42. Stefan
STEFAN
She'd shown up at his door a few hours after ignoring his call, no explanation offered, and he hadn't asked for one—just pulled her inside and held on.
Later, in the dark, she'd kissed him like she was trying to memorize it, and he'd said the thing he'd been circling for days because it felt true and because she looked like she needed to hear it.
I love you. She hadn't said it back. He'd told himself that was fine.
He knew before she moved.
Her breathing had changed—the rhythm of a woman deciding, not resting. He’d been lying in the dark with her head on his chest and his arm around her waist, listening to her not sleep, telling himself it was a bad day, the weeks of pressure, the weight of everything she still wouldn’t name.
Then she sat up, and the air where her body had been went cold.
“I have to go.” She said it to the dark. Already reaching for her clothes. “Early call time.”
There was no early call time.
He sat up. He watched her pull his stolen shirt over her head, reaching for her own. She kept her back to him while she dressed. That told him everything.
“This isn’t about call time.” He kept his voice even, jaw locked. “You kissed me like you were saying goodbye and now you’re getting dressed in the dark. Tell me what this actually is.”
She turned around. And he didn’t recognize her. The warmth was gone, the softness, the woman who’d pressed her face into his neck and held on.
“This isn’t working. Us. This.” She gestured between them, and the gesture was too sharp, too controlled. “The paparazzi, the tabloids—I’m not built for your life, Stefan, and pretending I am is going to break me.”
"I love you." He said it plainly, like a fact, not a plea. "I've said those words before, to women who wanted the version of me that sells magazines. I've never once meant them until you. And I'm not letting you walk out of here without hearing it because you've decided I don't get a vote."
"You've been on this island for weeks. You've handled Martin Blackwell and a fraudulent contract and photographers screaming your sister’s name every morning.” He held her gaze. “And tonight—after everything—my life is what breaks you.”
“It’s not just your life. It’s all of the craziness. The noise, the scrutiny—I can’t keep pretending I’m someone who belongs in this.”
“I can hear you not believing that.”
She pulled her hair back—sharp, practiced, armoring herself one piece at a time. “You’re an actor, Stefan. You make people feel things for a living. And somewhere along the way you stopped knowing the difference between what’s real and what’s performance.”
The words found the one place in him that had no armor. The fear he’d carried long before her—that his whole life was a set, that nothing he felt could be trusted because feeling was his profession. She knew that fear because he’d told her, on the beach, in the dark, with her hand over his heart.
And she was using it.
"That's not what this is and you know it." He stood. She took a step back. He stopped where he was—gave her the distance, even now. "I just handed you the one thing I've never given anyone, and you didn't say it back. Not even close." He watched her face for the crack he knew was there.
Her eyes moved—the fracture running through the mask, the woman underneath fighting to the surface.
“Then let me go.”
“Tell me why. The real reason.”
“I just told you—”
“You told me a story.” He stayed where he was, hands at his sides. “What happened in Martin’s office this morning?”
She went still. Not composure—the stillness of a woman who’d heard the one question she couldn’t answer.
“Nothing happened in Martin’s office.”
“You left my bed this morning and walked to that building and eight hours later you showed up at my door looking like someone had taken something out of you. And now you’re standing here telling me I’m the problem.” He didn’t move toward her. “Don’t treat me like I’m stupid, Erika.”
“This isn’t about Martin.”
“Every flinch. Every cold text. Every time you’ve pulled away.” His voice was steady but his hands wouldn’t stop and he let her see it. “You said yet. You looked me in the eye and said yet. Was that a lie too?”
Her face crumpled—just for a second—and then she rebuilt it, and watching her put the mask back together in real time was the worst thing he’d ever seen.
“I can’t do this.” The rehearsal was cracking, her voice roughening into something real.
“I can’t stand here and watch you be this—this man who makes me eggs and says te amo like it costs him nothing—because it’s going to cost you everything.
And if I tell you why, you’ll do something reckless and noble and Martin will—”
She stopped. Caught herself. But the name was already in the room.
He watched her realize what she’d done—the way her face went white, the way her hand came up like she could push the word back in. Martin. She’d said Martin.
“Erika.” He said it carefully. “What did he do to you?”
“Nothing. This isn’t—” She was shaking now, both hands clenched at her sides. “I love you. And that’s exactly the problem, Stefan, because the person I’m protecting you from will use that against you and you will let him.”
I love you. She said it like a door closing. It landed in his chest—the thing he’d wanted to hear more than anything—and it was the worst sound in the world because it came wrapped in goodbye.
“You love me and you’re leaving.” He heard his own voice from somewhere far away. “And I’m supposed to just stand here.”
“If I tell you, you’ll fight. And you’ll lose. And I’ll have to watch.” She was at the door now, her hand on the handle, her back to him. “I can survive him. I’ve been surviving him for weeks. But I can’t survive being the reason you lose everything.”
Survive him. Like it was a fact of weather, not a man.
She turned back then, her eyes searching his one last time—not with anger, but with a kind of devastating pity. “You’re the opposite of difficult, Stefan. That’s the problem. You’re too easy to love and too easy for him to break, and I won’t be the one who hand-delivers you to him.”
“I’m sorry.” Almost nothing. “I’m so sorry, Stefan.”
He wanted to cross the room. Every part of him was pulling toward her—to press her for what Martin had actually done, to force the conversation she was running from, to fight for her the way she was terrified he would.
But she’d just told him why she was leaving.
Because he would fight. Because Martin would use it.
And if he pushed past this moment—if he demanded, insisted, refused to let her walk out—he became another man who took her choices away.
“You don’t have to do this by yourself.”
“Yeah.” Her voice broke on it. “I really do.”
The door opened. The door closed. The villa went quiet.
He stood where she’d left him for a long time. The woman he loved was walking away from him because she believed it was the only way to save him.
And he let her. Because she’d asked. And because the man she’d just described—was going to have to be that man right now, patient, steady, still, even though every part of it felt like dying.