Page 111 of The Hollywood Switch-up

“The blueberry was stale.”

“Chica.” Lily stepped closer. Her voice dropped. Done playing. “You’ve lost ten pounds. You flinch when he walks past. And you’re running from the one person on this island who would burn it down for you.” She held Erika’s gaze. “I’ve been on sets for twelve years. I know the difference between stress and fear, and what I’m looking at right now is not stress.”

The truth was right there, pressing against her teeth—Martin’s office, the photograph, the private sessions, the deniable threat wrapped in reasonable language—and none of it could come out because Lily was a fixer, and if Lily knew, she would act, and if she acted, Martin would reframe it like he reframed everything, and Erika would become the girl who caused all the trouble and Martin would walk away clean the way he always walks away clean.

“I’m handling it.” The lie came out flat, and Lily heard everything underneath it.

“Okay.” Lily squeezed her arm. Brief, grounding. “But this doesn’t expire. When you’re ready to stop white-knuckling it, I will come find you.” Her grip tightened. “That’s not a threat, chica. That’s a promise.”

She paused at the entrance. “I saw Isabelle during that last round of takes.”

Then she was gone, and Erika stood alone with the costumes and the fragile, terrifying hope that she wasn’t completely alone.

The villa door stuck. She shouldered it open, stumbling through the dark living area and into the bedroom. She only made it three steps past the foot of the bed before gravity won. Her back hit the wall and she slid down until the plaster bit into her spine. The sounds she made were raw and animal-like.

Her tote bag had landed beside her, contents spilling across the tile. Lipstick. Tissues. Call sheet. She reached out, her fingers hooking the edge of the coffee table to pull the new sketchbook toward her. It was open to the drawing she’d started in his villa. Stefan’s profile in soft graphite. She’d been saving it.

She ripped the page out.

The first stroke was a slash across his jaw. The second obliterated his eyes. She ground the charcoal harder and watched the careful lines disappear under black. The rage cracked through her. Not relief, but a fury looking for somewhere to land. The stick snapped.

She grabbed another and tore through two more pages—his hand on the steering wheel, the curve of his shoulder in morning light—before her arm slowed. She sat there with her hands coated in charcoal, the destroyed pages curling around her on the tile, and looked at what was left in the sketchbook. The bulk of him. The careful observations she couldn’t finish destroying.

She closed the cover.

She pressed her palms to her face—charcoal grit, tears mixing with dust—and broke. When the sobs stopped, she sat in the wreckage and waited for regret, and what came instead was nothing. Scoured clean.

Annie Banana:

Lily called. You okay?

Annie Banana:

Eri, call me back.

Annie Banana:

I’m not above flying down there. Don’t test me, Bean.

Three messages. Twelve missed calls over the past two days. Anneliese was trying—for the first time in months, her sister was actually trying—and Erika couldn’t type I’m fine without it tasting like one more lie she’d have to maintain.

She locked the screen and reached up, sliding the phone into the nightstand drawer facedown. She couldn’t look at it. If she did, she’d call Stefan.

She pulled herself off the floor and walked a few feet to the bathroom. The mirror showed a stranger. Mascara tracked down her cheeks, charcoal smeared across her forehead. She washed it away and watched the black swirl down the drain.

She lay back on the bed, too drained to even pull back the covers.

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.