The car moves through the traffic of a Saturday evening, and Mikha watches the city lights slide across the window, then back to Aiah. The burgundy gown is tucked neatly across her lap, the fabric catching the light every time they pass under a streetlamp. Aiah's fingers are working at nothing, tapping against her knee, the silk of the opera gloves whispering with every small movement.

Mikha's hand rests on top of Aiah's crossed legs, palm flat against the gown. She has been watching the fidgeting for the last ten minutes, the thumb that keeps finding the edge of the fabric, the jaw that keeps tightening. Aiah is nervous. Mikha has seen her walk into boardrooms with the calm of someone reading a grocery list, and this is the version of Aiah that no one else gets to see.

Mikha slides her fingers between Aiah's, threading them together, and lifts the gloved hand to her mouth. She presses a kiss to the back of it, right over the knuckles, slow enough that Aiah has to look at her.

"It's going to be fine," Mikha says. "You've been planning this thing since before I knew your name."

Aiah exhales, and the corner of her mouth lifts. It's not her real smile, but it's close. She leans sideways and rests her temple against Mikha's shoulder, and Mikha feels the weight of her settle there, the tension going out of her neck one vertebra at a time.

They ride like that for a few minutes. The driver keeps his eyes on the road. Mikha's thumb moves across Aiah's glove, back and forth, the silk warm under her touch.

"Mikha." Aiah's voice is quiet, almost swallowed by the engine.

"Mm."

"Don't drink tonight. Please."

Mikha doesn't answer right away. She looks down at the top of Aiah's head, the neat bun, the single strand of hair that has already escaped and curls against her ear. Aiah is asking because she remembers the wedding. She remembers the drunk bride who slurred her vows and had to be carried inside. She remembers every event after that where Mikha found the bar before she found the host.

"Okay," Mikha says.

Aiah doesn't lift her head. "You don't have to say okay if you're going to ignore it."

"I said okay." Mikha turns her head and presses her lips to Aiah's hair. "I'm not going to drink tonight. I'm going to stand there and watch you be the most impressive person in the room. That's my whole plan."

Aiah laughs, a small breath against Mikha's shoulder. "That's a weird plan."

"It's a great plan. I came up with it myself."

The car slows, turns, and the hotel comes into view. The driveway is lined with lights, and there are people everywhere, photographers clustered at the entrance with their lenses already up, guests in gowns and barongs stepping out of cars ahead of them. The Arceta Foundation's annual gala. Aiah's gala. Mikha has heard about this night for eight months, watched Aiah redo the seating chart three times, listened to her rehearse her speech in the bathroom with the door open.

The car stops.

Mikha catches Aiah's chin with her fingers, turns her face, and kisses her. It's not a quick kiss. She takes her time with it, the way she does when she wants Aiah to remember something.

"I love you," Mikha says against her mouth.

"I love you," Aiah says back. Her eyes are steadier now. Whatever was fidgeting in her hands has gone quiet.

Mikha gets out first. The flash hits her before her second foot touches the pavement, a wall of white light from every direction, cameras clicking like a nest of insects. She doesn't blink. She doesn't smile. She walks around the back of the car, and the photographers part slightly, because even in a crowd of people who photograph billionaires for a living, there's something about the way Mikha Lim moves that makes them step back.

She opens Aiah's door and offers her hand.

Aiah takes it and rises. The gown falls into place around her, the burgundy silk catching the lights, the diamond necklace at her throat throwing back a small red spark. The cameras go wild. Mikha keeps her face neutral and puts her hand at the small of Aiah's back, right where the gown dips, and steers her toward the entrance.

"Ms. Arceta! Ms. Arceta, over here!"

"Aiah, how does it feel to host the foundation's biggest night?"

"Is it true you doubled last year's donation target?"

Aiah turns her head slightly, gives a quick answer about the foundation's scholars, thanks the media for coming, and keeps walking. Mikha doesn't answer anything. She's watching the floor, the steps, the hem of the gown, the way Aiah's heels catch on the carpet. She has one job tonight and it is not to talk to reporters.

The doors open, and the hall swallows them.

It is enormous. Round tables draped in cream, centerpieces of white orchids, a stage at the far end with a backdrop that has the Arceta Foundation logo lit in gold. The step-and-repeat wall near the entrance is the one Aiah redid three times, and Mikha can see Mrs. Cruz's logo exactly where Aiah promised it would be. Every table is full. Every face in the room belongs to someone whose surname is on a building somewhere in Metro Manila.

Eduardo Arceta reaches them first, with Carmen on his arm. Aiah's father is in a dark barong, his reading glasses tucked into his pocket, and he opens his arms without a word. Aiah steps into them.

"Anak," Eduardo says, holding her. "You did this."

Carmen takes Aiah's face in both hands when she pulls back, looking at her the way mothers look at daughters who have grown past them. Then she turns to Mikha and hugs her without hesitation, the same hug she gives Aiah, warm and unhurried.

"You look beautiful," Carmen says. "Both of you. Like you planned it."

"We did," Mikha says. "Aiah picked the color."

"Of course she did." Carmen's eyes move between them, and something in her expression softens. She doesn't say whatever she's thinking. She just pats Mikha's arm and lets them go.

Hubert and Hazel Lim are at the next table. Hazel stands up when she sees them, and her smile is wide and genuine, her hand already reaching for Aiah's. Hubert stays seated. He gives Mikha a short nod, then turns back to the man beside him, and Mikha watches the back of his head for one second longer than she means to.

"Aiah, the hall looks wonderful," Hazel says. "You must have worked so hard."

"Thank you, Tita." Aiah's voice is polite and even. "I hope you enjoy the program."

Hazel's eyes flick to Mikha, and there's something complicated in them, something that looks almost like apology. Mikha doesn't give her anything back. She just stands there with her hand still on Aiah's back until Aiah is ready to move on.

They find the others near the middle of the room, at a table close to the stage. Jhoanna is the first one to see them, and she's on her feet before they get there, pulling Aiah into a hug that nearly knocks the gown off balance. Colet is behind her, holding a glass of sparkling water, nodding at Mikha over Jhoanna's shoulder.

Stacey and Maloi are at the same table. Stacey is in a strapless black dress with diamond studs at her ears, and Maloi is in something pink and ruffled that looks like it cost more than the table. Both of them get up when Aiah reaches them.

"Okay, this is insane," Maloi says, gesturing at the room. "Look at this. Look at the orchids. Aiah, this is not a charity gala, this is a wedding."

"It's a fundraiser," Aiah says, but she's smiling now, the real smile.

"It's a fundraiser the way the Met Gala is a museum benefit," Stacey says. She looks at Mikha and raises one eyebrow. "You clean up okay."

"So do you," Mikha says. "Almost."

Stacey's mouth opens, and Colet snorts into her water, and Jhoanna laughs out loud. Maloi is already grinning. For a second, the whole table is easy, the way it was at Stacey's birthday, the way it is when the four of them forget to be careful with each other.

"I have to go greet the other sponsors," Aiah says, touching Mikha's arm. "I'll see you later."

Mikha catches her by the waist and pulls her in, leans down, and presses a kiss to her temple. "I'm proud of you, baby," she says, low enough that only Aiah hears it.

Aiah's fingers curl briefly around Mikha's forearm. "Thank you, my love."

She walks away, and Mikha watches her go, the burgundy gown moving through the crowd, the way people turn to look at her, the way Aiah stops at each table and says exactly the right thing to each person. Mikha could stand here all night and just watch this.

"So," Stacey says, from behind her. Mikha turns. Stacey and Maloi are both looking at her with identical expressions, eyebrows up, mouths curved.

"What."

"Nothing," Maloi says, in a tone that means everything.

"What—" Mikha starts, but they're already walking away, and Stacey waves over her shoulder without turning around.

Colet appears at Mikha's elbow, and Jhoanna slides in on the other side. Together they steer her toward the bar at the side of the hall, a long counter of dark wood with a bartender in a vest and bow tie, positioned so that Mikha can still see the whole room, still see Aiah moving between the tables.

"What are you drinking?" Colet asks, already lifting two fingers at the bartender.

"Nothing," Mikha says. "Just water. Cold."

Colet's hand stops in the air. She turns her head slowly, like she's checking whether Mikha is joking. Jhoanna, beside her, has gone completely still.

"Say that again," Colet says.

"Water. Cold. In a glass." Mikha leans one elbow on the bar and doesn't look at either of them. "You have ears."

"Mikha Lim," Jhoanna says, "you have never once, in the entire time I have known you, attended an event like this and not been drunk by the second speaker."

"That was a different night."

"That was a year ago."

The bartender sets down a glass of water. Mikha picks it up, takes a sip, and sets it back down with a small click. Colet and Jhoanna are both staring at her now, and Mikha can feel the weight of the question they're not asking yet.

Colet recovers first. She orders a whiskey for herself, neat, and a gin and tonic for Jhoanna, and then she turns back to Mikha with her head tilted. "Did something happen?"

"Nothing happened."

"Something happened," Jhoanna says. "You're standing at a bar holding water like it's a personality."

"Maybe water is my personality now."

"Mikha."

Mikha takes another sip of water and looks past them, out into the room, where Aiah is standing with a group of men in barongs, laughing at something one of them said, her gloved hand resting on a champagne flute she isn't drinking from. She's good at this. She's better at this than anyone in the room, and Mikha has spent the last eight months learning to see it up close.

"She asked me not to drink tonight," Mikha says finally. "So I'm not drinking tonight."

Colet and Jhoanna exchange a look. It's the kind of look that has been passing between them since they were fifteen, the kind that says everything without a single word. Then Jhoanna grins, wide and delighted, and Colet shakes her head and takes a long drink of her whiskey.

"Wow," Jhoanna says. "Okay. So this is what it looks like."

"What what looks like."

"You," Colet says. "Like this. Sober at a gala. Watching your wife work the room like a hawk. It's honestly a little disturbing."

Mikha doesn't answer that. She drinks her water and keeps her eyes on Aiah, who is now moving toward a table of older women with the careful, patient attention she gives to every donor. Jhoanna and Colet stay beside her, leaning on the bar, trading their usual banter, but Mikha only half-hears them. She is aware, in a way she can't quite articulate, that this is the first time in her adult life she has stood in a room full of people and wanted to be exactly where she is.

The program starts at eight. The lights dim, the emcee comes out, and there's a round of applause before the first speaker. Mikha stays at the bar counter without minding if Colet or Jhoanna are still beside her or roaming around the hall.

Aiah is sitting with her parents and the Lims, and two of the foundation's biggest donors. Her back is straight. Her hands are folded on the table. She listens to each speaker with her full attention, nodding at the right moments, laughing at the right jokes, and Mikha watches the line of her shoulders and thinks, for the hundredth time, that she has never met anyone who holds themselves like Aiah Arceta.

The first speaker talks about the foundation's history. The second talks about the scholarship program. The third is a scholar herself, a girl in her early twenties who stands up and says that without the Arceta Foundation she would have dropped out of college in her second year, and Mikha sees Aiah's jaw tighten, just slightly, and knows she's holding something back.

Then the emcee steps back to the microphone.

"Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome the host of this evening's gala, the head of the Arceta Foundation, Aiah Arceta-Lim."

The room applauds. Mikha claps with them, harder than anyone near her, and Aiah rises from her seat and walks to the stage, and the burgundy gown moves with her like it was made for this exact moment. She climbs the steps, adjusts the microphone, and looks out at the room.

"Good evening," Aiah says. Her voice is steady, warm, and it carries to the back of the hall without effort. "Thank you all for being here tonight. Before I say anything else, I want to thank my parents, Eduardo and Carmen Arceta, who started this foundation twenty-two years ago with a single scholarship and a stubborn belief that no child should have to choose between an education and a meal."

She pauses. The room is quiet. Mikha has heard Aiah speak in online meetings, over dinner, but this is different. This is Aiah at the center of a room she built, and she isn't performing. She's just talking, and everyone is listening.

"Tonight, we raised forty-three million pesos. That money goes directly to the scholars you'll meet in the program booklet on your tables, to their tuition, their books, their transportation, their meals. It goes to students who are smart enough and stubborn enough to be here tonight in ten years, accepting the same award we're about to give out."

A small laugh moves through the room. Aiah smiles, and it's the real one, the one Mikha sees in the kitchen at seven in the morning.

"The core value of Arceta Corporation has always been the same. We build things that outlast us. And the only thing that reliably outlasts us is the people we help along the way."

Mikha is watching her, and she is so focused on Aiah that she doesn't notice the person who has come up behind her until he speaks.

"It's a shame, really."

The voice is low, pitched for her ear only, and male. Mikha doesn't turn around. Her eyes stay on Aiah.

"A woman like that," the voice continues, "married to someone like you. Everyone in this room is thinking it. You know that, right?"

Mikha's face doesn't move. She keeps her hand on the glass, her back straight, her eyes on Aiah on the stage. She has heard this, in one form or another, since the wedding announcement. The papers, the business pages, the whispered comments at dinners. She has heard it enough that it doesn't land anymore. It just sits there, a fact she has decided not to care about.

"She should have married someone like me," the voice says. "Someone with a real name. Someone who could give her what she deserves."

Mikha takes a slow breath. She can feel the shape of the words, the way they're aimed, and she knows she should let them pass. She should stand here, and watch Aiah, and let this man talk himself out.

"I mean, look at her." The voice drops lower. "That body. That dress. Do you know what I would do with her, if she were mine? I'd have her bent over the—"

Mikha doesn't let him finish. She turns and find the face behind the voice.

Jeremy Gringo, heir to Gringo Holdings, the man whose family has been circling Lim Holdings for a decade, the man who has been at every business dinner Mikha has ever been dragged to, the man who once told a room full of people that Mikha Lim was a waste of a good surname. He is smiling. He thinks he's safe here. He thinks she won't do anything in a room like this.

He is still talking. His mouth is still moving, still shaping the rest of that sentence about what he would do with Aiah if she were his.

Mikha's fist connects with his face before he gets to the end of it.

The sound is wet and flat, and it carries. Jeremy's head snaps back, his whiskey sloshing over his hand and onto the carpet. He stumbles one step, two, catches himself on the edge of the bar. The bartender freezes with a bottle in his hand. Somewhere behind Mikha, a woman gasps.

"You don't get to speak about my wife," Mikha says. Her voice is low. Lower than usual. It comes out of her chest, not her throat. "Not you. Not anyone."

Jeremy straightens. There's already blood at the corner of his mouth, a thin line running down his chin, and he touches it with two fingers like he can't believe what he's finding there. Then his face changes. The polished heir disappears and something uglier comes up underneath, and he swings.

Mikha sees it coming, the wide, unskilled arc of a man who has never been in a real fight, and she leans back and lets it pass. Then she hits him again, harder, right below the eye. His head rocks sideways. The whiskey glass falls out of his hand and shatters on the floor.

He comes back swinging, and this time he connects. His knuckles catch her cheekbone, and Mikha's head snaps to the side. The pain is sharp and bright, and it clears her mind instead of clouding it. She tastes copper. She turns back to him and smiles.

Jeremy shoves her. Mikha's back hits the edge of the bar, hard enough to knock the breath out of her, and a tray of glasses crashes to the floor somewhere behind her. She doesn't care. She shoves him back, both hands flat on his chest, and he goes flying, backward, off balance, and lands across a table.

The table breaks. Glass shatters. Two women at the table scream and jump back, and a man in a barong yells something Mikha doesn't hear. The room is turning now, hundreds of faces swinging toward the sound, and Mikha is already crossing the space between them.

She grabs him by the collar of his barong and hauls him half off the floor. Her knuckles are already swelling. There's blood on her hand that isn't hers. She pulls back her arm, and she is not thinking about the gala, or the guests, or the cameras, or the fact that this room is full of every important surname in Metro Manila. She is thinking about the sentence he didn't get to finish. She is thinking about Aiah on that stage, in that gown, saying we build things that outlast us, while this man stood behind her and talked about her body like it was a piece of property he'd bid on.

She wants to kill him. She is aware of the wanting, clear and cold, and it doesn't frighten her at all.

Her fist comes down again, and Jeremy's head snaps against the floor.

"Mikha!"

Colet's voice, sharp and close, and then Colet's arms are around her from behind, locking her elbow, pulling her back. Jhoanna is on her other side, a hand on Mikha's shoulder, both of them hauling backward with their whole weight, and Mikha fights them for one second — one full second where her body doesn't agree to stop — before Colet gets an arm around her chest and Jhoanna pins her wrist.

"Enough," Colet says, low and hard, right at Mikha's ear. "Enough. You're going to kill him."

Mikha looks at her. She's breathing hard. Her cheek is already going hot and tight where Jeremy hit her, and her right hand is throbbing in a way that means she's done something to it.

She looks down at Jeremy, who is being helped up by two men in suits, and she feels nothing. No regret. No satisfaction. Just the cold, flat certainty that she would do it again.

The hall has gone silent.

Not the good kind of silent. Not the hush before a speech. This is the other kind — the kind where hundreds of people have all stopped mid-sentence and turned to look at the same thing, and every one of them is deciding what they think. Mikha can feel it land on her, row by row. The cameras are up. Someone's phone is up. A woman at the table Jeremy knocked over is still standing with her hand over her mouth, her gown splashed with red wine.

Mikha lifts her head, toward the stage.

Aiah has stopped speaking. She's standing at the microphone. Her hands are still on the podium. Her face is turned toward the noise, toward the bar, toward Mikha—and it is completely empty. Not angry. Not upset. Empty, in the way that Mikha has only seen once before, at the Lim estate, the day they met, when Aiah looked at her and decided to marry her anyway.

She is looking at Mikha, and Mikha cannot read a single thing behind it.

That's worse than if she'd screamed.

Aiah steps down from the stage. She doesn't look at Mikha. She doesn't look at anyone. She walks through the room with her face like stone, past the tables, past the guests who are standing now, past the emcee who is saying something into the microphone that no one is listening to. She walks toward the exit.

Mikha follows her.

She hears the whispers on the way out. She can't not hear them.

"That's the wife, right? The one from the papers?"

"Barely eight months and look at her. Eduardo's daughter, of all people."

"Poor Aiah. She can't control her."

"Somebody should have warned her. You can't tame Mikha Lim. Everyone knows that."

"I still wonder why Aiah married her."

"What a shame, really. This is the first time Aiah hosted a gala and it's a mess."

The words come from every direction, soft enough to be deniable, loud enough to be heard. Mikha's steps don't slow. She keeps her eyes on the back of Aiah's head and she doesn't look at any of the faces saying it, because if she looks at even one of them she will not make it out of this building without breaking something else.

She knows Aiah hears them. Aiah hears everything. But Aiah keeps walking. She reaches the doors, and a staff member in a vest jumps to open them for her, and she passes through without a word.

Mikha catches the door before it swings shut and follows her out into the night air.

The car is already waiting at the curb. The driver must have been watching the entrance, he opens the door for Aiah, and Aiah gets in without a word. Mikha slides in beside her, and the door closes, and the noise of the gala cuts off like a switch.

The car pulls away from the hotel. Through the tinted window, Mikha watches the lights of the driveway slide backward, the photographers still clustered at the entrance, a few of them turning their cameras toward the departing car, hoping for one more frame. She wonders if they got it. She wonders what the headline will say tomorrow. Mikha Lim throws punch at Arceta Foundation gala. Lim heir brawl ends charity night. Something like that. Something that puts Aiah's name in the same sentence as hers, and not in the way Aiah spent months earning.

Mikha watch Aiah from her peripheral. Aiah sits with her back straight against the seat, her hands folded in her lap, her eyes on the window. She doesn't turn her head. She hasn't said anything.

The driver keeps his eyes on the road. Every few minutes, his gaze flicks to the rearview mirror and then away again, quick enough that Mikha catches it each time. He doesn't say anything either. There's nothing to say.

Mikha wants to reach over and take Aiah's hand. She wants to put her arm around her and pull her in against her shoulder, the way Aiah leaned against her on the way to the gala, the way she has leaned against her a hundred times in the last few months. She wants to say something. She doesn't know what.

She doesn't move.

Her hands stay in her own lap. Her knuckles are starting to ache now, a deep, hot throb that keeps time with her heartbeat, and she doesn't mind it. She deserves the pain. She deserves worse than the pain.

Aiah prepared this gala for a year. Mikha knows this. She knows about the seating chart that was redone three times, the logo on the step-and-repeat wall, the speech Aiah rehearsed in the bathroom. She knows about the donors Aiah personally called, the scholars Aiah met with, the late nights Aiah spent on the floor of their bedroom with papers spread out around her. A year of work, and it ended in three minutes because Mikha couldn't let a man finish a sentence.

Except that's not true either. She could have let him finish. She has let men say worse things about her for years. She has let the papers call her a disappointment and the business pages call her a liability and her own father call her a problem, and she has never once thrown a punch over any of it.

It was the way he talked about Aiah. The way he said her body, the way he said he'd have her bent over, the way he used her name like he owned it.

Mikha would do it again. She knows that with a clarity that frightens her. She would do it again, right now, in this car, if Jeremy Gringo were sitting across from her. And that is exactly the problem, because she is sitting next to the woman she loves, and Aiah is staring out the window like there is nothing left in this car worth looking at.

The car turns onto their street. The gate opens. and the headlights sweep across the front of the house, the dark windows, the one lamp Aiah always leaves, the way it does every night, the same house where Aiah makes breakfast at seven in the morning and Mikha loses at racing games and they fall asleep tangled together in the same bed.

The car stops. The driver gets out. Aiah opens her door before he can reach it, steps out onto the driveway, and walks toward the front door without looking back. Her heels click on the concrete, sharp and even. She doesn't stumble. She doesn't slow down.

Mikha stays in the car. The driver is standing beside the open door, waiting. He doesn't say anything. He doesn't look at her face, which is a kindness, because Mikha can feel what her face is doing right now and she doesn't want anyone to see it.

She gets out of the car. Her hand throbs when she puts weight on the door frame. She walks up the driveway, and the night air is cold on her bruised cheek. She turns the knob and pushes the door open.

Inside, the house is dark and quiet the way it always is when they come home late. The lamp in the living room is on, the one Aiah always leaves. Mikha stands in the entryway for a second, listening. The front door clicks shut behind her. Somewhere down the hall, a faucet is running.

She walks toward the bedroom. Her steps are slow, and her hand hurts, and her cheek is starting to swell in a way she can feel with every step. The bedroom door is open. The bathroom light spills out across the floor in a long yellow rectangle, and Mikha stops in the middle of the room and just stands there, arms at her sides, listening to the water run.

She doesn't know what to do with her hands. She doesn't know what to do with any of it. She has spent hours in cars and boardrooms and bars and she has never once been in a room where she couldn't figure out how to be.

The faucet cuts off. A minute passes. Then the bathroom door opens, and Aiah steps out.

She's in her pajamas, the baby blue set with the long sleeves and the little buttons at the collar, the one she wears on the nights she wants to be comfortable. Her hair is down, still damp at the ends, and her face is washed clean of the evening. No makeup. No expression. She's holding the white medical kit from the cabinet under the sink, the one Mikha has never opened in eight months because she has never needed to.

Aiah doesn't look at her. She walks past her, close enough that Mikha catches the smell of soap and clean skin, and she crosses to the couch in the corner of the room and sits down. She sets the kit on the cushion beside her and unzips it.

"Sit," Aiah says.

She doesn't look back when she says it. Her voice is flat. Not cold. Flat. Like she's reading a line off a page.

Mikha turns and follows her. She sits down on the couch, close but not touching, and she stares at Aiah's face, searching for anything. Aiah's jaw is set. Her eyes are on the medical kit. She pulls out the small brown bottle of betadine and a paper packet of cotton balls, and she tears the packet open with her teeth.

Mikha watches her hands. They're steady. That's the worst part. Aiah's hands are always steady when she's holding something back.

Aiah reaches over and takes Mikha's chin between her thumb and her fingers. She turns Mikha's face toward the lamplight, tilting it slightly, and Mikha lets her. Up close, Mikha can see that Aiah's eyes are a little red, and her lashes are still damp, and she's been crying in the bathroom with the door closed and the water running so Mikha wouldn't hear.

Aiah dabs the cotton against the betadine and lifts it to Mikha's cheek.

The sting is small and immediate. Mikha didn't know there was a scratch there. She thought it was just the bruise, just the hot tight feeling where Jeremy's knuckles landed. But Aiah found it — a thin line along her cheekbone, and she cleans it with small, gentle strokes, working from the inside out the way she does everything, with patience Mikha has never been able to copy.

Mikha sits very still. She watches Aiah's face while Aiah works. Aiah doesn't look at her eyes. She looks at the scratch. She looks at her own hands. She looks anywhere but up.

"Baby," Mikha starts.

"Don't."

Mikha closes her mouth.

Aiah finishes with her cheek and reaches down for Mikha's right hand. She turns it over, palm up, and looks at the knuckles. Two of them are split, and the skin around them is already darkening into a purple that will be worse by morning. Aiah wets a fresh cotton ball and dabs at the broken skin, and Mikha hisses through her teeth before she can stop herself.

Aiah pauses. Then she keeps going, softer this time, and Mikha realizes that Aiah heard the hiss and adjusted. Even now. Even like this. Mikha's chest does something ugly and tight, and she has to look away, up at the ceiling, at the corner where the wall meets the light, anywhere.

"I know you're angry," Mikha says.

Aiah doesn't answer. She wipes the last of the betadine off Mikha's knuckles and sets the cotton ball down on the paper wrapper.

"I'm not going to pretend I don't know why." Mikha keeps her voice low. "But I need you to know what he said. He was standing behind me while you were on that stage, and he—" She stops. She tries again. "He said things about you. About your body. About what he'd do if you were his. I'm not going to repeat it. I don't want those words in this house."

Aiah's hands stop moving.

"That's why I hit him," Mikha says. "I'm sorry I made a mess at your gala. I'm sorry I put your name in the papers next to mine for the wrong reason. I'm sorry about the speech and the donors and the year you spent on this. I'm sorry about all of it." She takes a breath. "But I'm not sorry I hit him. I'd do it again. I'd do it right now if he were standing here."

Aiah doesn't speak. She doesn't look up. She closes the medical kit with both hands, the zipper making a long, slow sound, and then she stands.

Mikha stays on the couch and watches her walk to the bathroom. The light goes off. Aiah comes back out, crosses the room, and gets into bed. She reaches for the bedside lamp and turns it off. The room goes dark except for the thin strip of light under the door. Mikha hears the covers pull up, hears the small shift of the mattress, and when her eyes adjust, Aiah is on her side, facing the wall, her back to the rest of the room.

Mikha sits there for a long time, staring at that back. The shape of Aiah's shoulders under the blanket. The line of her spine. The dark hair spread across the pillow.

She did this.

She gets up. Her body feels heavy, like she's moving through water. She walks into the bathroom, closes the door behind her, and turns on the shower. She steps in and lets the hot water run over her, and when she lifts her hands to wash her hair, the soap gets into the split knuckles and the pain is sharp and clean and she doesn't mind it. She plants both palms flat on the tile wall and stands there under the water with her head down, letting it beat against the back of her neck, making sure her hands stay out of the stream.

When she gets out, she dries off and looks at herself in the mirror. The scratch on her cheek has gone pink and raw again, washed clean by the shower. She opens the cabinet, takes out the medical kit, and dabs betadine on it herself, one careful stroke, watching her own hand in the glass. Then she puts the kit back, walks to the closet, and pulls on a white shirt and a pair of boxers. No fuss. She doesn't have it in her tonight.

She walks back out into the bedroom. The room is dark. She gets into bed on her side, not close to Aiah, leaving a strip of empty mattress between them, and lies on her back and stares up at the ceiling.

The ceiling doesn't tell her anything. The house is quiet. Somewhere outside, a car passes and fades.

"I'm sorry, my love," Mikha whispers.

She doesn't know if Aiah is asleep. She doesn't know if Aiah heard. She says it anyway, into the dark, and then she closes her eyes.

She doesn't sleep. She lies there with her eyes closed and her mind running, and every few minutes she opens them again and looks at the ceiling and then at Aiah's back, checking, as if Aiah might have turned around while she wasn't looking. She doesn't. The strip of mattress between them stays exactly as wide as it was.

Hours pass.

Then the mattress shifts.

Mikha's eyes open. Aiah is sitting up. She moves carefully, quietly, the way people move when they don't want to wake someone, and Mikha keeps her breathing even and her eyes half-closed and watches through her lashes as Aiah swings her legs off the bed. Her bare feet find the floor. She stands, and the bedroom door opens with a soft click and closes behind her.

Mikha stays still. Maybe a minute. Maybe five. She counts the seconds in her head and loses track somewhere around a hundred, and the door doesn't open again.

She gets up.

She doesn't bother with the lights in the hallway, but she doesn't mind turning them on either — she's not trying to be quiet now, she's trying to find Aiah, and her eyes sweep the dark rooms as she goes. The living room is empty. The kitchen is empty. The dining room, the small study, the front entry — empty. The house is dark and quiet and Aiah is not in any of the places Mikha can think of.

Then she looks through the glass wall at the back of the living room, and she sees her.

Aiah is outside, at the pool. The back of her head and her shoulders are visible above the rattan bench that faces the water, and she isn't moving, and the outdoor lights are off, so all Mikha can really see is the shape of her against the faint blue glow of the pool itself. Mikha's chest tightens.

She walks to the sliding glass wall and opens it gently, just enough to slip through, and the night air hits her bare arms. It smells like chlorine and cut grass and the faint, clean scent of the water. She steps out onto the pavers. Her bare feet are cold.

Aiah is sitting on the rattan pool bench with her knees drawn up to her chest, her arms wrapped around them, her face pressed down against her knees. Her shoulders are shaking. It's small, that shaking — barely visible from across the patio — but Mikha can see it, and once she sees it, it's all she can see.

Aiah is crying. Silently. Alone. In the dark by the pool, in her pajamas, at three in the morning.

Mikha stands there for a second and can't move. Her heart is doing something she doesn't like, a hard, painful thud against the inside of her ribs, and her throat closes up, and she has to press her lips together and breathe through her nose to keep herself together. She did this. She is the reason Aiah is out here in the dark with her face on her knees. She is the reason the woman who spent a year building the most important night of her career is sitting alone by a pool at three in the morning, hiding her face so no one will hear her.

Mikha breathes in. Out. She takes one step, then another, and crosses the patio.

She crouches down beside the bench, close to Aiah's shoulder. Up close, she can hear the small, wet sounds Aiah is trying to swallow. Mikha lifts her hand and rests it on top of Aiah's head, light, the way she would touch something that might break.

"I'm sorry," she whispers.

Her voice breaks in the middle of the word. She hears it happen and can't stop it.

Aiah doesn't lift her head. Her voice comes out muffled against her own knees.

"Don't touch me."

Mikha takes her hand back.

She stands there for a second, hand still half-raised, and then she wipes her face with the back of her wrist — she doesn't even know when the tear got there, but it's there, hot on her cheek, and she wipes it away without a sound. She turns and sits down on the bench beside Aiah, leaving the same strip of space between them that she left in the bed. She puts her elbows on her knees and clasps her hands together and stares down at the pavers.

The pool filter hums. The water moves in small, dark folds. Somewhere in the neighborhood, a dog barks twice and stops.

They sit like that for a long time. Aiah doesn't lift her head. Mikha doesn't look at her. The only sounds are the water and Aiah's breathing, which is ragged and small and slowly, slowly evening out.

When Aiah's crying finally dies down, she wipes her face with both hands, slow and thorough, and stands up. She doesn't look at Mikha. She walks back toward the house, and Mikha stands and follows her, a few steps behind, and doesn't try to touch her.

Inside, Aiah goes to the kitchen and pours herself a glass of water. She drinks it standing at the counter, one hand braced on the marble, her back to the room. Mikha stands in the doorway and watches her and says nothing. When Aiah is done, she sets the glass in the sink and walks past Mikha back to the bedroom.

Mikha follows her in. Aiah gets into bed and turns on her side, facing the wall, and pulls the covers up to her shoulder. Mikha gets in on her own side and lies on her back and stares at the ceiling, and the strip of empty mattress between them is still there, and neither of them crosses it.

Mikha doesn't sleep.

Somewhere past four, Aiah's breathing goes slow and even. She's asleep. Mikha turns her head on the pillow and looks at the back of her — the dark hair, the small shape of her shoulder under the blanket — and she stays like that, eyes open, until the first grey light comes up behind the curtains.