This isn't only for tonight, we're gonna love our whole life long. 'Cause baby if it feels so right, how can it be wrong?
A cold bitterness surrounds Cesca's every breath. She is an empty void, a helpless creature with no hope. Cesca has been stripped of her passion for life, a passion that was once so vivid and so colourful. She once held a smile that could light a thousand rooms. Her love for life inspired her pupils everyday to achieve more than they ever thought possible. But that was until her love for a different kind of topic, got her into a whole new kind of trouble.
Now she sits, staring pitifully at the same four walls of her prison cell. She sheds tears everyday for the relationship that, given the chance, could have blossomed into a romance so beautiful, Romeo and Juliet would envy.
Despite knowing how wrong her crime has been, she still wonders how it can feel so right. She asks herself how the touch of his skin against hers is enough to send shivers tingling through her entire body. She questions how the thought of him, even after eight months apart, can still make her body shiver in delight. She knows why, she loves him. But no one would ever understand, they never could.
Cesca had never seen herself as the falling in love type. She's always known she was popular with the lads, but that was never her main priority in life, now though, it was her only priority.
The last eight months in prison hadn't been an easy ride for Cesca, not at all. She faced endless taunts and constant misery. The only thing that kept her alive through those tortured months was the life that had slowly began growing from within the restraints of her tiny body. The thought that her daughter was with her every minute of every day filled Cesca with a slight glimmer of hope. As well as baby Hope, a name they had both agreed on before being separated, Cesca lived for his letters. His hidden words of love and passion. They made sure she knew he hadn't moved on, and that he'd wait forever for his wife and their baby.
Although she was a million miles away from Ms Montoya, passionate Spanish teacher, she was now Cesca, a mum to be and a loving wife, and to be honest, she wouldn't have it any other way.
This isn't only for tonight, we're gonna love our whole life long. 'Cause baby if it feels so right, how can it be wrong?
Chapter 2
Bang
Bang
Bang
The thud echoes through the almost empty house. The football crashes against the ceiling and he catches it with ease every time. Jonah lays in his bed, an empty silence surrounds him.
This bedroom isn't even his own, his family had been ripped from him without even a second thought. His Dad was disgusted, his sister embarrassed and his wife imprisoned.
Instead he was living with his old English teacher, Tom took pity on the young school kid, seeing the pain and suffering that was tormenting his mind. Tom selfishly pushed away his jealousy and his own personal views to give the lad a home.
Eight months and six days since he has last seen her. Since then, he has barely left the confinements of the Clarkson house. Choosing instead to wallow in his own self pity, using revision as a pitiful excuse.
In her letters, Cesca had been clear of her wishes, he was to train and work hard and get into uni like he always planned. But she asked only one thing for herself. And she asked him to wait for her. She asked that if he loved her like he said he did, to wait for the day she is freed, so that together they can bring up their little piece of Hope.
He hated being seen as the foolish schoolboy. The stupid naive little kid that had a crush on his attractive Spanish teacher. He hated the looks, the ones that suggested he was using her to show off. A piece of bait, caught in his net. Stunning girl that she was, Cesca could have anyone she wanted, and everyone knew that. So why Jonah?
See everyone failed to notice one thing. The press always missed out one tiny, insignificant piece of the puzzle, the piece that fitted the whole sordid affair together. Jonah and Cesca were completely and irrevocably, in love.
Chapter 3
One week, two days, three hours and twenty minutes. The exact time since Jonah's last letter arrived. He'd never waited that long to reply. Cesca was struggling for breath without his words. Without his little decelerations of love. Slowly, very slowly but almost certainly, she was losing faith in him. In them.
She rubbed her hand gently against her swollen stomach, relishing in the closeness with her child. Their child. Their little piece of hope. She was so close to meeting their little miracle. A week to be exact. Tiny delicate tears dribbled down Cesca's cheek as she collapsed down onto her prison bed. The scratchy material of the blanket itching her bare skin. Something she had become quite accustomed to since bring there. Something that she now found almost soothing. The harsh material becoming a way to rub away all of her memories, all of the broken pieces of love.
She reached under her pillow and retrieved a tattered piece of paper. The words were faded were she had spent hours mindlessly rubbing her thumb over his swirly handwriting. The same writing she had taken for granted hundreds of times before as she marked his coursework or checked his book. Blotches lingered over the paper where hundreds of shards of tears had dribbled along the page and mingled with the words.
Cesca gasped slightly as she heard the large metal doors of her cell opening.
"Miss Montoya, a call for you" The officer nodded his head in direction of the phone in the main hall. In an almost mechanical fashion Cesca climbed from her bed and followed him from the room. She assumed it was another journalist, they still hadn't given up. All eager for a juicy piece of gossip, the inside story. Cruel relentless vultures circling their prey.
"Cesca?" She stopped dead when she heard his voice trickle from the end of the phone. Words failed her.
"Cesca is that you?" His voiced seemed desperate, needing to hear the calming sound of her voice for the first time in eight months.
"Yeah, it's me" She whispered, her voice hoarse with un-cried tears and fragile emotion.
"Hi"
"Hey"
Silence engulfed them both. So many questions needed to be asked, so many words shared but both knew they couldn't. Walls had ears where Cesca was. And neither of them could escape that.
"Why did you call Jonah?" She head him breathe sharply as she said his name, she didn't even realise she had for a moment, it just rolled off her tongue with such simplicity.
"I got the letter about the trial"
"I told them not to contact you!" Cesca groaned in frustration.
"Why Ces? I'm coming, I want to be there"
"No Jonah you can't!"
"Why? Why not? I have to see you Cesca. Please?"
"You can't come, it will cause to many questions and too much heartache, it's not good for my baby"
"Our baby"
"Sorry?"
"She's our baby Cesca"
"Sorry I didn't mean.."
"Let me see you Ces, It's all out now anyway! Everyone knows! We can be together, like we always wanted!"
"I've got to go Jonah"
And with that she put down the phone and padded her way back to her cell. Wincing as she heard the door slap behind her, trapping her again. She fell back onto the bed and cried silently to herself. She wondered what had happened to all those wishes on stars, wishes on birthday cakes. All those lost eyelashes and stolen wish flowers wasted on dreams that had never come true. And maybe they never would.
She and Jonah were a fairytale, and everyone knows that fairytales aren't real.
Chapter 4
Jonah
All your life you spend avoiding pain and hurt, avoiding the things that put you in danger. Love is one of those things. But it is also the thing that people crave the most. The love of another human being, to be cherished not for money, or fame but just because. It's just that sometimes you get tired. Tired of being hurt, tired of the lies and the heartbreak. You're not afraid of love itself; you're afraid of loving the wrong person.
To Jonah it feels so right to love her, perfect even, and yet the world says it's wrong for them to be together. As he placed down the phone, her delicate voice still trickling in his ears he realised that their future was slowly unravelling. Hanging on by the thinnest of threads. He understood that while their love was still strong, and very much alive, most people would say the least painful option is to let the beautiful thing fall to pieces instead of risking cuts upon your hands and heart whilst attempting to hold it together.
Jonah lay his head softly against his pillow, broken tears fluttering down his face, like shards of glass they glittered dangerously in the sunlight.
He was fighting an inner battle, but which would win?
Heart or head?
Logic or love?
Reason or determination?
His head told him to stop fighting, to let her go and live his daughter's life through the beauty of photos. And yet his heart fought back with fierce emotion. It told him to run as fast as he could, to catch their love with both hands and bottle it, keep it close to him, something to be treasured forever more.
Whilst he battled against himself he allowed sleep to consume him, his eyes flickered closed, his dreams to be filled of yet more of what could have been, should have been, might never be. Even as he slept he was confused beyond belief.
After all, we all want to live happily ever after.
But sometimes things don't go quite as we planned.