Mikha drives with one hand on the wheel, the other is intertwined with Aiah's and resting on Aiah's thigh, her thumb moving in small, absent circles against the fabric of the sundress.

Aiah watches the city pass through the window, then turns to look at Mikha. "You still haven't told me where we're going."

"Hmm."

"Mikha."

Mikha glances at her, the corner of her mouth lifts. "You said you wanted to be surprised."

"I said I wanted to know. You said, and I quote, 'just wear something comfortable.'"

"Which you did." Mikha's eyes flick down to the white sundress, then back to the road. "Good girl."

Aiah rolls her eyes, but she's smiling. Mikha catches it in her peripheral vision and has to look away.

They stop at a Jollibee drive-thru somewhere past the tolls. Aiah orders a fries, burger and a jolly hotdog.

Mikha raises an eyebrow.

"I heard you last time while we’re watching the news, a jollibee commercial appeared, you whispered that you’re craving jolly hotdog," Aiah says casually.

Mikha's heart pounds. She didn’t know Aiah heard that, but Aiah did, and actually took note of that. She pulls forward to the window, pays, and hands the paper bag to Aiah, who immediately opens it and pulls out a fry. She holds it up to Mikha's mouth without looking at her, and Mikha takes it, chewing as she merges back onto the highway.

"You're going to feed me the whole drive, aren't you?"

"Yes."

"I have a hand."

"You have a hand on my thigh. That hand's busy."

Mikha laughs. Aiah feeds her another fry, and they eat in comfortable silence while the fields start to open up on either side of the road. The sky getting wider.

Two hours is a long time to sit with something you've been carrying since four in the morning.

Mikha has been thinking about it since midnight. Since before Aiah said she loves her, before the couch, before the whiskey. She'd woken up at four with it sitting in her chest heavily, gone to the gaming room, poured the whiskey, and sat in the dark trying to figure out how to say it. Then Aiah came in. Then everything had changed. And now the words are still there, still waiting, still unsaid.

She doesn't know if she deserves to say them back. That's the truth she keeps circling. Aiah said I love you, and Mikha cried, and she didn't say it back, and she's been chewing on that failure for hours.

But she wants Aiah to see this first. Before she says anything, before she lets herself be that vulnerable, she wants Aiah to know where they're going—and why.

"You're quiet," Aiah says.

"Thinking."

"About?"

"Later." Mikha squeezes her hand. "I promise."

Aiah doesn't push. She just laces her fingers through Mikha's and goes back to watching the window.

They pass a sign that says Tarlac, and Mikha's stomach does something complicated. She turns off the highway onto the main road, and onto a narrower one, then another, then a gravel path lined with acacia trees.

Aiah sits up straighter. "Okay," she says. "This is not a hotel."

"No."

"This is not a restaurant."

"Also no."

"Love, where are we going?"

Mikha doesn't answer. She slows the car, and there it is, a few hundred meters ahead: the gate appears—tall, dark iron, set into a stone wall that runs the length of the property, and beyond it, nothing but green. She stops at the gate, pulls out a remote, and the gate swings open. She drives through.

Her heart is pounding so loud in her chest now. She's never brought anyone here aside from Jhoanna and Colet. This place is hers, the only thing in her life her parents don't have a hand in, and she's about to hand the key to it to a woman who told her she loves her and meant it, and she doesn't know if she deserves that or if she's about to ruin it the way she ruins everything.

She glances at Aiah.

Aiah is staring. Her mouth has opened slightly, and she's turning her head to take in the fields that stretch out beyond the gate—rice paddies, rows of fruit trees, vegetable plots laid out in neat rectangles, a few small figures in the distance bent over the soil.

"Love," Aiah says. "What is this?"

Mikha still doesn't answer. She drives through the long driveway, past the mango trees, past a small pond, and stops in front of an A-frame house with a wide porch and huge windows that reflect the afternoon sky.

She parks, gets out, and walks around to open Aiah's door. Aiah takes her hand and steps out, still looking around, still trying to make sense of it.

"Who owns this place?"

Mikha just smiles. A farmer in a wide-brimmed hat walks past with a basket of tomatoes, and Mikha lifts a hand. "Kuya Bert."

"Mikha!" The man's face splits into a grin. He sets the basket down and walks over, wiping his hands on his shirt. "Hindi ka nagsabi na pupunta ka. Nagpaluto sana ako ng mga paborito mo."

"Biglaan, kuya." Mikha claps his shoulder. "Kamusta po kayo? How's the irrigation holding up?"

"Mabuti naman kami rito. Gumagana yung bagong pump. Malapit na rin yung mga mangga—isa, o dalawang linggo."

"Good. I want to see the east field before we leave."

"Oo, sige." Kuya Bert glances at Aiah. "Good afternoon po, ma'am." Then back at Mikha, he grins.

Mikha reaches back and takes Aiah's hand, pulling her forward. "This is Aiah. My wife."

Aiah's breath catches—just a small one, barely audible—but Mikha hears it.

"Hala. Asawa!" Kuya Bert beams and offers his hand to Aiah. "Ma'am Aiah, it's an honor. Never pa nagdala ng partner si Mikha rito kaya pasensya na kung medyo excited ako."

Aiah chuckles softly and shakes his hand warmly. "It's nice to meet you, Kuya Bert. The farm is beautiful po."

"Mas lalo sa malapit, ma'am. The tomatoes this season—" He kisses his fingers. "Mikha, may bagong seedlings sa nursery. Ikot mo si ma'am ganda roon mamaya."

Mikha nods toward the house. "Opo. We'll just settle in first."

Kuya Bert picks up his basket and heads off, and Mikha walks around to the trunk, pulls out their bags, and slings them over her shoulder. Aiah watches her—still staring, still processing—and Mikha feels the weight of that stare all the way to the front door.

She unlocks it and steps inside.

The house opens up around them. High ceilings, pale wood floors, furniture in soft grays and linens. A wall of windows looks out over the fields. The kitchen is open and clean, with a long wooden table and a bowl of fresh fruit in the center. It smells like wood and something faintly green, like the outside has seeped in through the walls.

Aiah turns in a slow circle, taking it in. "This is—this is yours?"

"Jhoanna and Colet helped me pick the furniture." Mikha sets the bags down by the door. "I have no taste. I told them I wanted it to feel like a house, not a hotel, and they took over."

Aiah looks at her, eyes wide. "You own a farm."

"I own a farm."

"How many hectares?"

"Ten."

Aiah smiles warmly, proudly.

Mikha crosses the room, reaches out, and pulls Aiah gently toward her by the waist. She kisses her once—soft, unhurried—and when she pulls back, Aiah's eyes are still wide, but softer now.

"Walk with me outside?" she asks quietly.

Aiah nods. Her hand finds Mikha's, and they leave the bags where they are and step back out into the late afternoon light.

The fields are golden at this hour. The mango trees cast long shadows across the path, and the air smells like soil and cut grass and sweet from the orchards. Farmers pass them, and every single one stops. They greet Mikha like she's family, ask how she's been, tell her they missed her, scold her for staying away so long. Mikha takes it all with a patience Aiah has never seen her show her parents. She asks about their kids by name. She asks about the water pump that was giving trouble last month. She asks about the old woman in the next barangay who had a fever, and when they tell her she's fine now, she nods like it matters.

"This is my wife," she says, over and over. "Aiah."

Meanwhile, Mikha watches Aiah every time they tell her she's beautiful, and she thanks them. Mikha watches how Aiah is gracious and warm and easy with people she just met. And she thinks about how she spent years convinced there was nothing in the world worth being gentle for.

They walk on. Aiah keeps talking. About how fresh the vegetables look, how she wants to know if they grow tomatoes like this at home, how she could live somewhere like this, how the air smells different out here, cleaner, like it's never been breathed before. Mikha listens. She doesn't say much. She's still gathering herself, still trying to find the beginning of the thing she needs to say.

They pass under a row of mango trees, and the shade falls cool across their shoulders. Aiah is mid-sentence about the vegetables when Mikha stops walking.

Aiah stops too and looks at her. "Love?"

Mikha takes a breath. Her hand is still in Aiah's, and she can feel her own pulse in her palm, which is ridiculous—she's Mikha Lim, she doesn't get nervous—but there it is. 

"My parents think I hate them," she says.

Aiah doesn't move. Doesn't speak.

Mikha looks back at Aiah, and then past her, out at the green, because it's easier.

"Maybe I let them believe it." she says. "They see the meetings with their competitors. The calls I take behind closed doors. The quiet moves I make inside Lim Holdings. They see the pieces, but they never see the reason."

She swallows.

"To them, I'm dismantling the company from the inside. Selling off shares. Feeding information to rivals. Making deals that put everything they built at risk." Her jaw tightens. "None of that is true."

Aiah's hand shifts in hers, but she still doesn't speak.

"I've never sold a single share to a competitor." Mikha's voice is low, steady. "Every meeting I take with them is a warning, not a negotiation. I sit across from the people who want to take pieces of my family's company, and I tell them what will happen if they try. I know their plans before they can execute them. I know where they're vulnerable, what they stand to lose, which pressure points to push." She pauses. "I make deals that keep Lim Holdings standing. And I do it quietly, because the moment my parents find out—" She stops. Shakes her head. "They'll ask why."

"Mikha—"

"I don't know how to explain that I can resent them and still protect them." The words come out rougher than she wants. "That I can hate the way they neglected me. The way I spent years feeling like the child they remembered only on my birthdays. And still—" She closes her eyes briefly. "Still love them enough to burn down every threat that comes near them."

She opens her eyes. Looks at Aiah.

"I don't want Lim Holdings. I don't want their approval. I don't even want their gratitude." Her voice cracks on the last word, and she hates it. "I just don't want to watch everything they built fall apart."

She pulls her hand free of Aiah's and rubs her face. "So I let them think I'm the enemy. If they need someone to blame, I'll take it. If they need to believe their daughter is trying to destroy them, fine." She drops her hand. "Because I'd rather have my parents hate me than let someone else destroy them."

Her eyes sting. She blinks it away before Aiah can see it.

"Mikha," Aiah says softly.

"And this farm." Mikha gestures at the fields around them, at the house behind them, at all of it. "This is mine. My own money, and some of theirs, the money they think I'm just throwing away. This is what I've been building. This is what I signed the marriage for. Because I couldn't let my father burn it. Because I care about the people here. Because—" Her voice breaks. "Because even if they'd be proud of this, I don't know how to take their gratitude without it hurting somewhere I can't reach."

She looks away. And the tears come.

They fall silently, one after another, and she doesn't wipe them. She just stands there, in the middle of her own farm, under the mango trees, and lets Aiah see her.

Aiah steps closer. She reaches up and kisses Mikha's cheek, just below her eye, catching a tear on her lips.

"I love you," Aiah whispers.

Then she wraps her arms around Mikha and holds her.

Mikha hugs back. She buries her face in Aia’s shoulder and sobs. Harder than she has since she was a child—ugly, messy, without any of the control she's spent her whole life building.

Aiah doesn't let go. She holds her through it, one hand on the back of Mikha's head, the other flat against her back. And she's crying too, quietly, her tears soaking into Mikha's linen shirt.

They stand like that for a long time. The farmers in the distance don't approach. The sun keeps moving down toward the treeline, and still neither of them moves.

When Mikha can breathe again, when the worst of it has passed, she turns her face into Aiah’s neck and whispers it, barely there, broken by what's left of the sobs.

"I love you."

Aiah's arms tighten around her. She presses her cheek to her hair.

"I know, my love," she says. "I know."