Chapter: What Remains

Olivia listened to the recording once. Then again. And again. Each word from Tom was a knot in her throat and, at the same time, a balm that caressed her soul.

That night she didn't sleep. Not because insomnia had caught her, but because she didn't want to close her eyes. She didn't want to lose the feeling of having him so close.

Tom had left her an implicit promise: to live. But Olivia knew she couldn't just "move on." She needed to find a way to do something with everything that burned inside her. With the absence. With the love that she didn't know where to place.

That's how the idea was born.

At dawn, surrounded by photos, letters, the journal, and that last recording, she sat in front of her laptop and wrote: "Chapter 1: To Love and Lose."

She didn't know if it would turn into a book. Nor if anyone else would read it. But she understood that if she didn't write it, she would drown in all that she couldn't say to him, in everything she still felt.

The book wasn't about Tom. It was about loving someone so much that losing them rips apart a part of your soul... and still finding reasons to rebuild yourself. Page by page, Olivia walked through the memories again: their first kiss, the trip to the beach, their biggest fight, the day he gave her the emerald ring. The night she dreamed of his voice telling her that everything would be okay.

Her friends, Gloria, Merlyn, and Alejandra, supported her in every word written. Matteo, with his overflowing tenderness, made drawings to illustrate chapters. Luciana, from the gallery, offered her a corner where she could write in peace.

And one day, without thinking too much, she wrote the last line of the manuscript:

"Losing you broke me... but loving you saved me."

She published the book months later, with a simple but sincere title: Only for Him. She expected nothing. But letters, messages, and hugs from strangers began to arrive. People who had also lost. People who found in her words a mirror, a light, a companion.

Olivia never stopped missing Tom. She never stopped feeling the void in her chest every morning. But now she knew that this void was also space for something new. And every time someone told her that her book helped them move forward... she felt that, in some way, he was still there.

Because Tom didn't just leave her love. He left her purpose.

And writing became her way of continuing to love him... while learning to live without him.