion music?”
“That’s Tita’s playlist. Her theory was that the food absorbs whatever you’re listening to. Paella needs accordion and heartbreak. Anything else and the rice gets arrogant.”
“My mother used to say something similar about painting.” Erika swirled the wine. “That you had to play the right music or the colors would argue with each other. She’d put on Joni Mitchell and tell me the blues were fighting because I hadn’t earned them yet.”
Stefan stilled. “Your mother painted?”
“Where do you think I got it?” she said. “She was better than me. She just never had the chance to prove it.”
He was quiet for a moment, adjusting the heat.
“Tita would have liked your mother. She was a very serious woman about very unserious things. Used to stand right where you’re sitting, except her feet didn’t touch the ground.
Four-foot-eleven and absolutely convinced she was the tallest person in any room.
She’d have had strong opinions about your mother’s Joni Mitchell theory.
Probably would have argued about it for hours and then made her stay for dinner. ”
“She raised me, mostly. My parents both worked constantly—my mother at the restaurant, my father on job sites—so I’d go to Tita’s after school, and she’d teach me.
How to cook. How to dance without stepping on anyone’s feet.
How to sit still long enough to let the rice do its job.
” He smiled. “She said that patience was the only thing worth learning, and everything else was just showing off.”
The shrimp sizzled as he added them to the pan.
“When you start acting young, everyone wants something from you. Your agent wants you to book jobs. The studio wants you to be whatever they can sell. Tita was the only one who just wanted me to be a person first. She used to say the only honest thing a man could do was feed someone. Everything else is performance.”
“My sister would disagree with that.” Erika swirled the wine in her glass. “Anneliese thinks the only honest thing a person can do is build something. A brand, a business, a safety net. She’d say feeding someone is nice, but it doesn’t keep the lights on.”
“And what do you think?”
“I think they’re both right. And I think that’s why I can never figure out which one of them I want to be.” She looked down at her glass. “The person who feeds people or the person who makes sure there’s something to feed them with.”
He held out the wooden spoon. “Come here.”
She slid off the counter and padded over. He positioned her in front of the stove, stepping in behind her, his hand covering hers on the spoon.
“Slow,” he said. “You’re not stirring, you’re coaxing.”
She leaned back into him, and he wrapped his free arm around her waist. He didn’t need to perform for her. That was the thing.
“When this is over,” he said, “I want to take you to Cudillero. The village where I grew up. There’s a bar by the water where they play terrible music and the gin is cheap, and the view makes up for all of it.” He kissed her temple. “I want to show you where I’m from.”
Her hand stilled on the spoon.
“You’re talking about a future,” she pointed out. “With me. Off this island, in the real world, where you’re Stefan Cruz and I’m nobody’s twin.”
“That’s exactly what I’m talking about.”
She turned to face him, and he could see her fighting it—the wanting and the terror together. “I don’t know how to do that, Stefan. Plan for after. Every time I’ve tried to picture what comes next, I hit a wall.”
“Then we figure it out when we get there.” He tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. “I’m not asking you to have it mapped out. I’m asking you to leave room for me in whatever comes next.”
They ate on the terrace, plates balanced on their knees, the sky deepening to black. The paella was good—Erika scraped her plate clean with unselfconscious hunger that made his chest ache, because Anneliese would never eat like that in front of anyone.
She set her empty plate aside, tucked her feet beneath her, wine glass cradled in both hands. He watched her profile in the candlelight. The line of her nose, the curve of her mouth.
“Anneliese got famous when we were nineteen,” she said, unprompted.
“One viral video and suddenly she was everywhere. And everything I made—every painting, every sketch—felt like whispering in a room where someone else was screaming. Not on purpose. Annie never meant to drown me out.” She took a sip of wine, and the candle between them flickered, casting shifting shadows across her face.
“But who cares about some girl’s oil paintings when her twin sister is building an empire? So I stopped showing anyone. It was easier than watching people look at my work and think about her.”
He was quiet for a long time after she finished. “Your sister took up the space because someone had to,” he said finally. “That doesn’t mean the space wasn’t yours.”
She set down her wine and leaned into him, her head finding the curve of his shoulder, her hand resting on his chest. He wrapped his arm around her and held on. Above them, the stars kept coming out, one by one.
She kissed him. Not carefully—she was done with carefully. She swung one leg over his hips and settled into his lap, her hips rocking against him in a way that made his breath catch.
“Every time you touched me under that table today.” She kissed his collarbone, his throat. “Every time you looked at me like the rest of the room didn’t exist. I’ve been going out of my mind.”
Joder. He’d had a plan. Slow escalation.
She rolled her hips again, and the plan disintegrated.
“Bed,” he said, his grip finding her waist under the shirt. “I want you in my bed.”
“Then take me there.”
He stood in one motion, lifting her with him, her legs wrapping around his waist. She laughed into his neck and he carried her through the villa, knocking into a doorframe.
He laid her down on the bed, and she pulled him over her, hands greedy on his shoulders, his chest, shoving off his shirt. The ceiling fan turned above them, stirring the salt-heavy air.
This was different from the pool, where he'd stopped himself, made her wait, kept some careful distance between what he wanted and what he let himself take. Here, there was no stopping. No distance. Just the two of them in the quiet of his room, with nowhere to be and nothing left to hold back.
She slowed down. Her palms mapped his chest—not hungry now but deliberate. Learning him. The ridge of his collarbone, the scar below his ribs, the way his breath changed when her fingers traced the line from his hip to his waistband.
"I got this wrong every time," she said, her finger tracing the scar. "In my head, I mean. You're better than the version I kept drawing." She tilted her head. "What's this from?"
“Surfing accident. Cudillero. I was fourteen and trying to impress a girl.”
“Did it work?”
“I needed eleven stitches, and she laughed at me.” His mouth curved. “I have better moves now.”
“Debatable.” But she leaned down and pressed her lips to the scar, and he went completely still.