*Sorry for the delay, I promise another chapter after this one within 24 hours!*

He'd stayed wrapped up with her until she fell asleep.

But now, as the flickering of early daylight dripped through the cracked roof of the cabin, she realised that she was laying alone.

Michael was gone and their intimate night was now just a short moment in history.

She felt her tears brimming before she had fully stirred awake.

At her shoulder she felt an incessant poking that begged for her attention. Lia paused, eyes now transfixed on a pink note that had been resting beneath her and unfolded it, seeing words written out.

Michael's words, in Portuguese.

Thank you for always being my friend. I know tonight is my last night with you, but I wanted to make sure to give this to you this even if I don't end up finding the courage to tell you in person. I will always cherish the special moments we have shared together over the years in this cabin. You are a very special friend to me and I hope that you will always know that you have a place in my heart from this life to the next. Eu amo você and I always will.

Michael.

She felt her chest clench tightly and she held the note close to her heart in the hopes of subsiding the pain of Michael's departing words.

In that moment she could hardly bear the thought of him getting on a plane and leaving her, putting millions of miles between them, and she could do nothing but remain at home and trapped in the life she'd always known.

It made her angry and she hated the thought of having to face reality.

Morning gradually became noon, yet still she hadn't done much more than roll onto her face and weep. Contemplating how, precisely, she could make it stop. This unending train of humiliation and dissatisfaction. How could she leave this place and never return?

Then she thought about the ocean and heard it rush outside and she'd swallowed thickly as her thoughts, not unlike prior moments in her life became sinister in her mind. Encouraging her to commit irreversible actions that would likely impact nobody but herself upon their completion.

This wasn't the first time she'd felt the pain of numbness residing in her heart.

The first time it had really cut into her was the night of her 15th birthday. The weeks that followed it were spent envisioning life without her in it. Relishing in the thought of her uncle, suffering to make ends meet with her gone, and how she could finally reunite with her parents and her brother. Her real irmão, who remained unborn. She'd always felt in her heart that her new sibling would have been a boy.

But there had been a second time in which she had felt a similar pain and longing to disappear and it had been the worst so far. That had been a memory she'd pushed even deeper into the untouchable space in her memory. One she vowed never to talk or even think about but she could not avoid it now.

She could already feel the rainwater falling onto her sweating exhausted face from that very same night spent in the dirty damp favela that Gonçalo and his crew had her locked out of sight in.

She could still taste the filthy sponge that Gonçalo's girlfriend at the time Selena, had gagged her with, instructing her to "bite down". She could still feel the tears wet on her cheeks, the trembling of her body and the deep fear as her body was ripped open.

Crouched on her knees on the unsanitary concrete floor, she anxiously waited along with everybody else in the room, for the baby to come down.

Gonçalo spoke frantically to the others in Portuguese.

"She's bleeding Gonçalo!" Selena panicked, audibly freaking out and she'd left Lia's side to approach him, only to be smacked and shoved down onto the ground.

"Fucking mulatto! If you don't get that baby out of her right now I'm going to let each and every one of her clients have you instead." He'd cursed at her, kicking her. She'd come crawling back to Lia's side, her eyes watery and more pitiful than before. Unmistakably, she was completely out of her depths as Lia screamed at the top of her lungs and pressed her perspiring forehead into the couch.

Eventually, Selena's trembling and frightful hand rested on the small of her back, rubbing it ever so slightly.

"It's okay." She had uttered fearfully, sounding as if she were trying to assure herself more than Lia. "It's going to be okay."

"She's right Gonçalo, she's bleeding too much." Damiáo had finally chimed in with some distress.

"And what do you want me to do about it huh lover boy?" was Gonçalo's cold response. "If you care so much then help her." Gonçalo had said. A pause followed until Lia felt a presence rush to her side and a strong hand gripped hers.

"Lia..." Damiáo had uttered but she'd been unable to face him. Unable to look him in the eye and know that he was witnessing her giving birth to the child of a man who's name she didn't even know. "Lay down, please!" he'd urged her, then he'd taken her hand again and squeezed it so tight. He'd been there every step of the way and like her, he'd watched when the birthing was over, as Selena wrapped then delivered the crying baby as requested into the hands of Gonçalo.

"No!" Lia had screamed unable to get up. She thrashed weakly as Gonçalo pulled the hood of his jacket up over his head and turned away from her, tucking the baby into the blanket he quickly left into the night with it.

He took her baby from her before she'd even gotten the chance to hold it, or to look into its eyes and to know it was hers. He'd made her believe that they baby didn't belong to her. It belonged to the business, as did she.

The weeks to follow again was when she had tried to make the ending of her life happen.

She'd swallowed a deadly concoction of sleep and pain relief pills and stared at the ocean for days with dangerous intent but no strength to make it to the shore. It appeared she was a cat with nine lives and something out there in the world did not seem to want to see her die. 

The pills soon ran out and she was left without the strength to injure herself even more than she already was.

The end of those parasitic thoughts had only come weeks later when Gonçalo finally got locked up for petty theft. A few days after that Damiáo had appeared at her window while she was still bed bound with pain due to her rough childbirth and despite her attempt at screaming out for her uncle he'd quickly come in and covered her mouth with his hand, his eyes piercing hers.

"I know where he is." He'd simply said. "but we have to be quick."

He'd bought with him some strong pain relief before he helped her out of bed and carried her down the street to his motorcycle that was far out of sight from her uncle's window.

He'd then driven her for hours through Rio, despite all the weakness she was experiencing, to a remote part of the country that was not built up as much as Copacabana.

There were dusky streets and few homes dotted around, where children and dogs exited their homes when they heard the cycle approaching and where women washed their clothes outside in their barely existent front yards no matter how late into the evening it was.

He eventually pulled up at a large house behind a church where two children splashed and played with joyous laughter in a small bucket at the front. Damiáo had helped her carefully off of his bike and approached the doorway that was half open

Then when he re-emerged he did so holding the door open for a woman with kinky hair that stuck out from under her head wrap. Her arms carried a stirring baby.

Lia's baby.

She instantly fell to her knees and her cheeks became sodden with tears as the woman approached her and lowered herself down to Lia's level, finally showing her for the first time, her first and only real pride and joy in the whole wide world.

She only remembered weeping.

And how bright his eyes had been.

How curios they were and how much their inquisition reminded her of herself.

"I see so much of you in him." Damiáo had said, but Lia could not look at him. She had felt too many mixed emotions toward him. For he'd had his part to play in this, yet he had also gifted her this incredible moment. He'd allowed her to look into the eyes of her baby and to feel hope again.

"Gabriel..." she wept into his tiny stomach. "Eu amo...voce...Gabriel...eu amo voce." She had bawled until finally the time had come for them to leave. It broke her to have to do it. But she knew her son was safer here than with her. Here he was with smiling midwives and other children, close to God and near a church. This was a place of protection and housing for women and children who were abandoned and loveless in Rio.

But she could not stay.

Gonçalo could never know she had come here. She would never allow him to bring more harm to her baby and she'd be damned if she was the reason for it.

"I am sorry we have to leave so soon...but Gonçalo gets out of jail tomorrow morning and he will expect everything to be as he left it." He'd said to her as he hoisted her up from the ground.

"Out?" she felt pure anger pulsing inside of her. "How? How could he be out so soon for his crimes? How could they allow that?" she was outraged. Damiáo placed her back on the bike.

"Because the police don't care. He gave them what they wanted." Damiáo uttered simply and swung his leg over the bike also. Lia remained in disbelief.

"Money." she uttered, bitter at the injustice of bribery and the crooked state of the police in Rio. Damiáo leaned forward and sighed, clutching the firm handle of his motorbike.

"No." He began looking both ways down the street. "He gave them Selena." He looked to be in deep thought for a moment but didn't dwell long before he revved the engine and took off the way they had come.

Now here in the present again.

Where the feeling of loss had returned and seemed so grave.

Lia felt herself sink into a pit.

She had been wallowing, curled in a ball on the ground when she eventually heard it.

Voices.

First a quiet murmur in the distance that quickly progressed into loud chatter and cursing.

But worse still, behind the sharpness of their words had been the familiarity of them.

The door suddenly burst open and Lia shot upright on the floor of the cabin.

"So this is where you have been hiding!" Gonçalo led the pack of rowdy males and pulled her up by her hair. She immediately began to thrash in his arms. "Where's the money?" It took several attempts for the men to pull her out of the cabin and onto the ground outside.

Gonçalo had stayed in the cabin, riffling through her things in his aggressive hunt for cash. Lia felt her heart thudding, knowing he would not find anything and she grew anxious of the consequences.

Soon Gonçalo re-emerged, his eyes were maleficent and an awful chuckle sounded in his throat. Then he raised the letter. Michael's letter. And Lia felt her stomach twist even more with fear.

"Damiáo!" he called as he pranced down the steps and slapped the note against his chest.

"I think your girlfriend has something to tell you." He said and simply stood back. Lia struggled to get out of their grasp. Turning and writhing until finally Gonçalo stopped her with a firm slap against the cheek, pushing her head roughly upward from the jaw. Through her hair covered eyes she could see Damiáo reading through the letter, his eyes growing increasingly more stern and jaw more square. When he was done he stared absently on past the letter in his hands.

He looked up at her slowly, clutching the letter in his hands.

"Who's Michael?" he'd demanded of her. She couldn't talk but could only observe the coldness in his eyes. "Who wrote this bullshit?" He gave a short laugh but behind it she sensed his growing rage. Her lungs regurgitated air in deep gasping gulps of anxiety.

Damiáo quickly glanced toward the cabin and then double took when something caught his eye. He raced up the steps entered the cabin, soon returning with the poster Michael had given her the night before.

"This? This is Michael?!" he yelled. The boys around her laughed at Damiáo's reaction, they all seemed to find it funny outside of Lia and Damiáo himself.

"Damaoi...they...they just give me things and they think it's love, but it's not-"

"Isn't this the estúpido boy from the park?" he pointed and overrode her words, Lia's mouth remained open. "The one that makes you laugh, and you walk hand in hand like boyfriend and girlfriend." he mocked her with a curt laugh.

He crumbled up the paper and poster into one in his strong fists until she saw the veins popping in his arms.

"So you really think this is love?" He suddenly laughed his eyes becoming steely and vacant.

"I...I promise don't know him-" Lia cried while the others laughed.

"You are a fucking liar." he waved the letter. "You said he was a tourist, this letter says you have been friends for years! Why are you trying so hard to protect him? You love him?" he summarised calmly. Too calmly. Because behind his somewhat composed demeanour she could sense the anger and the jealousy overflowing. "You love spending time together in the cabin..." He mocked bitterly. He looked over at the balled-up papers that he held inches from his face, a small insincere smile bleeding across his face then shook his head spitting at the ground.

He reached slowly into his shirt pocket and pulled out his lighter showing it to her. It was green with white zebra stripes.

"You like it?" he asked her and she glanced around at the smirking boys surrounding her. "You want to see what it can do?"

His thumb came down and evoked the flame, that he bought to the crumpled papers in his hand. As it began to char he turned his back on her to face the cabin and she took an instinctual step forward.

"No, Damiáo-!" the other boys held her back and warned her to be quite while tears began to well up in her eyes again. The closer Damiáo got to the cabin the more ferociously she struggled and tried to fight the boys off of her. "Damiáo please!" she screamed.

"Do it Damiáo!" Gonçalo egged him on. Damiáo continued forward until he was on the top step.

"Say bye bye to your precious cabin Lia." He said venomously and she could feel floods of tears falling down her face as she screamed and they shoved, pushed and mocked her.

"Damiáo!" she tried to call him blindly through her tears and get him to see sense as she was pushed from boy to boy. "Damiáo!"

But it was too late. He tossed the burning ball down onto the blankets and the fire progressed fast. She felt a gasp catch in her throat as the boys stopped pushing her and they all looked on. Her eyes reflected the auburn bright burning glow accompanied by an awful thick smoke. And the boys laughter got louder as did her cries.

They'd held her still so she could do nothing except watch as the flames rose like a mighty beast and began to swallow up the walls of the cabin, her clothes and all that she owned. She felt heat kiss her face as it roared up into the air and then, when there was absolutely no chance of putting the fire out and most of the damage had been done, they released her.

"I want to see you in Copacabana later." Gonçalo had threatened her, then they had left her there alone. Broken at the site of so many memories going up in flames. Her tears dried on her face and still, she stared at the flames she had once praised so much and felt their evil flicker as they devoured her entire childhood and all of her happiest memories with her father, her mother and Michael, all in one go. The burning walls creaked and cried out to her, but she could do nothing.

She knelt and cried until the sky became a murky grey and the smell of burning became suffocating. Her head was down until she became aware of a presence that suddenly raced to a stop a short distance away.

When she turned she saw a silhouette in the distance, obscured slightly by the waves of heat and smoke in the air. Arms dangling at his sides as he stopped to witness the great plumes of smoke and engulfing fire. Eventually she was able to make out the stranger's face through brimming tears and in her distress she called out to him.

"Ramel!"

His face did not change even slightly. His eyes only adjusted to observe her, taking in the view of her weakened state and the burning cabin as it melted down to her level and in his eyes she saw nothing. No sympathy. No remorse or compassion for her at all. No sentimentality for the history the cabin contained.

Then, once he'd had his fill and he'd seen enough of her grovelling, he simply turned his back on her and walked away, leaving her alone once again.

Then she remembered all too soon his departing words.

The next time you need saving, don't call me.

As her heart twisted in her chest, for the first time she turned her face skyward and begged God to stop the raging blaze.

And through the crackling of the burning cabin and the livid smoke filled air above her, she felt the thing that she'd hated so profusely, cut through the air above and fall down onto her forehead, dancing there in the centre of her brows, before sliding down off the end of her nose.

Then little by little, more came down and it finally began to rain.