44. Stefan
STEFAN
Stefan hadn’t slept, which he knew because he’d watched every hour change on the villa ceiling—the blue dark of midnight, the gray nothing of three a.m., the pink at dawn that meant he’d run out of time.
His last text sat on the screen with a read receipt from eleven hours ago.
Can we talk? She’d seen it. She hadn’t answered.
And every time he’d gotten close to her on set over the past three days, she’d found somewhere else to be—wardrobe, craft services, a suddenly urgent conversation with whoever happened to be standing nearest—and Stefan had told himself she needed space because that’s what she always needed, and he’d given it, and it was killing him.
He pulled on shorts and a T-shirt and was out the door before he thought about it, the morning air heavy on him—humid, salt-thick. Her villa was fifty yards down the path. He knocked. He could feel her on the other side.
“Erika.” He kept his voice low because the walls were thin. “I saw your light on at three. I know you’re not sleeping either.”
Nothing. He pressed his palm flat against the wood and waited, and the bougainvillea threw shifting patterns on the stucco. She didn’t open the door.
He pulled out his phone and called. Voicemail—that generic recording she’d never bothered to personalize.
“It’s me. I’m at your door, which you know, because you’re ignoring me.
” His voice came out rougher than he intended.
“Three days ago, you were in my arms. You looked at me like—” He stopped.
This wasn’t something to say to a recording.
“And now I can’t get you to look at me, and I don’t know if that’s because of something I did or because someone else did something to you, and I need you to tell me which one it is. ”
He pressed his forehead against the door. “No me importa what it is. Whatever happened, whatever you’re carrying, you don’t have to carry it alone.” A breath. “I’m not going anywhere. Eso es todo. That’s the whole message.”
He pocketed the phone and stood there with his forehead against the wood, imagining she was doing the same thing on the other side and knowing she probably wasn’t, and then he pushed off and straightened his shoulders. Thirty-five minutes to call time.
The set was worse. At least at her door, he could pretend she might not be home. Here, she was thirty feet away, hitting her mark in the sand, and she still wouldn’t look at him.
Stefan leaned against the equipment truck and watched her instead of the monitors—the rigid line of her shoulders, the smile she gave the AD. That wasn’t her smile. That was Anneliese’s smile—the public one, the professional one—and on Erika’s face, she was disappearing.
The slate clapped and she became Luna, and he stood on his mark close enough to smell her shampoo and watched her walk toward him and deliver the line—“I thought you were different”—and her voice cracked on the last word, and for one unguarded second, her eyes met his and he saw it.
Terror. Exhaustion. Something like grief.
Then Martin called cut and the mask slammed back into place and she stepped away from him.
?Qué te hizo, Erika?
Because it was Martin. He knew that much—knew it without being able to prove it, in the flinch when that voice cut across the sand, in how she’d been holding herself smaller every day like she was trying to fold herself into a place he couldn’t reach.
And then he realized what he’d missed. He’d been watching her so closely that he hadn’t clocked what she was looking at.
He turned now—casual, an actor loosening up between takes—and there it was.
Martin’s chair. Fifteen feet behind where Stefan had been standing.
The angle was right. The sightline was clean.
She’d seen Martin watching, and she’d shut down. Not avoidance. Not heartbreak. A woman seeing a threat and going dead inside.
?Qué cono le hiciste, Martin?
He found Isabelle at the catering tent, and that told him everything he needed to know, because Isabelle Vance didn’t eat craft services.
In six weeks of production, he’d never seen her touch anything that wasn’t bottled water or black coffee from her own thermos.
White pantsuits, perfect posture, a studio VP who made directors nervous.
But here she was, standing in front of the fruit display with her back to Martin’s trailer, watching the set just as Stefan had been watching it.
“How long are you going to stand here pretending to pick out a banana while he destroys her?” He kept his voice low, but the anger bled through.
“Lower your voice.” Isabelle didn’t look at him. “And don’t look at me. Look at the monitors.”
He turned toward the monitors, voice tight. “She’s falling apart. This is exactly what he did to Stasia. Same pattern. And the whole crew is pretending they don't see it.”
“I know exactly where we are on the clock, Stefan.” Isabelle picked up her coffee, her gaze fixed on the screen where Martin was stepping into Erika’s personal space. “The Stasia Larke NDA expires in forty-eight hours.”
The number hit him. Two days.
“Forty-eight hours and she goes on record,” Isabelle continued, her voice low, controlled.
“The documentation is ready. The journalists are briefed. But until that clock hits zero, Martin still owns the narrative. If you move now—if you play the hero before that NDA is void—he’ll claim harassment, he’ll spike the film, and he’ll bury Stasia’s story before the world even hears it. ”
Eight years. Stefan’s mind flashed to the storage room. Martin had kept that woman silent for a decade before he’d even bothered to make her sign the papers, and now they were down to the final forty-eight hours of a decade-long silence.
“And Erika?” he snapped. “What happens to her for the next two days?”
“We keep her safe. We keep her on set. And you don’t give him a single thing he can use.”
“She doesn’t have two days.”
“Then help me make sure she does.”
He looked across the set at Erika, at Martin circling her mark. Every instinct in him fought to cross that sand and put himself between them. He didn’t, because Isabelle was right. And the only way to protect her was to let her suffer.
His phone buzzed before he made it back to his mark. Alex.
“Page Eight just posted photos. You and Erika between the trailers—her hand on your chest, your hand on her jaw, foreheads practically touching.” Alex’s voice had the clipped, caffeinated edge of someone who'd been fielding calls since before dawn.
“The trades want a comment. Two gossip sites have already called the office. And I've got a cable entertainment show camped in my voicemail acting like they’re owed a statement.”
Stefan closed his eyes. He knew exactly which moment they’d caught—the conversation where she'd almost told him something, and then didn’t.
“Give me something I can work with,” Alex said. “Because right now the narrative is ‘Stefan Cruz tanks his comeback over on-set romance,’ and I need a different story by noon.”
“I can’t,” Stefan said. “And I won’t.”
“Then don’t. I’ll handle the noise on my end.” Alex didn't linger on it—already onto the next problem. “What's actually going on? And don’t give me the press-conference version.”
Stefan stared across the set. Erika was back on her mark, listening to Martin gesture at the blocking diagram.
“She’s in trouble, Alex. Real trouble. And I can’t tell you the details because they’re not mine to tell, and don’t know if she’s told me everything anyway. But the situation is bad, and I’m not walking away from her.”
“Everyone keeps telling me to be smart.” His voice came out harder than he meant it to. “Isabelle says wait. Lily says wait. And every hour I spend being smart, she spends alone with him.”
“I hear that. And I'm still telling you: be smart.” A pause. “Two more days, Stefan. That’s what Isabelle needs. Can you get her two more days?”
“I don't know.”
“Find out. Because if you break first, none of this works—not for her, not for Stasia, not for anyone.” A breath. “Call me if that changes.”
He hung up. He watched Erika nod at something Martin said. He thought about everything he hadn’t told Alex—the flinch, the sightline, Isabelle’s eight years of files. And he wondered how many more hours of being smart he had left in him.
After the wrap, he watched her leave. She moved through the crew without making eye contact with anyone, grabbed her bag, and headed for the golf carts alone—practically jogging, shoulders hunched. Martin watched her go from the far side of the set, not smiling.
Stefan’s feet wanted to follow. His whole body pulled toward her as it had been pulling toward her for weeks.
Erika had said you’re the opposite of difficult, that’s the problem, and he was starting to understand what she meant.
What made him safe was what made him dangerous, because if she let him in, he would fight for her and Martin would use that, and she was keeping him out to keep him whole.
He understood it. He hated it. And he stood there anyway.
“You didn’t go after her.” Lily’s voice came from behind him. He hadn’t heard her approach.
“No.”
“Good.” She came to stand beside him, both of them watching the golf cart disappear down the path. “Because chasing her isn’t going to work. She’s got herself locked in so tight that the harder you push, the further she runs.”
“I can’t keep doing this. Standing here. Watching her disappear.”
Lily studied him. “You still got that friend? Nico? The one with the boat?”
He blinked. “How do you know about—”
“You mentioned it over drinks after that first week.” She was already somewhere else in her head, working it through. “I need a day to work on her. Don’t corner her. Don’t push. Just be around. Visible, consistent. Let her see you’re not going anywhere.”
“And then what, Lily?”
“And then maybe we get her somewhere she can actually breathe.” She glanced at him. “No promises. But it’s better than this.”
She walked away, and Stefan stood in the sand. The light drained from the sky.
And he thought about the opposite of difficult—what it meant, what it cost her, what it was going to cost him—and he stayed where he was, patient, steady, still, even though every part of it felt like dying.