Page 131 of The Hollywood Switch-up

Her voice cracked and dissolved, swallowed by the noise from the engine.

The bar was rising from the dunes ahead and Stefan ran with the phone pressed to his ear and sand kicking up behind his bare feet and he said “I can see it, I’m almost there” and Anneliese was saying “Stefan—Erika—please, please—” and he said “estoy llegando” and she said “then run faster” and he did.

Timber and rust. Boarded windows. Canvas flap shifting in the morning breeze. From outside, silent. From outside, nothing.d

Don’t think about it. Move.

He reached the entrance, grabbed the canvas, ripped it aside.

Sunlight slashed through the torn canvas behind him into the darkness, and he saw her.

Erika. On the floor. Face down on stained concrete, blonde hair fanned across the grime, her dress torn at the bodice and blood tracking from her temple dark against her skin, and she wasn’t moving, and her hands were curled into loose fists, and that was the thing that nearly took his legs out—not the blood, not the stillness, but the fists, because she'd been fighting when she went down and she was still fighting even now.

No. No, no, no. ¡Dios mío, no ella! ¡Por favor, no ella!

Martin was on the other side of the room—stumbling backward, shirt torn, eyes darting between Stefan and the phone where the red LIVE icon still pulsed. Stefan crossed the space in three strides. His fist connected with Martin’s jaw, sending him down hard.

He stood over him for one second. Martin on the floor, the phone glowing beside him, fifty thousand witnesses already watching. Stefan’s hands were shaking and his knuckles were split and Martin was already finished—not by him, by her—and he knew it.

He turned toward the sound of her breathing.

Security came through the entrance behind him—two guards, then three, then Isabelle in the doorway with her phone already pressed to her ear and her face like stone. They hauled Martin to his feet and he sagged between them, crying, snot running down his chin, babbling about context and misunderstandings and calling his lawyer, and Stefan didn’t watch them drag him out. He was already moving toward Erika, because Martin was nothing. Martin was already over. She had finished it before Stefan ever walked through the door.

Isabelle didn’t look at Martin as they dragged him past her. She looked at Stefan. Then at Erika on the floor. Then she said something quiet into her phone—Stefan caught “Solokov” and “evidence” and “tonight,” and he understood that Isabelle had been waiting for this moment for eight years and she was not going to waste it.

He knelt beside Erika and saw the scratches on her arms and the blood at her temple sticky and swelling to purple and her dress torn and her hands still curled into those fists, and she’d been fighting, alone, in this room, while he slept on a porch fifty yards from her door.

He touched her cheek with shaking fingers and brushed the hair from her temple, careful around the wound, and pressed two fingers to her throat to feel her pulse and it was there, weak but there, and he held his fingers against it and counted the way she’d counted his on the yacht, the way she’d pressed her hand over his heart and said Promise?, and he thought I’m counting. I’m here. I’m not leaving.

“Estoy aquí,” he whispered. “I’m here. I’m here.”

Her breathing was shallow but steady. She was alive and he was here and it wasn’t enough, would never be enough.

“Lo siento.” He whispered it to her closed eyes, to her curled fists, to the bloodstain on the concrete. “I should have been here. I’m sorry. Perdóname.”

Her fingers twitched against the concrete. Her breathing changed—less shallow, more present—and her lashes fluttered and her eyes opened, unfocused, staring at nothing, and then her gaze shifted and found his face.

“Stefan.” The way she said it—not surprised, not relieved, just his name laid flat between them.

“Estoy aquí.” His hand found hers. “You’re safe.”

Her fingers curled around his—weakly, barely there—and for one second she let him hold her hand and he could feel her pulse in her fingertips and she was alive and she was looking at him and he thought just this, just let me have this for one more second before she remembers because he could already see it happening, could see the fog clearing and the yacht and the statement and Alex and all of it flooding back into her eyes, and he couldn’t stop it, couldn’t hold it off, couldn’t do anything but watch the warmth drain out of her face.

She pulled her hand free.

“Don’t touch me.” Flat. Not angry. Worse than angry.

“Erika—”

“Where’s Annie?” She tried to sit up, winced, and pressed a hand to her head. “Where’s Lily?”

“They’re coming. Anneliese is almost⁠—”

She turned her face away from him and closed her eyes. And he understood that she wasn’t going to say anything else, wasn’t going to tell him to leave or explain why or give him anything to push back against, she was just going to lie on a floor with blood on her face and not look at him, and that was worse than anything Martin could have done to him because at least Martin’s damage would heal.

Lily came through the entrance at a run—face white, hands already reaching. She dropped beside Erika and her hands were on her, checking, gentle and efficient, the same hands that had handled every broken thing on every set she’d ever worked on. “Let me see, chica. Don’t move. Let me see.” Her fingers were careful at Erika’s temple, tilting her face toward the light, and Erika leaned into her without opening her eyes and said “Annie, I need Annie” and Lily said “She’s coming, she’s almost here, I promise.”

Stefan stood. His legs were unsteady and his hands were shaking and Erika was leaning into Lily with her face turned away from him and every part of him wanted to go to her and every part of her was telling him not to. He stepped back. Not out. Back.