55. Stefan
STEFAN
Stefan had been in the booth for twenty minutes, fingers curled around a tumbler of Japanese whiskey he hadn’t touched, the sketchbook in his bag pressing against his side.
?Qué estás haciendo aquí, Cruz?
Stefan had been asking himself that since he’d typed back I’ll be there before he could talk himself out of it.
Three weeks since the Courier exposé. Three weeks of watching his career come apart one dropped endorsement at a time, one quietly canceled meeting at a time, one publicist who stopped returning calls at a time. He’d known the cost going in.
He heard the door before he saw her. Bradley Smart walked Anneliese in, then peeled off toward the bar without being asked. Stefan watched him go.
Anneliese crossed to his booth alone. Clutch pressed to the table. Fingers that wanted to flutter, held flat. She sat. Neither of them spoke.
The La-La Lounge filled the silence around them—low music, ice against glass, the ambient murmur of other people’s deals being made.
Stefan let it sit. So did she. Two people who had said terrible things about each other in print for years, sitting in a dim booth at eight p.m. for the same reason, neither of them willing to be the first to say it out loud.
Then Anneliese said, “I’ve said a lot of things about you. Most of them to Erika.”
Stefan didn’t move.
“Which makes this”—she laughed, short and humorless—“probably the strangest meeting I’ve ever called.” She met his eyes for the first time. It wasn’t a question. “Did you mean it?”
He turned his glass in his hands. The amber caught the light.
“Every word.”
“What did you say to her?” Anneliese asked. “On the floor of that bar—what did you say when you finally got to her?”
Stefan went still. He remembered the bar, but his mind jumped further back, to the closed set.
“That I was sorry. That I’d failed her.” He set the glass down. “That I was there, even if it was too late.”
Anneliese’s breath caught. “And she pushed you away.”
“Like I was nothing.” His voice didn’t waver.
She was quiet for a moment. Not because she didn’t know what to say. Because she was deciding how much to give. “The statement. The one with your name on it.”
“I didn’t write it. Didn’t see it until Erika shoved it in my face on the yacht.” He exhaled. “My team went behind my back. And Martin made sure she saw it before I had the chance to explain.”
Anneliese studied him. He let her look, the same way he’d let Teagan look, because he was done performing and the only thing left was whatever she could see.
“I poisoned her against you before she ever met you,” Anneliese said. “Every headline. Every rumor. I handed her a version of you that made it impossible to trust what she was actually seeing.” She looked at the table. “So when that statement came out, she already had a file.”
“I gave you real material.” He said it flatly. “The Temmy comment. Years of it. You didn’t manufacture that.”
“No.” She didn’t look away. “But I amplified it. Specifically. Repeatedly. To the one person whose opinion of you I knew would matter eventually.” A beat. “I’m telling you because she deserves to know the full picture. Not because it lets either of us off the hook.”
The silence between them shifted—not comfortable, but honest.
“The exposé,” Anneliese said finally. “You and Isabelle.”
“Over a decade of evidence. Eight of them have gathered since Stasia.” He exhaled. “Fifty thousand people watched him hurt her and the studio called it a misunderstanding. I failed her when it mattered. Handing over the files was the only concrete thing I had left.”
She nodded slowly. Not absolution, just acknowledgment.
He reached into his bag. Pulled out a worn sketchbook—the cover soft from handling, warped from salt air, edges worn smooth. Sketches of the Bahamas set. Of him, apparently, though he’d only understood that later when he’d let himself look.
It smelled faintly of salt air. Of her.
He slid it across the table. “She left this on the set. I thought she might want it back.”
Anneliese’s breath caught. She didn’t touch it immediately, just looked at it.
“You kept this?”
“I kept everything.” The napkin she’d drawn on at craft services. A single earring she’d lost on the yacht. Patético. He knew. He didn’t care.
Anneliese picked up the sketchbook carefully. “I’ll make sure she gets it.”
She stood, but Stefan didn’t move. He turned the glass in his hands, watching the whiskey catch the light.
“Premiere’s next week,” he said. “After that I’m going back to Spain. Cudillero. My grandmother’s village. My career’s done. This city’s done. There’s nothing keeping me here.”
Anneliese looked at him, measuring the distance between what was written and what was true. “You’re not leaving because it’s time,” she said. “You’re leaving because it’s easier.”
“She made her choice.” His voice went flat. “Aunque me mate.”
“Hollywood didn’t break you,” she said. “She did. And you’re dressing it up as the same wound because the truth costs more.”
He didn’t answer. There wasn’t anything to say to that.
The silence held. Outside, the bar kept moving around them—glasses clinking, a low laugh somewhere near the door, the steady churn of people whose lives hadn’t stopped.
“Don’t leave for Spain yet.” She said it quietly, without pressure. Just the fact of it.
Before he could respond, she was gone. Bradley appeared from the bar, fell into step beside her, and the door closed behind them both.