There are things we cannot say.

Not because we cannot find the words. Not because our throat tightens or tears come too quickly. No. Sometimes we do not say certain things simply because we do not yet know they exist. Because they live in a part of ourselves we have not yet had the courage to visit.

This is where the story begins.

In that silence.

Lea was not used to writing. She had never kept a journal, never scribbled her thoughts on the back of an envelope, never believed her words deserved to exist on paper. She thought writing was reserved for people who had something important to tell. For people whose lives looked like something meaningful.

She did not yet know that hers would become a story.

Not always a beautiful story. Never an easy story. But a true story - and maybe that is the most precious thing.

If you are holding this book in your hands, it may be because you know that feeling. The feeling of being both full and completely empty at the same time. That strange paradox of having lived something intense and no longer knowing how to talk about it, how to name it, how to simply continue breathing normally afterward.

Lea knew that feeling.

She knew the relationship that lasts too long. The one where you stay not out of love, but out of fear of emptiness. She knew betrayal - not the betrayal of strangers, but the one that truly hurts: the betrayal of someone you believed was close. She knew the confusion of feeling something for someone when you should feel nothing at all.

She knew loss.

Real loss. The kind that gives no warning, asks no permission, and enters your life like a brutal winter leaving everything frozen behind it.

But here is what you need to know before we begin.

This is not the story of a victim.

Nor is it the story of a perfect heroine who rises gracefully after every hardship.

This is the story of an ordinary girl who went through extraordinarily heavy things. Who stumbled. Who stood up. Who fell again. Who cried in bathrooms so others would not worry. Who smiled while slowly breaking inside. Who searched in other people’s eyes for an answer only she could give herself.

A girl who learned - slowly and painfully - that surviving is already a victory.

I remember the night everything began to change.

Not the night of the breakup. Not the night of the discovery. No.

The night I realized I no longer recognized myself in the mirror. That something inside me had gone out so quietly I had not even heard the click.

It was an ordinary Tuesday. Rain against the windows and some random show playing on television. Nothing dramatic. Nothing memorable.

And yet.

That was the night I understood my life would have to change. That I could no longer exist halfway. That the silence I had carried inside for so long would eventually speak - one way or another.

I did not yet know how.

I did not yet know what it would cost me.

This story begins there - in that suspended moment between a life you are leaving and another you do not yet know.

It begins in silence.

And it moves forward, page after page, word after word, toward something that resembles light - not immediately, not easily.

Turn the page.

Lea has something to tell you.

End of Prologue

⸻

Chapter 1 — A Life Standing Still

There are lives that feel like waiting rooms.

You settle into them. You develop habits. You learn to recognize the sound of the air conditioner, the way the light enters through the window at certain hours, the uncomfortable texture of the seat you eventually fall asleep on anyway. You wait without really knowing what you are waiting for. And little by little, without realizing it, you even stop waiting. You stay. Simply. As if staying had become the only thing you still knew how to do.

Léa’s life felt like that.

She was twenty-two years old and had a three-year relationship behind her — or rather, around her, like something you carry without being able to put down. Karim had been there since the beginning of her adult life. Since the time when she did not yet know who she truly was, when having someone beside her seemed enough to give meaning to the days.

Karim was not a bad person. It was important to say that, even now, even after everything that would follow. He was not violent. He was not cruel. He was simply… elsewhere. Mentally absent despite a constant physical presence. The kind of person who shares your bed for three years and still makes you feel completely alone on certain nights.

Léa had learned to live with that kind of loneliness. She had absorbed it into her routine the way one adapts to chronic pain — you get used to it, you adjust, you continue.

Their days followed a precise rhythm.

In the morning, Karim left early. Léa woke up after him, prepared a coffee she drank standing by the window while looking at the street without truly seeing it. She got dressed, picked up her bag, took the bus. Classes. The library. The ride home. Dinner, often silent. Screens side by side on the couch. Then bed. Then starting again.

Nothing dramatic.

Nothing beautiful either.

Just a life turning endlessly in circles like a clock whose time no one checked anymore.

What people do not understand is that it is not always a catastrophe that breaks a relationship.

Sometimes it is simply wear and tear. Daily life slowly eating everything away. The small things we stop doing — the messages during the day, the questions about how your day went, the looks that last one second too long because you still find each other beautiful.

With Karim, all of that had disappeared so slowly that I never saw the exact moment when it ended. One day, I realized it had been weeks since he had truly looked at me. Not looked at me as if I existed. As if I were a person in his life and not just familiar furniture.

That kind of realization does something to you. Not an explosion. More like a hollow sound. Like knocking on a wall you believed was solid and discovering it is empty inside.

She remembered one evening in particular. A Friday. It was raining heavily outside, and she had cooked — truly cooked, not just reheated something — a dish he used to love. A gesture. An effort toward him. Toward them.

Karim came home late. He ate quickly, eyes on his phone, said it’s good without lifting his head, and sat down in front of the television as if that night were no different from any other — while for her, that night had been an attempt.

She said nothing.

She washed the dishes in silence, turned off her smile like an unnecessary lamp, and went to sit at the other end of the couch.

That night, something decided to stop hoping.

But life continues even when hope disappears.

That may be the strangest thing. You think that without hope, everything would stop. You think the pain would be too visible, too present to keep functioning normally. And yet, the next morning, Léa got up. She drank her coffee. She took her bus.

She went to class.

And it was there, within that mechanical and tasteless routine, that something unexpected slipped in. Not something grand. Not something dazzling. Just an ordinary conversation in a hallway after a sports class, about a basketball game whose results she had not even checked.

A conversation with a boy she barely knew.

She did not yet know — she could not know — that this tiny moment would change the trajectory of everything that followed.

You never know, at the time, which moments truly matter.

You only understand afterward.

That evening, when she returned home, Léa looked at Karim sleeping on the couch, the remote control still in his hand, and a thought came to her that she had not searched for:

Is this really my life?

The question floated in the living room air for a few seconds.

Then she went to bed without answering it.

But the question itself no longer slept.

— End of Chapter 1 —

💙

⸻

His name was Adam.

Léa had crossed paths with him several times in the university hallways without really noticing him. He belonged to that human scenery we pass through every day without stopping — a familiar face without a story attached, a name heard in a conversation that did not concern you, a silhouette among many in the crowd of hurried students.

That day, after sports class, he was simply there. Leaning against the hallway wall, earbuds around his neck, looking at his phone with the air of someone waiting without truly waiting. And he was the one who spoke first.

— Did you watch the game last night?

Léa looked up. She did not watch basketball. She did not know the game. She had no reason to stop.

She stopped anyway.

She did not know why, that day.

Maybe because she was tired of walking straight ahead without ever deviating. Maybe because his voice had something natural about it, something uncalculated, that contrasted with the constant tension she had been carrying for weeks. Or maybe, simply, because that day she needed someone to talk to her. Truly talk to her. Without hidden intentions, without silent reproach, without the weight that every exchange with Karim carried behind it like a suitcase too heavy to ever truly put down.

So she stopped.

— No, I missed it. How was it?

The conversation lasted seven minutes.

She knew because she had checked the time when she arrived and when she left, automatically, by student habit. Seven minutes about a basketball game she did not know, with a boy she barely knew anything about.

He spoke well. Not in a brilliant or calculated way — just fluidly, naturally, like someone who was not afraid of silence but did not seek it either. He laughed twice. A real laugh, not the polite sound people produce out of social courtesy. And when she said something — a light remark, almost nothing — he looked at her as if what she said deserved to be heard.

It was nothing extraordinary.

But it had been a long time since someone had looked at her like that. Truly looked at her. Not through her, not beyond her — her. Léa. The person standing in that hallway at that exact moment.

She had forgotten what that felt like.

Before leaving, he took out his phone.

— I’ll send you the game video if you want. It was really good.

She gave him her number without thinking. The way you give directions to someone on the street. A simple, practical gesture, without particular weight.

He sent the video that same evening. With a short message:

The last minute is worth it. Good evening.

She watched the final minute of the game sitting in the bathroom while Karim watched television in the living room. The door closed. The small screen in her hands. And that strange feeling of being inside a bubble — separated from the rest of the apartment, from the rest of her life, by a few centimeters of wood.

She smiled.

A real smile. Small, discreet, almost surprised by itself.

In the days that followed, the messages continued. Gently. Without pressure. Without imposed rhythm. It was not a conversation that demanded constant attention — it was something that existed outside of time, appearing when one of them had something to say and disappearing without drama when they had nothing.

An article about a team. A joke about a professor they shared. A question about homework. A meme sent at midnight without explanation.

Nothing intense.

Nothing romantic.

Just two people beginning to talk. Truly talk, with that rare lightness sometimes found with someone you barely know and who, for that very reason, does not judge you yet.

Léa was careful not to think about it too much.

She was in a relationship. She had Karim. She was not the kind of girl who invented stories or feelings where there was only friendliness.

She told herself clearly, quietly in her mind, every time she noticed she had smiled when his name appeared on her screen. Every time she caught herself checking her phone a little too often. Every time she chose her words with a care she had not put into messages to Karim for a long time.

He’s just a friend. He’s just someone nice. It’s normal to have nice people in your life.

And it was true.

Everything was true.

But there was something else too — something she did not yet put into words, something that had no precise name. Just that light, almost imperceptible sensation of existing a little more when she replied to him.

Little nothings.

One evening, Adam texted her late.

Are you asleep?

She was not asleep. She was lying in the dark, eyes open, listening to Karim’s breathing beside her — that steady, indifferent breathing of someone who sleeps with the calm conscience of someone who has nothing to reproach himself for. Or of someone who no longer asks questions. She could not have said which was worse.

She hesitated for a second.

Then she replied.

No. Still awake.

And they talked until one in the morning. About nothing important. About everything that matters without seeming to matter — childhood dreams, regrets, places they wanted to visit one day, the music you listen to when you are alone and would not easily show to others.

At one point he wrote:

You seem like a good person, Léa.

She looked at that sentence for a long time. Not because it was extraordinary. But because it had been so long since anyone had told her something like that — simply, without reason, without her needing to earn it first.

When she finally put her phone down, it was almost two in the morning.

She fell asleep almost immediately, the phone still warm in her hand and something light in her chest — something she had not felt for so long that she had almost forgotten its name.

Beside her, Karim slept.

He did not know.

He could not know.

And Léa, eyes closed in the darkness of their bedroom, did not try to understand what it meant.

Not yet.

— End of Chapter 2 —

💙.