Page 148 of The Hollywood Switch-up

“You were there,” she said finally. “You came.” A breath she hadn’t meant to take. “And I told you not to touch me.”

His face took it. Not a flinch. Just the words landing where they were meant to.

“I know.”

“I meant it. In that moment⁠—”

“I know.” Different the second time. Not agreement, just holding it. Letting her have it without reaching for the absolution underneath it.

The lobby noise reached them faintly. Classical music. The murmur of the crowd. The world at its usual pace while they stood outside it.

“I would do it all again,” he said quietly. “Every choice. Every risk. If it meant you were safe⁠—”

“I didn’t need to be safe.” Steadier than she expected. “I needed to be believed.”

He went still. She watched it land—slow, the way understanding lands when someone turns a sentence over and finds what’s inside.

“Sí.” Not agreement. Recognition. He exhaled, slow. “That’s the one. That’s what I got wrong.”

She didn’t say anything. Neither did he. Just stood there with three months of silence between them and all the things that silence had contained.

“I’ve said ‘I love you’ in seven languages on screen,” he said. “Te amo. Je t’aime. Ti amo.” His voice cracked on the last one—barely, but she heard it. “Every time it was just a line. Blocking. The emotion required by the scene.” He looked at her. “You’re the first person I ever meant it for.”

The anger was still there, technically. She just couldn't find the shape of it anymore. What replaced it had no name yet—not forgiveness, not surrender. More like standing at the edge of a decision she’d already made without realizing it.

“Mi amor.” Barely audible. “If it meant I got one more chance to⁠—”

ERIKA

She already knew what he was going to say.

The corridor was still, and she stood there with that knowledge sitting in her chest—quiet and certain, the kind of thing you’ve been not-letting-yourself-know for a long time—and waited for him to say it anyway.

“To tell you that I love you.” His voice dropped on the last words. “I’m in love with you, Princesa.”

She didn’t say anything. The anger she’d been carrying for three months was doing something complicated—not dissolving, not hardening, just shifting around what he’d said.

“I hear you,” she said finally. “And I believe you. That’s the problem.”

Hope crossed his face, and behind it the knowledge that hope might not be enough.

“It’s not about the statement—your team went behind your back, Martin used it, I understand what happened.” She kept her voice steady. “But you let me believe the worst of you for three months. You knew where I was. You knew I was at Anneliese’s. Why didn’t you try?”

“You told me not to touch you.”

“That’s not an answer.”

“You meant it.”

“I meant it at that moment. That moment passed.” She held his gaze. “Why didn’t you try after?”

His face did the thing that comes after guilt. He looked away first. “Because it was easier not to. Because I told myself you were better off without someone who’d already proved he’d choose wrong under pressure. And because if I tried and you still didn’t want me, I’d have to live with that instead of just the possibility.”

She hadn’t expected him to be that honest.

“And Spain?” she said. “Cudillero is just a longer way of saying you’re still choosing the easier thing.”

“Maybe. Or maybe I’m just done pretending this city was ever going to give me back what I came here for.”