37. Erika
ERIKA
At five in the morning, she’d hidden the photo in her sketchbook—slid it between pages, charcoal smudging her fingertips, Martin’s evidence pressed flat against a half-finished drawing of the coastline. Like burying poison in the only clean place she had left.
She hadn’t slept. Had sat on the bathroom floor with the shower running, turning Martin’s note over in her hands until the creases went soft. You belong to this production. To me. She kept coming back to the last line. Especially him.
It wasn’t a threat. It was a leash. And he’d just let her know he was holding it.
The screen on her nightstand lit up. Then again.
Stefan:
Buenos días, mi alma. Can’t stop hearing my name the way you said it. I’m wrecked.
Stefan:
I made coffee for two. Stared at your empty cup for ten minutes like an idiot. This is what you’ve done to me.
Her throat closed. She typed I love you and deleted it. Typed something happened and deleted that too.
Especially him.
Erika:
Can’t do it this morning. I’m sorry. Later?
Stefan:
Erika. What’s wrong?
Not a question. He’d read three words and seen right through them.
Erika:
Rough night. I just need to get through today.
Stefan:
You don’t text like that when things are fine.
She closed her eyes. Of course he noticed. He always noticed.
Erika:
I promise. I just need some air. Please.
He didn’t respond for a long time. Then:
Stefan:
Estoy aquí. Cuando estés lista.
She didn’t know all the words, but she knew estoy aquí—he’d said it to her on set weeks ago, hand on her shoulder, when she was still pretending to be someone else and he already knew. It had been safe then. Now it was what she was about to destroy.
She dropped the phone on the bed, grabbed her bag, and left. The humidity hit thick and salt-heavy the moment she stepped outside.
She didn’t look at Stefan like she’d spent the night in his arms. Hit her marks, smiled when the scene called for it, and performed the version of herself that didn’t have a photograph hidden in a sketchbook and a leash around her throat.
Lily came up beside her, tablet in hand. “You look like you swallowed something sharp and you’re trying to smile through it.” She tilted her head. “What happened between last night and right now?”
“Nothing. Bad sleep.”
“You’re a terrible liar. Which is a problem, because in about ten minutes you’re going to be on camera and Martin reads faces better than I do.
” Lily opened her mouth to push harder, but Stefan was already crossing toward them—still in his own clothes, hair damp from a shower, a coffee in each hand because he’d made her one anyway despite what she’d texted.
“Made you one anyway.” He held the coffee out, the easy grin in place.
She reached for the cup, and when their fingers brushed, her whole body flinched—sharp, involuntary, the kind of recoil you can’t dress up as anything else.
He didn’t miss it. The grin stayed but his eyes shifted. He set the coffee on the equipment case beside her.
“Talk to me.” Quiet enough that Lily couldn’t hear.
“I’ll be fine once I’m on camera. Always am.”
That last part was cruel and she knew it—always am, like last night was just another performance. She watched it land, watched him absorb it. He didn’t flinch the way she had. His knuckle grazed her jaw, barely a touch, and he walked away without pushing.
Which was worse. So much worse than if he’d pushed.
Lily’s hand found her arm. “Okay. You and me. Before lunch.” Not a request.
Erika grabbed the excuse and bolted, the back of her neck prickling the whole way.
“Scene forty-two. The kiss.” Martin’s voice carried across the set. “I want to see a woman who’s terrified of how much she wants something that’s going to destroy her.” He looked directly at her when he said it. “Show me that.”
She’d known this was coming. It had been on the call sheet for days. But she hadn’t expected to film it today. After last night. After the photo. After Martin had made it clear he’d been watching.
Stefan came up beside her, already in costume. He didn’t touch her. Didn’t try the easy grin. Just stood close enough that she could smell the beach on his skin and said, “I’ve got you. Whatever you need this to be, I’ll follow your lead.”
Someone called places. The lights came up. Martin leaned into the monitor, fingers steepled.
“Action.”
Stefan’s hand cupped her face—gentle, tentative, scripted. His thumb brushed her cheekbone, and her breath caught. Not acting. Not even close.
“Luna.” His voice dropped, raw and aching. “You asked me once what I was afraid of. It’s this. It’s you. It’s how much I want something I’m not supposed to have.”
Say your line. Just say the line and don’t think about his mouth on your collarbone six hours ago, don’t think about the photograph, don’t think about Martin watching this on a monitor with the same eyes that watched you on that beach—
“Then fall.” It came out broken.
He kissed her. And her body didn’t know the difference between the script and last night—she leaned into him, opened for him, and for a moment there was no camera, no crew, no Martin studying the monitor with his fingers steepled, assessing.
“Cut.” Martin’s voice, soft. Satisfied. “Beautiful. But I need more, Anneliese. I need to see a woman who doesn’t recognize herself anymore.” He paused, letting the silence do its work. “You know what that feels like, don’t you?”
They reset. Filmed it again. And again. Each take stripped another layer away—the distance she’d built that morning, the mask she’d worn to set, the lie she’d told Stefan with her flinch, her cruelty, her always am.
By the fifth take, Martin was smiling, and Erika couldn’t remember which parts of her performance were Luna’s and which were the wreckage he’d made of her.
“Very . . . authentic.” Martin’s voice found her before she’d even stepped off her mark. “Both of you. Truly special.”
Stefan’s hand found her elbow. She pulled away—gently, deliberately—and kept walking.
She’d made it halfway to the water station when Martin fell into step beside her, matching her pace without asking.
“You have a minute,” he said. It wasn’t a question either.
They stopped at the edge of the set where the sand went soft and the crew noise faded to murmur. Martin stood with his back to the ocean. She could smell his cologne—oud, too much of it.
“I wanted to check in,” he said. “You’ve been doing remarkable work. That scene just now—I wasn’t directing at the end. Did you notice? I just let the camera run.” He tilted his head. “That’s rare. That kind of truth on screen.”
“I appreciate that.” She kept her voice level.
“Which is why I feel protective of it.” His expression shifted—not concerned, exactly. Ownership. “Of you.”
She waited.
“Stefan Cruz.” He said the name carefully.
“Your chemistry reads beautifully. I cast for it—you should know that. I saw it in both of you before either of you did.” He paused.
“But I’ve been doing this for thirty years, Anneliese.
I’ve watched it happen to women who were far more prepared for it than you are. ”
“I can handle myself.”
“I’m sure you can.” He reached out and squeezed her shoulder—fatherly, calibrated, skin-crawling.
“But the studio is watching this production very carefully. Your performance is the reason they’re watching.
I’d hate for anything to compromise that.
” His hand lingered a beat too long. “Or to give anyone a reason to look more closely at the casting decisions I’ve made. ”
Beneath the concern, beneath the warmth, beneath the thirty years of practice—the same voice that had left a photograph on her nightstand. You belong to this production. To me.
“I hear you.” She held his gaze. Didn’t flinch, didn’t nod, didn’t give him the gratitude he was waiting for.
“Good.” He smiled, patted her shoulder once, and walked toward the monitors.
She stood in the sand with the sun on her face and her skin crawling where his hand had been. Across the set, Stefan caught her eye and smiled—that private one, the one she’d kissed last night under stars from a different lifetime.
Martin’s voice in her ear: I’d hate for anything to compromise that.
It hadn’t sounded like a threat. That was what made it so effective. It sounded like a man who cared about her career, and if she hadn’t found a photograph tucked into her door that morning, she might have believed him.
She might have believed all of it.
Across the set, Stefan stood with one of the grips, laughing about something she couldn’t hear. Easy. Open.
She walked to the water station. Poured a cup. Drank it slowly. I’ve watched it happen to women who were far more prepared for it than you are. She poured another cup. Her hands were steady. She made sure of it.
Stefan found her ten minutes later, leaning against the equipment truck with her script open to a page she hadn’t read a word of.
He stopped a few feet away. Kept his hands in his pockets—she noticed that. After this morning, after the flinch, the texts, the cruelty she’d handed him on set, he was giving her the space she’d asked for.
“You’re holding that script like a shield,” he said. “Who are you hiding from?”
She closed it. “How long were you watching me not read?”
“Long enough.” He leaned against the truck beside her, close but not touching. “What did Martin want?”
So he’d seen them. Of course he had.
“He wanted me to know he cast us for chemistry.” She kept her eyes on the set. “And that he’d hate to see anything compromise it. Or give the studio a reason to look too closely at his casting decisions.”
Stefan was quiet. Then, “He folded a threat to you inside a threat to himself.”
“In about ninety seconds flat. While squeezing my shoulder like a proud father.”
“And?”
“And he told me you have a pattern.” She turned to look at him. “That you do this. Connect, and then the project ends, and the woman’s the one left standing in it.”
Something registered on his face. Not surprise—recognition.
“Do you believe that?”
“I believe he’s good enough that I almost couldn’t find the threat underneath the concern.” She held his gaze. “I know what he is, Stefan. I just don’t know what to do about it yet.”
She almost told him then. The photo, the note, the leash tightening every hour. It sat right there at the back of her teeth. But the crew was twenty feet away and Martin was somewhere on this set, watching them.
He studied her for a long moment. Then he reached out—slowly, giving her time to pull away—and tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. His fingers grazed her jaw, and she let herself lean into his hand for one breath. Two.
“You will. And I’ll be here when you do.”
She nodded. Stepped back before she lost her nerve.
“Come on. Time to be a professional.” The word tasted like Martin’s voice in her mouth. She swallowed it and walked toward the lights.