Chapter 15: The Bunny and the Escape
The phone stopped buzzing.The silence it left behind was worse. It was a held breath, a waiting. Cymra watched Pedro disappear through the French doors, the California sun hitting his shoulders like a spotlight. The crew buzzed around her, dismantling their world, but she was frozen in the chair, the cream silk of her blouse sticking to her skin under the hot lights.She could still feel the ghost of his thumb on her wrist. Tú eres mi alma gemela.The words felt stupid now, naive. A child’s spell against a gathering storm.
A technician unclipped her microphone, the sudden absence of its weight a small, sharp liberation.“All done, Ms.Xander. You were great,” he said, already turning away, coiling cable.She managed a nod, her throat tight. She stood, her legs unsteady, and walked toward the bedroom on autopilot. She needed to be away from the strangers, from the exposed space of their living room. She passed the kitchen island, her eyes snagging on the script—her script—lying beside a half-empty coffee mug. The man who spends half his life pretending to be whole. She almost laughed, a brittle, soundless thing. He’d used her own truth as a shield on national television, while the enemy was texting him in their home.
In the bedroom, the bed was still unmade from the night before, the sheets tangled in a way that felt intimate and accusing. The scent of them, of sleep and sex and Pedro’s cologne, was trapped in the linen. She sat heavily on the edge of the bed, her head in her hands. The interview high, the feeling of solid ground, had evaporated.In its place was a cold, familiar dread.Rafael wasn’t a ghost. Ghosts didn’t have your number. Ghosts didn’t ping your phone with a persistence that spoke of certainty, of entitlement.She heard the patio door slide open and shut. Pedro’s footsteps were slow in the hallway.He appeared in the doorway, backlit by the hall light. He hadn’t brought his phone.His hands were empty. His face was drawn, the expertly applied makeup now seeming like a mask over something exhausted and pale.
“What did he want?” Her voice came out flat, drained.
Pedro leaned against the doorframe, running a hand through his hair, messing up Marco’s careful work.“He’s in Buenos Aires. He’s… scared.The Moss resignation has spooked him. The people they worked for, they’re not happy.Money is missing.Blame is getting assigned.”
“And he called you for what? A loan? A hug?”
“He called because I’m the only one who ever…” Pedro stopped, pushing off from the frame.He walked to the window, staring out at the hills. “He thinks I owe him.For the silence. For the discretion he didn’t break, even though he outed me to the paps, though you stopped it.”
Cymra watched his back, the tension in his shoulders. “Do you?Owe him?”
He was quiet for a long time. The question hung in the air, thick with the memory of the scar on his thigh, of his confession in the dark.This is the only scar that matters.
“No,” he said finally, but the word lacked conviction.It was an intellectual answer, not a visceral one.“But fear makes people dangerous. He’s cornered. A cornered animal bites anything near it.”
“Including us.” She said it not as a question, but as the final piece of a terrible equation.
Pedro turned to face her.“I told him not to call again.I told him again it was over. That I was done.”
“And he texted back,” Cymra stated.She could imagine it. A threat wrapped in nostalgia.A reminder of a vulnerability only Rafael had seen.
Pedro’s silence confirmed it.He didn’t move from the window. The distance between them, ten feet of polished hardwood, felt like a canyon.A cold clarity settled over Cymra. This was the pattern.Rafael would recede, then return. Pedro would fortify his walls, then a crack would appear—a moment of guilt, a flicker of shared history, a twisted strand of loyalty. And she would be left holding the perimeter, armed with nothing but a wedding ring and a decade of love.The fight was eternal. The quiet scenes he wanted to play were a luxury they couldn’t afford.She stood up.Her body felt both heavy and detached. She walked past him, out of the bedroom, down the hall to her office. The corduroy sofa still bore the imprint of their bodies.She ignored it.She went to her desk, opened the laptop. The screen glowed to life.
“Cymra?” Pedro had followed her, standing in the office doorway.She didn’t answer.Her fingers moved over the keys, deliberate, calm. She knew the name. She’d looked it up weeks ago, in a moment of despair so black it felt like planning was the only form of control left.Hotel Muerte Buena. She navigated to the site.The design was serene, minimalist. Pale woods, soft textiles, views of a tranquil garden.For those seeking a permanent end to their story.She found the reservation page. The dates she’d tentatively selected were still there.A week in a premium suite. One guest. And at the end— nothing. No more worries. “What are you doing?” Pedro’s voice was closer now, just behind her chair.
She could feel the heat of him, smell the faint sweat beneath his cologne. Her heart was a slow, dull thud against her ribs.She clicked on the reservation. A confirmation screen loaded.A button glowed: Confirm Arrival.
A single tear slid down her cheek, followed by another.They fell silently onto the keyboard.She wasn’t sobbing. It was a quiet leakage of a profound, endless exhaustion.
“Cymra.” His hand came down, covering her mouse hand.His skin was warm.He didn’t pull her away yet. He saw the screen.He read it.His breath hitched.
“I’m tired,” she whispered, the words scraping her throat raw.“I’m so tired of fighting a ghost. He always wins.He has the real scar. He has your attention, even when it’s fear, even when it’s anger.It’s a thread. And I…” She gestured at the screen, at the serene hotel facade.“I have a reservation.For an ending. A quiet one.”
His other hand came to her shoulder, gentle, then firm. He turned her chair around, forcing her to look at him.He dropped to his knees, his eyes level with hers. They were wide, dark pools of sheer panic.The pale calm from the window was gone, shattered.
“You are not leaving,” he said, each word a stone dropped between them.
“Pedro—”
“No.” His voice broke on the word. He took her face in both hands, his thumbs wiping desperately at her tears.“Listen to me.You do not get to leave me. You do not get to check out.This is our life.This mess. This beautiful, fucked-up, imperfect life.You are in it. With me.”
“I don’t know how to fight him anymore,” she choked out, the dam breaking.A sob wrenched itself from her chest. “I used all my weapons.I stood on a red carpet. I said I loved you on television.What’s left? What do I have that he doesn’t?”
“You have me!” The cry was ripped from him, raw and guttural. His accent thickened, wrapping around the words like a vise.“You have the me that wakes up scared and reaches for you. The me that hates the scar on his leg until you kiss it. The me that is yours. That has always been yours, even when I was too fucking cowardly to claim it back!”
He pulled her from the chair, folding her into his arms as she crumpled. He held her as she cried, great heaving sobs that shook them both. He rocked her slightly, his face buried in her hair.“I will change my number.I will burn the phone. I will fly to Buenos Aires and make him disappear myself, Cymra, I swear to God. Whatever it takes.But you are not leaving.You are not allowed.”
His ferocity was a lifeline. She clung to it, to the solid reality of his arms, the beating of his heart against her cheek. The cold, detached clarity began to recede, burned away by the heat of his anger, his fear, his love.
When her sobs quieted to shuddering breaths, he released her just enough to look at her face.He cradled her jaw, his own eyes glistening. “From now on,” he said, his voice low and steadier, a vow forged in the tremble.“I fight for us.You don’t have to. You just have to be here.Let me fight.”
He stood, pulling her up with him. He led her back to the desk. With one arm still tightly around her shoulders, he reached over and closed her laptop lid, extinguishing the serene, terrible image. Then he picked up his own phone from where he’d left it on the desk.He unlocked it.The screen showed the text thread. He didn’t let her read it. He opened the contact, tapped a few buttons, and held the screen so she could see.Delete Contact “Rafael”?He hit yes.
Block this Caller?He hit yes.Then he powered the phone down completely. The screen went black, reflective.“Done,” he said, tossing the inert device onto the sofa. It landed with a soft thump on the corduroy.He turned to her, cupping her face again. “Now.Let’s go burn that reservation.Not metaphorically. Let’s print it out and set it on fire in the kitchen sink.”
A weak, watery laugh escaped her. She leaned into his hand, her energy spent. “That’s a fire hazard.”
“I don’t care.” He kissed her forehead, her eyelids, her salty cheeks. “Then we’ll shred it and flush it.We’ll have a ceremony.But it’s gone. That option is gone.”
He was right. The terrifying, logical escape hatch she’d kept in her mind was closed.He had welded it shut from the outside.The only way was through.With him.
She nodded, her forehead resting against his. “Okay.”
“Okay,” he echoed, breathing the word into her skin.
They stood like that for a long time, in the quiet of her office, surrounded by the ghosts of their former selves—the writer and the actor, the best friends, the lavender couple—all consumed now by this new, fragile, and fiercely defended thing: an us. The fight wasn’t over.Rafael was still out there, scared and dangerous. But the front lines had been redrawn.He was no longer between them.Pedro finally stirred. “Come on,” he said, his voice rough but tender.“Let’s go make some new quiet scenes. And then, I really do want to read that script. All of it.”
He took her hand, his grip sure and strong, and led her from the room, leaving the dark phone and the dormant laptop behind, walking not away from the fight, but into the heart of their own, chosen story.
He took her hand, his grip sure and strong, and led her from the room, leaving the dark phone and the dormant laptop behind, walking not away from the fight, but into the heart of their own, chosen story. The hallway felt different now, the wood floor cool under her bare feet, his palm warm against hers. It was a simple connection, a tether back into the world.
In the kitchen, the morning sun slanted across the marble, casting long, warm shadows.The interview’s champagne flutes stood empty by the sink. Pedro didn’t let go of her hand. “Where’s your printer?”
“The office,” Cymra said, her voice still hoarse.
“Stay.” He gave her fingers a squeeze and disappeared back down the hall. She heard the soft whirr of the printer, a single sheet being fed.She leaned against the counter, the cool stone seeping through her silk blouse. The domesticity of the moment—the hum of the fridge, the distant whine of a leaf blower—felt surreal, layered over the phantom chill of the hotel website.
He returned with the single printed page, the Hotel Muerte Buena logo a small, elegant swirl at the top. He held it up.“This?”
She nodded, a lump forming in her throat again. It wasn’t just paper.It was the schematic of her surrender, the blueprints for her exit.
“Okay,” he said, almost to himself. He opened a drawer, rummaged past takeout menus and rubber bands, and pulled out a cheap plastic lighter. He placed the page in the deep, stainless steel kitchen sink.“Here,” he said, offering her the lighter. “You should do it.”
Her hands were steady as she took it.The plastic was warm from his grip. She flicked the wheel. A small, defiant flame sprang to life, wobbling in the still kitchen air.She touched it to the corner of the page.
The paper caught quickly, a bright orange tongue licking up the edge, blackening the serene text. It curled in on itself as it burned, the fire consuming the dates, the suite number, the promise of an ending. A feather-light ash floated upward before vanishing.
They watched it together, his arm around her waist, her head leaning against his shoulder. The flame climbed, hungry, and for a second the logo resisted, then it too darkened and was gone.The heat warmed her face. The last fragment, the words “permanent end,” glowed briefly as an ember before crumbling into gray dust.
He turned on the tap, a short burst of water hissing onto the ashes, reducing them to a wet, black smear. He rinsed it down the drain.“Gone,” he said, quietly.
Cymra stared at the empty sink, then at the lighter in her hand. She placed it on the counter with a soft click.A strange, hollow relief settled in her chest.The escape route was sealed. There was only forward.“So,” Pedro said, turning to her, his eyes searching hers. “We’re here. What does that mean now?”
She took a breath, the air still faintly carrying the acent of smoke.“It means we need a new plan. One that doesn’t involve waiting for his next move.”
“Leave LA,” Pedro said, the idea seeming to form fully as he spoke it.“Not forever.But for now.A house somewhere. Big walls, a long driveway. Where a car can’t just pull up to the curb.”
“Where no one knows the schedule,” she added, the thought taking root. “Where you aren’t Pedro Valenzuela for five minutes.”
“Where you can write something that isn’t about us,” he said, gently.He brushed a strand of hair from her cheek. “Do you have any scripts left in you that aren’t about broken men?”
The question was so earnest it almost hurt.She thought of the document on her laptop, the one he’d promised to read. “One or two.But they’re quiet. Small.”
“That’s all I want,” he said.“Quiet and small.Let Leo handle the press.Let the lawyers handle Rafael. We’ll go find some quiet.”
“What about your premiere next week?” she asked. “The Netflix thing.”
He made a dismissive sound in his throat. “I’ll walk the carpet.I’ll smile.I’ll say the things. And then we get in a car and drive until the lights look like stars again, not just other people’s windows.” His thumb traced the line of her jaw. “Mi alma gemela isn’t a line for a camera, Cymra.It’s a fact. And I’m going to start building a life that proves it.”
She believed him. Maybe it was the smoke in the air, or the ashes in the drain, or the absolute certainty in his tired eyes. For the first time in weeks, the tight knot of dread in her stomach loosened, not because the threat was gone, but because she wasn’t facing it alone on the perimeter anymore.He was in the trench with her.
“Okay,” she said, a real smile touching her lips for the first time that day. “Let’s go be quiet.”
He kissed her then, not with the desperate heat of the night before, but with a deep, settling certainty. It tasted of closure and of promises, of lemons from his cologne and a faint, lingering trace of smoke.When he pulled back, he rested his forehead against hers.
“I’m going to make coffee,” he said. “And then we are going online, and we are going to look at houses with gates. Very big, very stupid gates.”
She laughed, a real sound that bounced off the clean, hard surfaces of the kitchen. “That sounds perfect.”
He moved to the espresso machine, his familiar, comfortable ritual filling the space where the silence had been. Cymra watched him, the purposeful set of his shoulders, the way he tapped the grounds into the portafilter. The sun was lower now, the light turning a deeper gold, gilding the edges of everything. The phone was off. The reservation was ash. The ghost was in Argentina. And they were here, in their kitchen, making coffee and planning an escape not from each other, but towards something new.The story wasn’t ending.It was just changing direction, one page at a time.
He handed her a small white cup, the espresso inside dark and fragrant. “To quiet scenes,” he said, clinking his own cup against hers.“To quiet scenes,” she echoed.
They drank, and the bitter, perfect taste was an anchor, a beginning.
Pedro’s phone, a dark slab on the corduroy sofa, stayed off. The silence it fostered was spacious, filled only by the gurgle of the espresso machine and the distant, muffled city. “Big gates,” Cymra said, setting her cup down with a definitive click. “But not one of those stark modern boxes, all concrete and anxiety.”
“Something old,” Pedro agreed, already pulling his tablet from a drawer. He leaned against the counter, his shoulder brushing hers. “With trees that have seen things. A porch.”
“A porch is non-negotiable.” She slid onto a stool beside him, the marble cool through her silk pants. “I want a swing. The kind that creaks.”
He smiled, a real one that crinkled the corners of his eyes. “A creaky swing. Noted.” He opened a real estate app, its interface brutally bright. They scrolled past gleaming minimalist villas, their pools like turquoise scars in the hills. Everything looked staged and inhospitable. “This is depressing,” he muttered, his finger swiping faster. “They all look like surgery centers.”
“Try a different zip code,” she suggested. “Further out. Towards the valley, maybe. Or up the coast.”
He changed the search parameters, pushing the radius wider, filtering for older properties, for land. The new listings loaded slowly, a cascade of faded stucco and overgrown gardens. It felt more human. They drank more coffee and began a silent, shared curation. He would point, grunting. “Too yellow.” She would shake her head. “The roof looks tired.” They were building a shared vocabulary of refusal, which felt, in its way, like a form of construction.
Then he stopped. “Look at this one.”
The photo showed a faded terracotta pathway winding through a tangle of olive trees. The house itself, a low-slung Spanish Revival hidden at the end of a long, private drive, was barely visible. The caption read: Needs vision. And work. The gate in the first picture was wrought iron, intricate with rust, but unequivocally closed.
“Click it,” she said.
The inside was a time capsule of dark wood and cracked Saltillo tiles. The kitchen was a tragedy of 1970s avocado green. A giant, moss-stained fountain dominated a courtyard where a lone lemon tree grew twisted towards the light. Sunlight pierced the dust motes in empty rooms through arched windows. It was profoundly unglamorous. It was perfect.
“The gate’s a monster,” Pedro whispered, zooming in. He sounded reverent.
“It’s at least ten minutes from the main road,” Cymra said, studying the map. “Look at the land. All those trees. You could scream and no one would hear.”
He looked at her, a flicker of pain in the warmth. “I don’t want you to have to scream.”
“I know.” She touched his wrist. “But it’s good to know you could.”
They spent two hours falling in love with a ruin. They argued about the courtyard—whether to restore the fountain or tear it out. He imagined a writing nook for her in the sun-drenched eastern room. She saw him pruning the olive trees, his hands in the earth. They discussed the practical horrors of rewiring and plumbing with a light-hearted dread that felt like planning a shared future, not fleeing a threat. For those two hours, Rafael was a character in a bad script they were no longer reading.
“We have to see it,” Pedro said finally, his voice firm. He saved the listing. “Tomorrow. I’ll have Leo call the agent. Discreetly.”
“What about the premiere tomorrow night?” she asked. The red carpet felt like a appointment on another planet.
“We’ll go. We’ll smile. And the next morning, we drive out to see our crumbling hacienda.” He said our with a deliberate weight. “It’s a plan. A real one.”
Cymra nodded, watching him. The panic that had gripped him in her office had transmuted into a focused, steadying energy. He was building a barricade, not just with deleted contacts and burned paper, but with floor plans and irrigation concerns. It was the most romantic thing she’d ever seen.
Her own laptop, still closed on her desk, felt less like a coffin now. The story inside it, the one about the man who spends half his life pretending to be whole, didn’t feel like a quiet scream of her own loneliness anymore. It felt like something she could finish, perhaps even revise. She wasn’t just the writer of a broken man. She was, potentially, the co-owner of a broken house. The difference was atomic.
Pedro’s tablet buzzed with a calendar alert for the next day’s fittings and press call. The real world, with its rigid schedules, intruded with a soft chime. He sighed, the caretaker of the olive grove vanishing, replaced by the actor with obligations. “I should turn this back on,” he said, gesturing vaguely towards the living room where his phone lay. “Just for Leo. To arrange the viewing.”
The air in the kitchen shifted, cooled a degree. The fortress they’d built over the afternoon had a door, and it had to be opened.
“Okay,” Cymra said. She stood, collecting their cups. The mundane action was a tether. “But you’re not checking that thread. Leo can handle the agent. That’s it.”
“That’s it,” he agreed, pushing off from the counter. He walked into the living room with the resolve of a man approaching a neutralized bomb. She heard the faint electronic chirp of the phone powering up. Then silence.
She rinsed the cups slowly, the water almost scalding her hands. She counted the tiles on the backsplash. Twenty-seven.
His footsteps returned, slower. He appeared in the kitchen doorway, the phone in his hand. His face was unreadable.
“Leo’s on it,” he said. “He’ll set up a viewing for the day after tomorrow. Private. No paper trail.”
“Good.” She dried her hands on a towel. “That’s good.”
“There were… other messages.” He didn’t look at the device. “From numbers I don’t know. Area code 54.”
Buenos Aires. The chill was back, seeping through the warm kitchen air. Cymra leaned against the sink, the edge digging into her spine. “What did they say?”
“Nothing.” He finally met her eyes. “They said nothing. Just missed calls. Three of them. From three different numbers.”
A new tactic. Not a torrent of words, but a silent, persistent knocking. A reminder that the block function was only as good as the next throwaway phone. The ghost wasn’t just texting. It was multiplying.
Pedro’s jaw tightened. He walked to the large kitchen trash can, lifted the lid, and dropped the phone inside. It landed with a dull thud on top of coffee grounds and discarded lemon rinds. He let the lid fall shut.
“I’ll get a new number tomorrow,” he said, wiping his hands on his jeans. “A completely new one. Only you, Leo, and my father will have it.”
It was a gesture, grand and slightly ridiculous. They both knew a determined person could find a way. But the symbolism was the point. The phone in the trash was the physical echo of the burning paper. It was a line drawn in the domestic dirt of their kitchen.
Cymra looked from the trash can to his resolute face. The fear was there, a cold knot in her stomach, but it was met now by a spark of defiant anger. “He’s trying to scare you.”
“He’s succeeding,” Pedro admitted quietly. He came to her, took the towel from her hands, and laid it aside. His palms were warm on her chilled arms. “But I’d rather be scared with you in a house with a giant gate than pretending I’m not scared in this glass box.”
He pulled her close. She rested her head against his chest, listening to the steady beat beneath his shirt. The kitchen smelled of espresso and lemon cleaner and, faintly, of the ash they’d washed away. They stood there, in the heart of their current home, already mentally packing, already halfway out the door.
“We should pack a bag for after the premiere,” she murmured into his chest. “For seeing the house. Just in case we… love it.”
She felt his breath of laughter against her hair. “Just in case we love a house with avocado appliances and a demonic fountain.”
“Exactly.”
“I’ll pack my overalls,” he said. “And you pack your… creaky swing negotiation pants.”
“You mean my faded black yoga pants. Agreed.”
It was absurd. It was necessary. The plan, fragile as it was, gave the fear a shape they could walk around. They weren’t just waiting anymore. They were searching. For a porch, for a gate, for a silence they could both bear. And for the first time, the searching felt like something they were doing together, not something she was doing to keep him, or he was doing to escape. It was a forward motion, however uncertain. The next scene was already waiting.