49. Erika
ERIKA
She locked the cabin door and sat on the bed and listened to him stand on the other side of it for a long time before his footsteps moved away.
She didn’t come out Saturday. Didn’t come out Sunday.
She lay in the dark with the lock between them and the cabin exactly as they’d left it—his jacket draped over the chair, the sheets tangled from that morning, his cologne clinging to the pillows—and every detail was evidence of something she couldn’t look at directly.
He knocked. She stared at the ceiling.
He called. She sent him to voicemail.
The texts came next—lighting up her screen. She deleted them without reading. Erika, please—Gone. I swear I didn’t—Gone. Just let me—Gone.
If she read them, she might believe him.
The storm broke Sunday night and she let it rage.
Rain hammered the portholes in sheets, and overhead Stefan paced—back and forth, back and forth—and she lay beneath the sound of him and counted the seconds between thunder and thought about nothing because thinking meant choosing and she couldn’t choose between the man pacing above her and the name on the statement and so she chose the storm instead.
By morning the sky was that pale, exhausted blue that follows violence—scrubbed clean. She unlocked the door. The hallway smelled like coffee and sleeplessness and him, and she walked through it without stopping.
The helicopter came at dawn.
She chose the seat farthest from him. He didn’t try to close the distance.
The helicopter lifted and the yacht shrank beneath them and then disappeared, and Erika pressed her forehead against the glass and watched the ocean pass below—dark and flat in the early light—and thought about how she was going back to the island where Martin was waiting and the cameras were waiting and her entire life was trending on platforms she’d never asked to exist on, and Stefan was sitting four feet away breathing the same recycled air and she couldn’t look at him because looking meant deciding and she still didn’t know what to decide.
The helicopter touched down and the world didn’t wait.
Flashbulbs hit the moment the doors opened. Shouting, lenses, her name in strangers’ mouths—
“How long were you pretending to be your sister?”
“Did you know you were committing fraud?”
Stefan stepped in front of her—one arm out, his body between her and the cameras—and she remembered the afternoon Martin had cornered her outside the makeup trailer and Stefan had appeared from nowhere and angled himself into the conversation, and her whole body leaned toward him for one stupid half-second before she caught it.
She put her hand on his chest and pushed him sideways.
Not hard. Not angry. Just—no.
She put her head down and walked into the flashbulbs herself, and they were blinding and the questions were cruel and she didn’t answer a single one, just moved, one foot and then the next, the way she’d walked back from Martin’s false call—controlling the only thing she could control, which was the speed of her own feet.
Security caught up. Stefan fell back.
They crossed the grounds in silence. He walked three steps behind. Close enough to shield. Far enough not to touch.
It took three tries to get the key in the lock. Her hands were shaking—from the flashbulbs or the helicopter or the two days of not eating or all of it—and Stefan was behind her on the path, three steps back, waiting.
She got the door open and stepped inside and turned to close it and he was there—not reaching, not pushing, just standing on the threshold with his hands at his sides and his face wrecked and the morning light behind him, and he said her name once, quiet.
“Erika.”
She looked at him. Really looked. At the circles under his eyes and the shirt he’d been wearing for two days and the way he was holding himself so still.
And she thought about the heartbeat under her hand and the te amo and the promise in the dark and the word aquí and the man who’d given her the cabin and waited outside her locked door for two days, and she thought about the statement and Anneliese and the four hundred thousand likes and erratic and unprofessional, and she could not make those two people be the same person and she was so tired of trying.
She closed the door.
Stood there with her palm pressed flat against the wood, heart slamming against her ribs.
Waiting for the knock. For him to fight for her.
For the door to shake with the weight of his fist, for him to shout her name, for him to do the one thing that would let her open it—not an explanation, not a defense, just the raw stupid stubborn refusal to walk away.
His footsteps faded down the path.
She slid down the door and sat on the floor in the dark and pressed her face into her knees, and the villa was quiet and the air conditioning hummed and outside the waves hit the shore the way they’d hit it yesterday and the day before and every day she’d been on this island, indifferent, and she thought, he left, he actually left, and she didn’t know if that meant Annie had been right about him all along or if she’d just destroyed the only person who’d ever—
She sat on the floor until her legs went numb, and then she got up and walked through the dark villa without turning on the lights because the dark didn’t need anything from her and she was out of things to give.
Still in the sundress from the yacht, salt gone crunchy in the fabric, still smelling like the ocean and sunscreen.
She reached for a pillow and got the wrong one—his side, from weeks ago, sandalwood, gin and salt—and her whole body flinched because she’d had her face in his neck two days ago breathing in that exact smell on purpose and now it was an ambush.
She shoved the pillow off the bed and lay down facing the wall.
Her phone buzzed. And didn’t stop. She pulled it out and the screen was chaos—notifications multiplying, unknown numbers, news outlets, names she hadn’t thought about in years. She scrolled past all of them looking for one.
Annie Banana:
Please call me
Annie Banana:
Eri, where are you
Annie Banana:
I’m flying down, I’m coming to get you
Annie Banana:
Just tell me you’re okay
Annie. Who’d warned her. She’d been so sure.
Erika typed: I’m okay
Stared at the cursor. Two words. The smallest possible lie.
And she couldn’t send it because Annie was somewhere over the Atlantic racing toward her and Annie had never lied to Erika, not once, not even when the truth was ugly, and Erika couldn’t even do that much—couldn’t manage two words on a screen for the one person who deserved them.
She deleted the message and turned the phone off and pressed it facedown on the nightstand.
A knock at the door. Not Stefan’s—she knew it in her body before her brain caught up, something in the rhythm, two quick taps and a pause. Lily.
She crossed the dark villa and cracked the door open.
Lily stood on the porch, a bottle of tequila in one hand and two shot glasses in the other. She looked like she hadn’t slept either—eyes swollen, hair pulled back in a knot that had given up hours ago.
“Chica.” She held up the tequila. “I come bearing medicine.”
Erika stepped back and let her in and closed the door and they stood in the dark kitchen and Lily poured two shots by moonlight through the curtains and pressed one into Erika’s hand without asking if she wanted it.
“To men who don’t deserve us,” Lily said.
“To terrible taste in men.”
They drank. The tequila burned and for one second—one—she felt something other than numb.
Lily poured another round. Then she set the bottle down and her voice dropped.
“I need to tell you something. About Stefan. About what he’s been trying to do for you—”
“Don’t.”
“Erika—”
“Whatever hero story he’s spinning, I don’t want to hear it.”
“It’s not a story.” Lily’s hands were flat on the counter and Erika could see them shaking, and not from the tequila. “He’s been trying to protect you. Him and Isabelle. For weeks. He didn’t tell you because he was afraid you’d run and he’d lose the only chance he had to keep you safe.”
“He had six weeks to tell me the truth.” She kept her voice flat.
“He didn’t. He gave me a few cryptic looks and half-finished sentences and let me believe he was on my side while he was actually in a room with Isabelle and you, deciding my future for me.
He told everyone except the person it actually mattered to. ”
“You’re wrong about him, chica.” Lily said it quietly. Like she was placing something fragile on a table and watching it not be picked up.
“Stefan is exactly who Annie said he was.” She said it and heard how much it sounded like a prayer—something she was repeating because stopping meant thinking and thinking meant maybe Annie was wrong and maybe Stefan was telling the truth and maybe she’d just destroyed the only person who—and she could not carry that right now.
She could not. “His career will always come first. That’s how they’re built. ”
Lily’s eyes were wet. Erika watched her press her lips together and swallow whatever she’d been about to say, and the silence between them was the loudest thing in the room.
“I can’t reopen this and survive it, Lily.” It came out quiet. Not angry. Just true. “I’ve got nothing left. Annie’s on a plane. My name is trending. And I have to figure out how to get through tomorrow without the one person I—” She stopped. “I just need to get through tomorrow.”
Lily set the tequila bottle on the nightstand like an offering.
“For what it’s worth?” She paused at the door. “You’re the bravest person I know. Even when you’re being stupid.”
The door closed.
Erika sat in the dark. The tequila caught moonlight on the nightstand and she thought about Lily’s hands shaking on the counter and the way her voice had cracked on the word safe and she told herself it didn’t change anything, it couldn’t change anything, because if Stefan was right, then she was wrong, and if she was wrong, then she’d thrown away the only—
She closed her eyes. Tomorrow. Just get through tomorrow.