Page 154 of The Hollywood Switch-up

“Then let’s stop running. Both of us.” He smiled, and it was the first real smile in months. “Juntos.”

“Together,” she echoed.

“Then show me,” he murmured, and kissed her.

He tasted salt from her tears and the sea. Around them, the lanterns held against the wind, waves moved at their feet, and somewhere beyond the break, the horizon held, the way it always had.

When they broke apart she was still there. That was the thing. Three months of her being gone—in the corridor, on the yacht, in every version of this he’d constructed in his head—and now she was standing in front of him on his beach with salt in her hair and mascara on her cheeks and she wasn’t leaving. His body didn’t know what to do with that yet. He wasn’t sure his mind did either.

“When does the plane leave?”

He almost laughed. Three months and that was her first question. “Dos de la mañana.”

“Good.” She pulled back slightly. “Because I should tell you something.”

“¿Qué?”

“I’m not packed.” She said it the way she said everything that mattered. “I have a premiere dress and whatever’s in my clutch. Lily has my phone charger. I left my shoes somewhere on your beach.” She looked at him. “I’m telling you this now so you can’t say I didn’t warn you.”

He looked at her for a long moment. Then he laughed—the surprised kind, the kind that had nothing to do with performance. “Dios mío, Erika.”

“Anneliese is going to be insufferable about this,” she added. “Just so you know.”

“About which part?”

“All of it.” Her eyes were bright. “I made her help, actually. Her and Bradley and Lily. I told them what I wanted and they pulled it together in two hours.” A beat. “They’re all Team Stefan now, apparently.”

“Team Stefan.”

“Her words.” Erika’s mouth curved. “She said, and I quote, ‘If you don’t go after him, I will literally disown you as a sister.’”

“‘Literally.’” He said it the way Anneliese would have said it—with the full weight of the italics. “I like her.”

“Don’t tell her that. She’ll be impossible.”

“Más imposible.”

She laughed. He took her hand.

“There’s a kitchen in Cudillero,” he said. “My mother’s. It smells like sofrito and olive oil and the specific light that comes through the window over the sink in the morning is—” He stopped. Tried to find the word in either language and couldn’t. “I've been trying to describe it since I left. I want you to paint it.”

She looked at him. Her face moved. Not the arranged version, just the real one.

“Okay,” she said. Quiet and certain. The same register as I’m done with small.

“Entonces.” He squeezed her hand once. “We should go. The jet⁠—”

“I know.” She looked down at herself—the wet hem, the bare feet. “I’m going to Spain in a premiere dress with no shoes and whatever’s in here.” She opened the clutch. Lip gloss. A bobby pin. Bradley’s parking ticket from the theater. “Perfect," she said dryly.

She took his hand and they turned toward the house together—the ocean behind them, the lights of the porch ahead, Spain somewhere beyond the dark water at their backs. Not running. Just moving. In the same direction, at the same pace, toward the same thing.

For the first time in a long time, that was exactly right.

EPILOGUE

Erika

The balcony of their villa looked out over the Cantabrian Sea—perched on a cliff, open to the sky, a view with no equivalent in Los Angeles. Los Angeles didn’t have this light. Erika had been trying to name it for a year. The closest she’d come was somewhere between cerulean and something that didn’t have a word yet.