Page 123 of The Hollywood Switch-up

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.