Page 110 of The Hollywood Switch-up

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.

ERIKA

Stefan’s jaw caught the morning light, and Erika was trying very hard not to notice.

She stood at craft services, her coffee gone cold and untouched in its paper cup and her mark waiting in the sand—a little X of gaffer tape, stage left—and she kept her eyes on the ocean because the ocean didn’t make her chest hurt. Stefan was thirty feet away, laughing at something one of the grips said, one hand in his hair, and the sound carried across the sand and hit her as it had been doing since Martin’s office.

“Blocking in five!” The AD’s voice carried across the set.

Erika dumped the cold coffee and wiped her palm on her shorts. Her shoulders ached from holding herself rigid. She’d need a licensed masseuse and a bottle of wine. She’d been avoiding the angles that put her in his eye-line, avoiding the setups where they’d have to touch or speak or breathe the same air, and she’d become an expert at strategic bathroom breaks and urgent conversations with the craft services guy about muffin freshness. Anything to keep ten feet between her body and his.

And underneath all of it, Martin’s voice on a loop: the sooner Cruz understands that, the better for everyone. Especially him.

“Anneliese.” Martin’s voice cut through the noise, and her whole body went rigid.

He walked toward her with his clipboard, and the crew parted around him. He stopped too close. He always did. His cologne hit her first—oud with an antiseptic note underneath—then his hand on her shoulder.

“The camera picks up everything,” he murmured, voice dropping so only she could hear. “Every flicker you’re trying to hide, that’s what I want.” His hand dug into her shoulder, and a bruise formed under the pressure. “The truth beneath the performance. Can you give me that, Anneliese?”

She smiled at him as she’d been smiling at him for three days—dead-eyed, agreeable, the performance of a performance—and said “Of course” and meant I want to break your fingers.

“Places!”

The AD’s call sent everyone scrambling. Erika walked to her mark—stage left of Stefan now, close enough to smell the sandalwood on his skin—and fixed her gaze somewhere over his shoulder because looking at the ocean was easier than looking at him.

The slate clapped. The camera’s red light blinked on. Erika became Luna. Heartbroken, desperate, reaching for a man who’d already left her behind. Walk toward him. Stop. Deliver the line. Hold the silence while he turned away. She’d done it seven times already and each take got harder because Martin kept finding fault—her makeup, her posture, her delivery—and by take seven, the crew had gone quiet. Everyone knew what was happening and no one would speak up.

“Again.” Martin didn’t even stand up. “And this time, Anneliese, try to remember you’re supposed to be an actress.”

She hit her mark. Walked toward Stefan, stopped, looked up. His eyes met hers and the mask slipped—not Luna’s, hers. Her voice cracked on the last word of “I thought you were different.” And she meant it, all of it, everything she couldn’t say to him pouring through the one line she had.

“Cut.” Martin rose from his chair. “Better. Not good, but better. Moving on.”

The crew exhaled. Erika stood on her mark and waited for her legs to stop trembling. She caught Martin watching from his chair, not smiling. Beyond him, near craft services, Isabelle Vance stood motionless with coffee she hadn’t touched. She wasn’t watching Erika. She was watching Martin.

Stefan came up beside her. “Every take was perfect. He’s fucking with you.”

She knew. She also knew that if she turned to look at him, she was going to crack, and if she cracked on set, Martin would see it and catalog it, and she couldn’t afford to give that man one more thing to use.

“I have to get to wardrobe,” she said, and walked away before she gave herself away.

The wardrobe tent was empty. She slipped inside and pressed her back against a rack of costumes. For a moment she stood there—eyes closed, hands shaking—trying to remember what it felt like to not be performing.

“Four wardrobe checks.” Lily’s voice came from the entrance. “Three bathroom breaks. One deeply suspicious conversation about muffin freshness.” The tent flap fell shut behind her. “You want to tell me what’s going on, or should I keep counting?”