Lia was there, in front of the icy body of the love of her life. Lazzaro still looked alive, his handsome face still exuded life and love for the person he loved most in the world. The tears echoing through the room, the unbearable pain shattering her chest into millions of pieces, the will and sense of living without him fading more and more.

It was destroyed, shattered.

There was no point in surviving without him, he was the only reason she was happy and then suddenly he wasn't there anymore. He lied to her, he wouldn't take care of her forever, he wouldn't stay to see their child born. In fact, he didn't even know he was going to be a father, the bitterness taking over the soul of the girl who just wanted never to have loved him.

Lia just wanted to have answered Lazzaro's request when he told her: You can't love me .

## Home

It was just another day in which Lia woke up feeling like nothing. It wasn't her fault, she even tried to love herself, however it was impossible when her aunt – with whom she lived – insisted on saying the opposite every day.

Her eyes were a little swollen from having cried all night, – something also commonplace in her nights – that dark color that her mother loved so much and said to be the most beautiful eyes, didn't shine anymore. However, Lia smiled at everyone and anyone who saw her helping others and always happy, could not imagine the pain in her soul that she felt whenever she was alone.

Sighing, he got up to face a new day despite everything, thanking the heavens for waking up. She was a good girl.

"Are you awake, girl?" she heard her aunt's voice yell from the cellar door where she slept.

“I already have, Aunt Martha. he replied in a sad voice.

—Finish what you have to do and go straight to the street, the richest people are going to work at this hour. she demanded pulling away.

Lia sighed, holding back a painful cry, looking to the side at her watch that she had found in the street, she saw that it was only four in the morning, it was a cold and rainy morning, but even so, she would have to go begging her aunt for alms, or that, or the street and hunger.

Finishing making the bed, she brushed her teeth and tied back her hair with an old string. She wore a torn sweatshirt, faded jeans and went upstairs, leaving behind the old basement that was only not dirty because of her, which she cleaned every day with the remains of cleaning products she found in the trash.

I couldn't stand the smell of dirt.

"Hurry up, girl!" We are hungry! Martha hurried her out.

Lia walked through the streets crying, as she always did. His small backpack was on his back with all his documents that he made a point of always carrying with him. The chin fluttering with cold and the mouth in purple color were almost freezing.

Her mother had died two years ago and since then she has lived with her aunt and her three children; Marcos, Mara and Mike. Her life became hell, Martha exploited her by sending the girl begging every day, she always got something, but it was little to last long and then she was hungry until she brought larger amounts of money or donations. Not to mention the psychological torture.

She hated everything that was happening, but none of that took away her faith in something else, she dreamed of having something more one day, she just didn't know how. I felt like a failure too.

Those cliché dreams that all teenagers had of finding love and being happy, living a beautiful romance, died in her when her cousins said how ugly she was, her hair bad, too thin and with almost no breasts. That no man would look at her as a woman other than someone interested only in having fun.

Little by little, this penetrated her psyche, leaving marks and wounds, traumas and distrust of herself as a woman. When she went to live with her aunt she was seventeen, now she was nineteen, almost twenty in a few months and until then she had never even had a boyfriend. Who would want to date an ugly, dirty homeless woman?

Nothing else mattered to her. Despite nurturing deep down hope for a better future, at the moment she didn't care if she ever got married, fell in love, or went to college, that would never be important to her again.

He was often hated.

Taking a few more steps, she heard low meows coming from the front of a factory under construction, she crossed the street in a hurry and came across a wet cardboard box on the edge of a fall where the remains of rubble were thrown, it was still very dark, but her attention only went to the box on the floor.

The meows grew louder and more agitated when the small cats became aware of someone's presence. Lia quickly opened the box and felt her heart warm at the same time as it shattered when she saw three kittens inside the container. She held back her tears when she touched one of them and felt it shiver from the cold, they were puppies and someone had abandoned them.

With each passing minute she lost even more faith in humanity. Who would be able to abandon defenseless animals? She couldn't hold back the tears of empathy for the innocent little animals that didn't meow as much with her caresses anymore. She was passionate about animals.

She could very well have taken them to her home, but she remembered that even she wasn't welcome and she was already living in difficulty, let alone three kittens. Her aunt would kill them and force her to eat. She knew this because she once forced her to eat a pan of burnt rice because she was simply careless when helping one of her cousins with the clothes on the line.

He was feeling sick for several days and without eating either.

The girl was thinking for so long that she ended up not noticing a car coming at high speed towards her, her heart jumped when she finally noticed the bright light in her eyes and jumped to a ravine beside her with the box clutched to her body, in the in order to get rid of being run over and also the cats.

She put her hand on her chest trying to calm the beating when she was lying in the middle of several stones, she thought she was going to die. She felt her arm ache and some twinges in her back and ribs, but at least she was alive.

Not that that sounded very meaningful to her. After all, what was your life worth?

He sighed and struggled to his feet, clapping his hands together to wipe them clean. It was difficult for her to climb the ravine, she tried once, twice, three times and when the bush she was holding on to broke, she began to succumb screaming, that's when she felt a callused hand hold hers, cover it to be more precise. It was a big hand.

Chills ran through all her bloodstreams, not understanding at that moment what it was that left her floating, as if it were the best touch she had ever received in her life.