Never a day goes by without me thinking about her.

Four years, seven months and fifteen days have passed since the last time I saw her, the image of her world crumbling apart as I was dragged into the police car is the last thing I see when I fall asleep and I spend my nights trying to change it, revert the past so that she can smile at me again like she did so many times before.

It never works.

It's a clouded and cold day, even here, inside this cell with no windows and controlled temperature we can tell. We only get a few hours out in the yard for exercise, recreation or whatever the hell any inmate wants to do that it's allowed by the regulations. They keep us on a short leash, although most of the prisoners in here were like me, not condemned for violent crimes but rather fraud, drug dealing, money laundry, that sort of shit. Like me, my sentence is eight years of jail for having been found guilty of money laundry, responsible for over twenty million dollars that were never mine to begin with.

I had done it all for her, for us, because I was stupid enough to thrust a guy that said to be my friend to drag me into that operation, because I thought I could get into a business like money laundry and come out unscratched and free, so that Ana and I could live happily without the shadow of depths and college loans to loom over us. We could live wherever we want to, we wouldn't just fantasize laying naked against each other at nights about places we wanted to live, we could live them, I wanted to give her the life she deserved.

Ana and I had been together since the last year in high school, since that homework assignment in economy class that put us together, two complete strangers who would turn into so much more. Most couples broke up after graduation, they simply went their different ways, forgetting whatever love they ever had for one another as if it had been nothing but child's play, it had never been like that for us. Maybe it was because we both knew what could happen, unlike most who thought they would be together forever and never fought for their relationship. No, Ana and I knew that people grew apart, that we could meet new people and change but we never let that stop us. We changed, yes, after four years we were bound to, but instead of growing apart we got closer, we still loved each other and I know we always will, once you know that kind of love, you know it will never go away, that you will never meet anybody else meant for you, that it's only her.

I know she loves me too, or at least she would have if I hadn't fucked everything up.

Could she still love me? Where was she? After I was arrested I expected to see her again, she was the first person I tried to call but every calls I made to her house and cellphone had led to nothing. I asked my mom, she is actually my foster mom but she raised me and loved me like a son, and I considered her my mother, but she had no news of Ana. Next I tried to ask Taylor, my best friend, and that was when I could understand better why she, in two weeks, had never come to visit me.

Ana's father, Ray, was a good man; is I hope he is still alive after all the time I have spent locked up in here, but he had had a problematic family. As hard worker as he was, his father and brother weren't so much, and the two had been well-known for their cons and frauds. Ray had been twenty when, in an attempt to save his ass, his brother John had pinned the blame of an insurances conn on him. The evidence against Ray hadn't been much but enough to convict him for it, and he spent a year in jail after which he cut any contact with his family whatsoever.

That betrayal would forever stay on his record, making it almost impossible for Ray to find a decent job. After Ana's mother left both of them, he had done what he could to provide everything for his daughter and in exchange Ana had grown as an independent woman, raised practically by herself but she never held it against him, she loved her father because she knew he had done everything for her.

The problem was, after I got arrested the police started to check all of my relatives and friends, trying to find associates that could lead them to the stolen money. Ana's father had been the first name to pop up. With a previous sentence on his record the police had taken him into the precinct for questioning, after which they had laid fraud charges on him.

With her father facing jail time for a stupidity I had done, it was no wonder why Ana had stayed away from me. But I had a solution, and so I had my mom give Ana all she needed to access the account in which I had left all the money I saved from the fraud. I wasn't stupid, despite having let myself get caught up in this mess, and so I had set up an offshore account that only she could access so that nobody else could get the money.

I waited a day, a week but she never came. Taylor told me Ana had paid her father's bail but that that was the only thing she knew about her, after that she had packed up all of her things and left, she had dropped college and her father, Ana and her best friend Kate had moved somewhere else that Taylor had no idea off.

And so I was left here, alone and kicking myself for believing some dirty money would be enough for her to thrust me again, for her to forgive me.

After a while, my mom started visiting me too, it was no surprise though, who would want to be associated with me? Who would want to drive all this miles to see an idiot like me? I deserved what I got and so I was left to wonder on what my life could have been if I had known better.

We would still be together, Ana and I, and it was that thought, that certainty that it had been my fault that the love of my life had left me that shattered me.

But it could change, it's my last day in this place. I need to find her, to explain her that it was all for her, that I never meant to hurt her. I need to know she can love me as much as I love her.