Page 102 of The Hollywood Switch-up

He looked at her hand like it was the most ridiculous thing he’d ever seen, stepped past it, and closed the door behind him.

“Olivia can manage the press. I’m not here to talk about the press.”

“That’s not what this is about⁠—”

“This morning you told me you were fine and I let you lie to me. On set, you flinched when I touched you and I didn’t push. I have done everything you’ve asked.” He stood in the middle of her villa, not touching her, not moving closer. “And you are getting worse.”

She didn’t have a deflection for that. He wasn’t asking a question. He wasn’t offering comfort. He was stating what he saw, and he was right, and she hated him a little for it.

“Tell me one true thing,” he said. “Not about the article. Not about Olivia. One thing that’s actually happening with you right now, and I’ll leave.”

Martin left a photograph in my room. He's been watching us. He owns me and he's making sure I know it.

She couldn’t say any of it. Not with Olivia’s instructions in her ear, not with Anneliese’s fury still lodged in her throat, not with Martin’s leash pulling tighter every hour. But Stefan was standing three feet away looking at her like he’d wait all day, and the distance between them was killing her faster than the secret.

“I’m scared.” Two words. The truest thing she’d said to anyone since the photo appeared. “Not of the article. Of something I can’t tell you about yet. And I know that’s not enough, and I know you deserve more than that, but it’s what I have right now.”

He was quiet for a long time. She watched him work through it—the part of him that wanted to push.

“Yet,” he said finally.

“Yet?” She looked at him.

“You said yet. Can’t tell me yet.” His face shifted—not relief, not satisfaction. Recognition. “I can work with yet.”

He crossed to her then—slowly, giving her time. His hand came up and rested against the side of her neck, thumb on her jaw, and she let herself press into it. His skin warm against hers and his pulse steady under her fingers where they’d found his wrist without her deciding to reach for him.

“I know,” she said.

“Good.” He looked at her for one more beat, then stepped back. “Go be boring for Olivia. I’ll stay here for five minutes so nobody sees us leave together.”

She almost smiled. Almost. “You heard that?”

“Thin walls.” The ghost of a grin—the first crack in the tension since he’d walked in. “Go—I’ll be the guy who definitely wasn’t in your villa.”

She picked up her script, and walked out into the sun. She was halfway to set before she realized her hands had stopped shaking.

STEFAN

Five minutes in her villa, staring at the indent she’d left on the bed and the glass of water she hadn’t touched, and Stefan couldn’t sit still anymore.

He checked the path before stepping out. Clear. He walked back the long way, and made himself slow down because a man walking fast away at seven in the morning was a story someone would tell.

I’m scared. Not from the article.

She’d given him that much. Two sentences, stripped down to the bone, and he’d taken them because they were real and because pushing harder would have lost her entirely.

Of something I can’t tell you about yet.

Yet. He couldn’t shake the thing he hadn’t said to her—the thing he’d been turning over since yesterday, since Martin’s little chat with her at the edge of the set, since she’d come back from that conversation like someone had rearranged her from the inside.

Martin had talked to her. And then she’d shut down. And those two things were not a coincidence.

Alex picked up on the first ring, which meant it was bad.

“Before you ask, no. The buyout’s dead. Someone offered more, moved faster, and had the photo syndicated to a dozen outlets before my guy even got in the room.” Alex’s voice had the clipped rhythm it got when he was angry. “This wasn’t a pap shopping for the highest bidder. This was a chess move.”

“Martin.”