36. Erika
ERIKA
The rooftop confrontation scene had taken four passes. On the last one, Martin nodded and moved on—no notes, no lingering looks, no fingers finding her shoulder as he passed. Just the nod. Like she was any other actress doing competent work on his film.
She hadn’t realized how starved she was for indifference until it arrived.
Now the set was dark, the crew scattered to their villas, and Erika stood on the terrace.
Three days since Isabelle’s warning, and the catastrophe she’d braced for hadn’t come.
Stefan fed her notes between takes—don’t anticipate the line, let it surprise you—and it had started clicking.
Not Anneliese clicking. Luna clicking. That brittle defiance, that refusal to be small. She was finding it.
The screen lit up against the railing. Stefan.
Stefan:
You’re on your terrace staring at the ocean like it owes you money. Come outside. I found something.
She looked up. Scanned the dark. She couldn’t see him, which meant he couldn’t see her either—which meant he just knew.
Erika:
Found something. Very mysterious. Very vague. Definitely not how people get murdered on islands.
Stefan:
Trae tus chanclas, Princesa. Trust me once.
She was already reaching for her sandals.
She found him on a stretch of beach she hadn’t known existed—past the resort lights, past the tiki bar where the crew drank on weekends, past the rocky outcrop that hid this sliver of sand. Her sandals dangled from her fingers as she picked across the cool sand. She stopped.
He’d set up a picnic.
Just a faded blanket spread across the sand, a cluster of battery-powered lanterns casting warm pools of gold, a cooler sweating condensation, and two wine glasses catching moonlight. A guitar rested on the cooler.
Stefan sat cross-legged in the center of it all, barefoot, sleeves rolled to his elbows, forearms tan against the white linen. He glanced up when he heard her approach, expression soft, unguarded.
“You found a secret beach and didn’t lead with that information?” She dropped her sandals at the edge of the blanket. “I’ve been going to the resort pool like an idiot.”
“I was saving it.” He held out his hand, palm up. The lantern light caught the line of his jaw, the dark sweep of his lashes. “I needed the right occasion.”
“A man with a guitar and a secret beach.” She took his hand, let him pull her down beside him. “This is either very romantic or the opening scene of a true crime documentary.”
“Can’t it be both?” His thumb traced the inside of her wrist. Then softer, “Mírate. That shadow under your collarbone—I wanted to trace it all day on set and couldn’t touch you.”
The honesty of it disarmed her more than the Spanish. She didn’t deflect.
He’d packed well. Cheese, grapes, crusty bread, and cured meat that tasted like it cost more than her rent. She raised an eyebrow at him as she popped another grape.
“Did you rob craft services, or is there a deli I don’t know about?”
“The resort kitchen owed me a favor.” He stretched back on his elbows, obscenely relaxed. “I may have convinced the chef that my tita’s paella recipe would change his life.”
“Did it?”
“He wept.” Stefan grinned. “Actual tears. It was very satisfying.”
They ate, and she forgot to perform. That was the thing about Stefan—he didn’t fill silence with noise. He just let it sit there, warm and unhurried.
“That last take today,” he said. “The rooftop. You know the moment I mean—where Luna turns back and the line lands before you even say it.” He refilled her glass. “The whole crew went quiet. Not polite, quiet. Forgot they were working quietly.”
She turned a piece of bread over in her fingers. “I wasn’t thinking. That’s what was different. I wasn’t hitting marks or remembering where the camera was. I just—found her.”
“That’s the thing nobody tells you about acting. The good version of it feels like the opposite of acting.”
“When does it stop being terrifying?”
“I’ll let you know.” His shoulder settled against hers. “Fifteen years in and I still white-knuckle half my takes. The rest is muscle memory and hoping nobody notices.”
She looked at him—the easy posture, the rolled sleeves. “You’re telling me Stefan Cruz gets scared on set.”
“I’m telling you everyone does. The difference between you and half the actors I’ve worked with is you think the fear means you don’t belong here.” He picked up the wine bottle. “It means the opposite.”
The waves broke against the sand. “I keep waiting for the whole thing to collapse. For someone to look at me and just—know.”
“They won’t.”
“You did.”
The quiet settled between them. Not awkward—just full.
Her gaze drifted to the guitar propped against the cooler. “Is that for show, or do you actually play?”
Stefan’s face shifted, the confidence dimming. “My father taught me. Said if I was going to break his heart by leaving the village, I should at least take something home with me.”
She waited.
“He passed away when I was twenty-three. Heart attack. I was on set in Vancouver when I got the call.” He said it plainly. “I still play the songs he taught me. He’d be furious I don’t practice more.”
He reached for the guitar and settled it against his chest like it belonged there. Thumbed a chord. “Alma de mi vida. The story of a love. Old, sad, very dramatic—he used to play it for my mother when he thought no one was watching. I’d spy on them through the kitchen window.”
He played. Not the casual strumming of a man who’d learned enough to impress at parties.
This was muscle memory—a father’s patient hands guiding his son’s across the frets, years ago, worn into bone.
His fingers moved sure and unhurried. Light caught the tendons in his wrists.
His eyes were half-closed, his voice found the melody, low, under his breath.
Sin tu alma, mi vida se apagó. It cracked on a note, and he kept going.
A man giving himself away with a dead man’s song. She wanted to paint him like this—the exact angle of his jaw, grief and music in the same breath. He wasn’t performing for anyone, least of all her.
The last note held longer than it should have, and then there were only the waves. Stefan looked up, and his expression shifted—tender, wary.
She didn’t realize she was crying until his thumb crossed her cheek and came away wet.
“Your father,” she said. Her voice was rough but she didn’t bother smoothing it.
“The way you played that—like you were having a conversation with someone who wasn’t here anymore.
” She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand.
“I paint like that sometimes. Arguing with a canvas about something I can’t say out loud.
I didn’t know music could do the same thing. ”
He set the guitar aside, his knee pressing against hers, and was quiet long enough that she almost took it back.
“Nobody’s ever heard it like that before.” His fingers found the back of her neck, threading into her hair. “Everyone else hears a sad song. You heard him.”
She kissed him first.
It wasn’t a decision so much as a collapse—the distance between them unbearable, her hands fisting in his shirt, pulling him down to her. He made a low, relieved sound against her mouth, arms wrapping around her.
They tumbled back onto the blanket. His weight pressed her down, and she arched up into him, needing every inch of contact. His mouth left hers to trace her throat, teeth grazing her pulse, and she gasped.
He pulled back just enough to look at her, eyes dark and searching. “Every day I have to pretend on set that this isn't the only thing I think about. I'm getting worse at it, not better.”
Her laugh came out shaky. “You hid it better than I did.”
“Barely.” He kissed her jaw, the corner of her mouth. “Every time you looked away from the camera, I wanted to drag you off set and remind you I was watching too.”
His hand found the hem of her dress. “Yes?”
“Yes.” She lifted her hips.
He took his time—mouth on her collarbone, tracing the soft curve of her breast, her stomach. Lantern light painted gold across his shoulders; waves whispered in the dark. She clutched his shoulders, anchoring herself as heat built under her skin.
“I want to keep every sound you make tonight,” he said against her hip, voice rough with reverence.
“Then don’t stop,” she whispered. “Make me remember this when I’m alone again.”
He groaned low and moved lower, building her up with deliberate strokes until her thighs trembled against his shoulders. When she shattered, he held her through the aftershocks, kissing tears from her cheeks, saying soft Spanish she caught only in fragments.
Then he rose over her, skin against skin, nothing between them but moonlight and salt air. He paused, forehead pressed to hers, breath ragged.
“Look at me.”
She did. His eyes held hers. “I keep waiting for the moment you disappear,” he said. “Like the set wraps and you’re gone. And then you’re still here.”
He pushed inside her slowly. She winced at the stretch, the fullness. She wrapped her legs around him, pulling him deeper, nails pressing into his back.
They moved together—slow at first, then deeper. Pleasure built, her arching to meet him, his groans low against her ear.
“Te necesito aquí,” he said against her skin. “Aunque sea solo esta noche.”
The words undid her. She clung harder, overwhelmed—by sensation, by him. When she came apart beneath him—shaking, tears spilling again—he followed, her name torn out of him, spilling into her with a broken, shuddering sound.
Afterward, they lay tangled together, the blanket half-buried in sand. He traced patterns on her hip, his breathing slowing against her shoulder. She gazed at the stars overhead, and the ground opened beneath her.
I love him.
Well. Fuck.
The thought landed and her whole body went still. She loved him, and that was the most terrifying thing, because this wasn’t her life. Borrowed time on a borrowed island. And when the cameras stopped rolling, when she went back to being just Erika, would any of this survive?
“You went somewhere,” he said, half-asleep, nose against her hair.
“I’m thinking about how sandy this blanket is,” she said. “This is going in my memoir. Chapter one: death by exfoliation.”
“This is what I get for trying to be romantic,” he said. “Serenaded you, fed you, made love to you under the stars, and your takeaway is sand.”
“It was perfect,” she said. “Sand and all.”
He kissed her temple, still laughing, and she closed her eyes and let herself have this one moment.
He walked her to her villa, hand on her lower back, thumb drawing circles that raised goose bumps. At the door, she reached for the handle and he spun her around, pressing her into the frame. He kissed her goodnight, the kind of kiss that reminded her exactly what they’d been doing an hour ago.
“Stay,” he said against her mouth, and the word undid her.
She wanted to so badly it frightened her.
“Tomorrow,” she said. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”
He stepped back, and the look he gave her from the path—half-shadowed, still wrecked—was worth more than anything he could have said. She watched him disappear into the dark.
She was still smiling when she pushed inside and saw the envelope on the floor.
Plain white. No postmark. Anneliese—in handwriting she didn’t recognize. She bent to pick it up, already assuming a call sheet or script revision.
A photograph slid out. The beach at dawn.
The morning mist still clinging to the sand.
It was from the race—the moment they’d collapsed by the palms, looking less like two actors finishing a workout and more like two people who’d forgotten the world was watching.
Stefan was leaning over her, his hand braced against the trunk beside her head, his face inches from hers.
She sat down on the floor because her legs stopped working. She turned it over—glossy white, nothing. Inside the envelope, a single note, folded once.
You belong to this production. To me. The sooner Cruz understands that, the better for everyone. Especially him.—M
Every sound from tonight—the guitar, his voice cracking on a note, her own name in his mouth—curdled at the back of her throat.
She looked at the photograph again. At the most private moment of her life, flattened into leverage by a man who thought he owned her.