Page 145 of The Hollywood Switch-up

The memory arrived before she was ready—rotting floorboards, mildew, Martin’s shadow filling the doorway. The cold of the floor against her cheek. The comments scrolling past on a screen she couldn’t see.

“I went to the Bahamas for Anneliese,” she said. “To pretend to be her. I thought staying small would protect me.”

She looked at the red light. Steady. Unblinking. Witness to everything.

“I’m done with small.”

ERIKA

Lily’s hands were quick and sure, pinning the last strand into place, and Erika stood in Anneliese’s dressing room in emerald silk and tried not to think about what came next.

Don’t think about it. Just stand here. Just be a person standing in a dress.

Yesterday’s interview was already everywhere. She’d turned off her notifications sometime around midnight and hadn’t turned them back on. Tonight she’d walk a red carpet in front of the same fifty thousand people who’d watched Martin attack her on a livestream. Tonight they’d get to look at her on purpose. Every lens pointed at her, every flash calibrated to find what the subject was trying to hide.

She’d spent her whole life behind the canvas. Tonight she was on it.

Lily stepped back to look at her work and Erika caught her eye in the mirror.

“Tell me I don’t look like I’m about to be arrested.”

Lily tilted her head. “I’ve dressed a lot of women for things they didn’t want to do.” A beat. “You don’t look like that.”

Erika looked at herself. Actually looked the way she hadn’t been able to for three months. The woman in the mirror looked like she’d made a decision. Which she had. Yesterday. In a chair, in a Beverly Hills living room, with a red light blinking.

“What if I don’t mean it yet?”

Lily’s hands settled warm on her shoulders. “Remember the pencil?” She held Erika’s gaze in the mirror. “This is just showing up in a very expensive dress.”

Easy for you to say. You’re not the one who might vomit on the red carpet.

She was still looking at herself, and it didn’t make her want to look away, which was new. Then Anneliese appeared in the mirror behind her. Gold and black. Hair perfect. The particular expression she wore when she was trying not to let something show on her face and failing, because Erika had been reading that face for twenty-six years.

She stopped in the doorway. Looked at Erika—not at the dress, not at Lily’s work. At her.

“You’re wearing it.” The corner of her mouth lifted. “Most people let a dress wear them.”

“High praise from someone who once told me earth tones were a personality disorder.”

Anneliese’s smile went genuine before she caught it. “Don’t push it.”

A buzz from the vanity cut through the room. Anneliese glanced at her phone and answered. “Isabelle?”

She listened. Erika watched her sister’s face cycle through something she couldn’t read from across the room—tension first, hand gripping the phone, knuckles going white—and then a loosening underneath it. Her free hand pressed flat against the vanity.

What is it? What did she say? What⁠—

Anneliese lowered the phone.

“Martin.” Her voice came out careful, measured. “They arrested him last night.”

The room went still. Nothing to do with sound.

Lily made a sound beside her—not quite a laugh, not quite a sob.

Erika didn’t move. Didn’t speak. Just stood in the mirror in the emerald dress and let the word sit there—arrested—too small for what it was supposed to contain, too final for how long they’d been waiting for it.

The door opened. Bradley, champagne already in hand, reading the room in the single glance he always managed. His eyes went to Anneliese—took in her face, whatever was written there—and then moved to Erika’s in the mirror.