Rica’s heels clicked on the marble floor of their new home—a penthouse she’d bought with her third bestselling novel. She swept in at midnight, smelling of champagne and literary parties.

Then she told him about Miguel’s inappropriate texts. The pressure to write darker, sexier novels. The way she felt like a product, not a person.

“I thought you were done working,” she said.

Rica looked at Luis in the front row, holding her mother’s sinigang recipe card in his pocket.