Love Drunk

by Marita A. Hansen

  Table of Contents

  CONTENTS

  1 Clara

  2 Clara

  3 Dante

  4 Clara

  5 Dante

  6 Clara

  7 Dante

  8 Clara

  9 Clara

  10 Dante

  11 Clara

  12 Dante

  13 Dante

  14 Clara

  15 Clara

  16 Dante

  17 Dante

  18 Clara

  19 Dante

  20 Clara

  21 Dante

  22 Clara

  23 Dante

  24 Dante

  25 Clara

  26 Clara

  27 Dante

  28 Clara

  29 Dante

  30 Clara

  31 Dante

  32 Clara

  33 Dante

  34 Clara

  35 Dante

  Epilogue

  Author Note

  About the Author

  More Books by Marita A. Hansen

  LOVE DRUNK

  By Marita A. Hansen

  Copyright

  Love Drunk

  Kindle Edition

  Copyright 2018 © Marita A. Hansen

  Editor: John Hudspith

  Cover design © Marita A. Hansen

  Cover Photography by

  CoffeeAndMilk and weareadventurers,

  and sourced from www.istockphoto.com

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means whatsoever without the written permission of the author, nor circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author. For subsidiary rights inquiries email: marita.a.hansen@hotmail.com

  All characters, names, places, and incidents in this book are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual events, locales, or real persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  CONTENTS

  1 Clara

  2 Clara

  3 Dante

  4 Clara

  5 Dante

  6 Clara

  7 Dante

  8 Clara

  9 Clara

  10 Dante

  11 Clara

  12 Dante

  13 Dante

  14 Clara

  15 Clara

  16 Dante

  17 Dante

  18 Clara

  19 Dante

  20 Clara

  21 Dante

  22 Clara

  23 Dante

  24 Dante

  25 Clara

  26 Clara

  27 Dante

  28 Clara

  29 Dante

  30 Clara

  31 Dante

  32 Clara

  33 Dante

  34 Clara

  35 Dante

  Epilogue

  Author Note

  About the Author

  More Books by Marita A. Hansen

  UK English is used due to the New Zealand setting.

  All other variations are also due to where the book is set, as well as the characters’ cultural and socio-economic backgrounds. This is why some characters use different speech patterns from others.

  Acknowledgements

  Thank you to my long suffering family for having to put up with all the time I spend on trying to make my writing career a success.

  In addition, I would like to say a special thanks to:

  John Hudspith – He’s edited many of my books, and is absolutely great to work with. I always feel that I’m putting my best work forward after he’s been through the manuscript.

  This book is set in the year 2011.

  1

  Clara

  General. When you hear that word it could mean many things. A leader. Something common. Widespread. Unclear.

  But to me General meant I was in danger. In with the toughest of criminals. Women convicted of murder, assault … such horrendous crimes that would make you sick to your stomach. But to them, I was the worst kind of criminal.

  A paedophile.

  But I wasn’t one.

  Dante hadn’t looked like a child. He may have been fifteen, and my student, but he was anything but a child. He looked so much older. Acted older too. A streetwise, tough boy with his eyes set on winning me.

  And he had.

  I fell head over heels in love with him, and he with me. We’d tried to run, to make a life together, but a car accident put him in a coma and me in jail. They said he was going to pull through, but me…

  I wasn’t sure I was going to make it through three years in General let alone the rest of my life. They were meant to transfer me into the protected unit, otherwise known as the bone yard, somewhere I dearly wished I was in now as I walked through the dining hall. A number of women were watching me as I passed by, their eyes burning holes in the back of my head. I could imagine what they were thinking. They probably thought I’d raped a young boy, lured him in to doing things he didn’t want, their mind’s eye painting a very different picture of what Dante looked like. They wouldn’t know that he was almost six-foot, looking closer to twenty than fifteen. They also wouldn’t have known that he’d lured me, doing things to my body that even my twenty-four-year-old husband wasn’t capable of. But my fellow prisoners wouldn’t … couldn’t, have known that, unless they’d met Dante in person.

  I went to sit down at an almost empty table. There were two prisoners at the other end, a skinhead with a homemade swastika by her eye and an old woman who looked too similar not to be her mother—two generations locked away. They took one look at me and picked up their trays, gone before I could sit down. It was almost as though I was infected with a vile disease, a social leprosy that could contaminate them if they hung around me.

  I placed my tray on the bench-like table, a bowl of porridge, an apple, a carton of juice—my breakfast for the day. I went to pick up the apple, the slop called porridge unpalatable, but a hand snatched it away before I could touch it. I looked up, seeing two prisoners standing over me, one holding my apple.

  She smiled down at me, her expression anything but friendly. “You pro’bly got a lot of apples as a teacher,” she said, taking a bite out of it. She looked in her early thirties with a face that had probably been very attractive in her youth, the years grinding it down to the harsh woman dressed in prison greens.

  I didn’t reply to her question, knowing no matter what I said it wouldn’t be received well.

  She took another bite of my apple, a drop of juice hitting her chin. “I bet you also got a lot of cherries.”

  The other prisoner, a large woman with thinning hair, snorted out a laugh. “That’s a good one, Marnie.”

  Marnie ignored her and lowered her head to me. “You and your kind make me sick!” she spat, a bit of apple hitting my cheek. I didn’t wipe it away, the pure hatred in her dark eyes petrifying me. She narrowed them at me, the vein down the centre of her forehead practically pulsing. “I had a fifteen-year-old daughter. She committed suicide after a paedo raped her.”

  “I didn’t rape—”

  She cut me off before I could say Dante’s name, “I saw the news, saw what you were convicted of. It was massive. All over the telly. So don’t fuckin’ deny it. Don’t you fuckin’ dare!” She threw the half-eaten apple across the room, the prisoners in the line of fire ducking.

  “Marnie!” a guard boomed. “Here! Now!”

  Marnie straightened, her eyes going to the guard. “There’s no needa be like that, boss,” she said, all sugary sweet. “I’m just having a friendly convo with the local paedo.”

  The other prisoners la
ughed.

  The guard lifted his baton, indicating for her to come over. She rolled her eyes and sashayed over to him, puckering her lips, blowing him a kiss. Her mate yelled, “Go, Marnie, show him who’s queen bee!”

  The guard shook his head, saying something to Marnie, whatever it was making her laugh. She looked over her shoulder at me, then back to the guard, nodding her head. She walked off, the guard following her. He glanced back at me, his eyes lingering for a moment, then he left with Marnie.

  Marnie’s friend smiled down at me cruelly, showing a row of badly stained teeth, one of them chipped. “Looks like you got McAvoy’s attention.” She laughed and walked away.

  I glanced around, wondering what that meant. The other women went back to eating, leaving me alone. I pushed my tray of food away, no longer hungry, sick to the stomach closer to the mark, what Marnie’s friend had said leaving a bad taste in my mouth.

  And fear in my heart.

  2

  Clara

  A high-pitched screech jolted me awake, sending me shooting straight up in bed. My eyes darted about, the familiar safe surroundings quickly calming me down, the noise coming from my alarm clock. I was in my bedroom, not the prison dining hall I’d just dreamt about. I hit the alarm clock and let out a ragged breath, upset that the dreams were back. I hadn’t dreamt about prison for a few years now, the nightmares having faded away, only bad memories remaining.

  I kicked my covers off and got out of bed, wishing it was the weekend and not Wednesday. For the first time since I’d started working as a counsellor at the rehab centre, I didn’t want to go to work. Instead, I wanted to swallow down some sleeping pills and crawl back under my covers. I glanced over at my mobile on my bedside cabinet, considering phoning in sick.

  You’re a coward.

  I grimaced, not caring. I had a right to be, especially after everything that had been done to me, and all because I’d fallen in love with a fifteen-year-old boy from the wrong side of the tracks.

  But Dante isn’t fifteen now.

  He was twenty-four. The age I’d been when they’d thrown me into prison for having an affair with him. I’d spent just over three years behind bars, the first few months almost killing me.

  A knock at my door pulled me out of my morose thoughts. “Heya, CC,” my flatmate called out, using the nickname she’d given me in prison, “you better get a move on, we need to be at work early today.”

  “I’m not feeling up to going,” I yelled back, sitting back down on my bed. I ran a shaky hand over my face, still feeling the effects of the dream.

  My door cracked open, Georgie’s concerned face appearing. “What’s wrong?”

  I cast my eyes down, unwilling to admit the real reason. “Feeling sick, possibly a bug.”

  “But you never miss work, even when you’re sick.”

  “I just don’t feel up to it today.”

  “Or maybe you’re avoiding work due to a certain ex?”

  “It’s got nothing to do with Dante,” I replied, finally meeting her hazel eyes.

  She stepped through the doorway, resembling a burlesque dancer with her black kimono and retro hair, her thick Betty Page fringe reminiscent of the fifties. The rest of her wavy dark-brown hair was held back by a red ribbon, tied in a bow at the top of her head. She looked a mix of naughty and nice, fitting her personality down to a T, since she’d been both a convict and an honour student. She’d been put into the same protected unit as me after she’d killed a drug dealer. But she’d been freed a month before I’d gotten out, declared innocent, her lawyer finally proving that she’d acted in self-defence.

  Georgie waved a finger at me. “I think this sudden sickness is about Dante. You can’t let him drive you away from work. You’ve already lost so much because of him, don’t let him take another job from you.”

  I stiffened, not happy that she was blaming him. “What happened to me wasn’t his fault, it was mine. So, you better not treat him badly like you did when he first came in. He’s a patient, and is only at the clinic because he needs help.”

  She kept her eyes on me, not backing down. “While you’re paid to help him, so get up and get dressed, you have a job to do.”

  I flung my hands up in the air. “I can’t do it, Georgie, I just can’t. It hurts just to look at him, hurts so bad. Maybe the best thing for me to do is to take some time off work, come back when he’s gone.”

  She sat down on the bed next to me. “You do realise he’s old enough now if you still want him?”

  I exhaled, wishing it was that easy. “I want him more than anything in the world, but he barely remembers me. That car accident destroyed everything we had. He doesn’t remember us being in love. I could see it in his face. He didn’t know me. He probably only remembered I was his teacher because I came to his house that one time.”

  Something I regretted.

  I’d tried to see him after I’d gotten out of prison, hoping … praying that he remembered me. But he hadn’t. Even worse, he’d been living with another woman. He’d moved on from our life together like it had never happened, and to him it hadn’t.

  Unlike for me.

  I remembered everything—every small detail about him—from the way his eyes darkened when he was emotional, to the strange way he said wuz instead of was, his Maori accent emphasizing the word. And I definitely remembered his wavy, messy, sexy hair that I’d loved gripping onto as we made love. I had loved his hair so much, loved him so much, but he didn’t love me back. I was a stranger to him, nothing more.

  Georgie placed a hand on my knee. “I really don’t think you should stay away from work because of him. I think you should push through this. Actually, maybe this is what you need to finally get over him, because I know it’s why you won’t accept Simon’s proposal. Simon’s such a lovely guy, the kind of man you should be with. You need to move on with your life, be with someone that you deserve.”

  I let out a pathetic laugh, my friend having rose-coloured glasses when it came to me. “I don’t deserve Simon.”

  “Yes, you do.”

  “No, I don’t,” I emphasized, getting frustrated with her, “otherwise I would’ve fallen asleep thinking about him, not Dante.”

  “I get it, Dante’s gorgeous, what woman wouldn’t dream about him. Before I realised who he was, I was drooling. But we can’t always get what we want, and mooning over it will just leave us sour and unhappy. And although Simon may not be smoking hot like Dante, he’s still a right honey. He’s also an incredibly nice guy.”

  “My husband was an incredibly nice guy and just as good-looking as Simon, if not more so, yet it didn’t stop me from cheating on him with Dante. And even when I was with Simon, I kept imagining Dante while we had sex. Now Dante’s back in my life, I’m scared I won’t be able to control myself.”

  “Okay, fair enough regarding Simon, but what isn’t fair is you letting all of your patients down.”

  I grimaced. “Don’t do that.”

  “Do what, CC? Guilt you? Well, too bad, because it’s true. You know you’ll be hurting them if you stay away from work. And what about Tyler? He’s leaving soon. You can’t just up and disappear without even saying goodbye to him. No other counsellor was able to get through to that poor guy before you took over his case. No one. You could at least be there when he leaves.”

  I didn’t reply, knowing she was right, especially about Tyler. He’d been with the clinic for months, slowly opening up about why he’d fallen into drugs. The poor boy had worked in porn, his boss having used and abused him, what had been done to him so hard to hear.

  Georgie pushed up off my bed. “So, get dressed. I expect to see you in the car in thirty minutes.”

  She walked off, leaving me feeling an overwhelming sense of hopelessness. A hopelessness I knew was only going to get worse.

  3

  Dante

  I entered the rehab’s dining hall with one massive motherfucking headache, and for once I couldn’t blame it on booze, becau
se I hadn’t touched a drop since the intervention. But Jesus did I want to. I wanted to chug an entire bottle of Jack, feeling the liquid ecstasy burn a path down my throat. But I couldn’t. I needed to stay sober to keep my record deal, something I wanted more than anything. That deal could pull my family out of the shit they’d mired themselves in for so long, giving them the life they deserved, especially my older brother. Ash needed it more than anyone, even more so now. He’d quit the drug trade and sold his house, moving to Howick to make his partner happy, a suburb they couldn’t afford to live in. Because of it, he was doing back-breaking labour jobs, his partner’s measly teacher’s salary not even a drop in their mortgage. I’d stopped in to see him before going to rehab and he’d looked utterly exhausted. If his partner hadn’t already left for work, I would’ve ripped into her, giving Tiana an earful.

  Still trying to ignore the urge to hightail it to a liquor store, I headed for the breakfast bar. I was going to down a plate of bacon, eggs, mushrooms, and fried tomatoes instead of what I really wanted. It wasn’t my usual fare, but at least the indulgence would stop me thinking about whiskey.

  For the moment.

  Because I knew sobriety wasn’t going to be easy, especially since I’d starting drinking hard liquor at the age of thirteen.

  As I continued towards the breakfast bar, I noticed the other patients watching me, one of them openly staring. The chick was full-on eye-fucking me, appearing more interested in swallowing down my sausage than the one on her plate. She smiled when she noticed me looking. I lifted my chin in a friendly hello and grabbed a plate, the food here pretty damn fine. My manager had obviously paid a shitload to get me into this rehab, because everything about it looked expensive. From the high, vaulted ceilings to the polished floors, as well as the mouth-watering food laid out before me. I guessed they didn’t have people with food addictions in this place, because they would come just looking at the spread.