One Christmas Night With You

Chapter 1

Chapter One

Kennedy Noelle

I hate Christmas. Yep, there I said it. This crappy holiday can go to hell. Okay, maybe I am being dramatic, but holy crap, this day is turning into a complete dumpster fire.

My jackass of a boyfriend turned off my alarm when he got up this morning, instead of hitting snooze, so I was late to my hair appointment; the hairdresser got a little to scissor-happy and chopped five inches off my hair, the esthetician used the wrong wax on my lady garden, and I’m pretty sure I have third degree burns down there, and then Starbucks’ girl got my coffee order wrong and gave me matcha instead of a peppermint tea.

Gross. I know, first-world problems. Poor Kennedy Noelle Kensington, I hear you say.

But truthfully, this complaining is all to mask what I’m really upset about: I didn’t get accepted for the internship at The Row.

The letter landed in my mailbox this morning, and I regret opening it.

I should have never checked it before Christmas.

It’s been a bad omen all day. I graduated top of my class this summer from FIT, earning a degree in fashion design.

I’ve dreamed of being a big-time designer since I was little and would play fashion shows with my Barbie dolls and beg my mom for her old dresses so I could cut them up and make my own.

This internship would have sealed the deal.

If I could get my foot in the door at The Row, my goal seemed achievable. But it wasn’t to be.

I turn the corner, tripping over my own feet for the third time on this walk back home, and decide I am done for the day. My feet hurt so bad.

I spot a yellow cab bay and decide I am hopping in one to get home.

I quicken my steps, my feet throbbing with every tap of my kitten-heel boots, and I swear, I am about to weep in pain.

I wave my hand frantically, my Chanel purse sliding off my shoulder as I try and run and wave at the same time.

As I approach the cab that pulls in, I collide with what feels like a brick wall.

My purse goes flying and lands in a puddle.

“What the heck?” I screech at the 6ft 5 wall of muscle I’ve just been derailed by.

“Do you not look where you are going?” He growls, picking up my now soggy purse and thrusting it into my hands.

I am so taken aback by this man’s rudeness, I’m frozen, clutching my dripping purse, mouth agape.

He proceeds to open the waiting cab door and toss his overnight bag in it.

Is he joking?

“Hey, that was my cab,” I yell, finally finding my voice.

“No, it’s mine.” He turns to glare at me, and if I wasn’t so mad right now, I’d have melted on the spot.

For a hot second, I think I’ve just yelled at Chris Hemsworth.

He is a dead ringer for him. He looks at me with a jaw so tight I wouldn’t be surprised if he cracks every tooth in his beautiful mouth.

He glares at me like I’ve ruined his Christmas, birthday and Easter, and I retreat, letting him have the cab.

He wastes no time jumping in, slamming the door and speeding off. No apology.

What an asshole.

I use the sleeve of my cream coat to wipe the remaining dirty puddle water off my leather bag and then decide to take the long walk home that we have lived in for barely three months, clearly needing to avoid all forms of public transportation today because I don’t fancy my chances after this disaster of a day and its barely noon.

As I pound the busy streets, my painful winter boots cut into my skin, and a dull ache forms in the pit of my stomach.

I failed.

Years of hard work, unpaid summer internships, and working retail jobs have been for nothing.

We have the drive to my parents’ vacation home this evening for the holidays, and the reality of that makes that dull ache turn into a painful knot. Knowing I’ll have to face my family and tell them I failed when they are all thriving makes me want to throw myself into oncoming traffic.

Let’s calm it with the dramatics, Kennedy. They’re your family, and they love you.

I let out a long sigh and reach into my purse to pull out my phone so I can call my boyfriend, Carson.

It rings and rings and goes straight to voicemail. Great. Letting out a frustrated breath, I shove the phone back into my purse and powerwalk the rest of the way to my house; the winter New York air hitting my cheeks, making them feel tight and tingly.

I arrive at our brownstone, paid for by my boyfriend’s parents, because we are both graduates trying to land a job.

Carson comes from money. So do I, but there’s money, and then there is money.

Carson hasn’t had to work for a damn thing.

Everything lands in his lap, and his parents have held his hand throughout.

I have been hellbent on paying my way, and even though his parents won’t accept a cent from me, I have saved money every month from my retail assistant job at Bloomingdale's so that I can give them a big cheque when we move out. This living situation is only temporary. Carson has been promised a job at his father’s advertising company on one condition: he spends twelve months working for someone else to gain life experience.

My parents worked for their wealth. My father a surgeon and my mother a health and wellness expert, they have instilled in me and my three sisters that we are to work for everything we want, which is fair enough, and they have supported me through school on the condition I work and pay my way too.

But come on, throw a girl an extra bone every now and then. I’m tired.

I open the front door of our home and step inside, tripping over Carson’s tennis shoes and gym bag he’s left in the hall.

“For shit’s sake… Carson,” I bellow up the stairs, knowing that’s where he’ll be, playing video games no doubt in his man cave.

I unzip my boots that will be going in the trash and toss them beside Carson's, then take off my coat and hang it on the hook and hobble my way up the stairs in search of my man-child of a boyfriend.

The faint sound of his voice trickles down the stairwell, and I follow the sound.

To my surprise, I find him in our bedroom, packing a suitcase.

“That’s great. I’ll see you first thing Monday. Merry Christmas.”

Monday? We will be in The Hamptons on Monday with my family.

“Hey… what’s going on,” I ask hesitantly, gesturing to the suitcase that I note is full of summer clothes and not the attire appropriate for the cold weather.

“Ken, I’ve had the opportunity of a lifetime handed to me.” His big green eyes are full of excitement as he looks at me.

“You don’t say, and what is this opportunity?” I ask, tone irritated, folding my arms across my chest.

“I’ve been offered a job in LA.”

LA? He planned to get a job in New York. It’s why we decided to stay in New York. He didn’t want to move out of the city.

“Congratulations, what did you say to them?” I’m praying that he told them he would think about the offer and get back to them.

Silence. A deafening silence falls between us as he continues to pack.

“Carson, what did you tell them?” My tone is firmer this time as I release my arms and my hands ball into fists. I already know what’s coming. I can feel it in my gut.

“I… I accepted the job,” he says quietly. Tears well in my eyes, and my heart begins to thump loudly.

“Without speaking to me?” I say on a shaky breath.

“I couldn’t turn it down, Ken. This is the Milton Brothers. Do you know how big they are in the advertising world?”

No, I didn’t. I couldn’t give a shit if the president himself had offered him a job.

We were supposed to be a team, in it together.

He was my high school boyfriend; we’ve been together since we were fifteen.

He gave me a promise ring in college after he admitted he made out with a sorority girl.

Hannah, fucking Hannah. I forgave him. He promised me it was no more than a drunken kiss.

I also forgave him for Tiffany and Amber.

Am I a fool? Yes. Did I deserve better? Probably, but he was Carson.

My Carson. My comfort blanket. My parents loved him, and his parents loved me.

Our families were friends; we were written in the stars.

Or so I thought. But now he’s making plans about our future without even consulting me, and it hurts. A lot.

“I get that, but I thought we would talk about this and decide together. How soon would we have to move?” I ask, trying my best to sound interested. Maybe I could live in LA?

“I’m on the 8.20 flight to LA tonight,” he says as he zips up his suitcase.

“Tonight? Carson, it’s Christmas eve. It’s my birthday tomorrow. My parents are expecting us. We can’t bail,” I shout, throwing my arms up in the air.

“I know, and I’m sorry, but it was part of the contract.

Please apologize to your parents for me.

I know they will understand.” He disappears into the walk-in closet, and as his words register, I march in after him, my anger simmering to a dangerous level.

I slap a hand against the door frame and grip it with force as I say through gritted teeth, “What do you mean, apologize to your parents for me, am I not coming with you?”

Silence. I swear to God, I am about to rip him a new one if he doesn’t start talking.

“For god’s sake, Carson, will you look at me?” I screech. His body stiffens, and he slowly lifts his head. His light green eyes stare into mine, and the somber look on his face tells me everything he hasn’t said.

I’m not going to LA with him.

“Ken, I think I need to do this on my own. Things between us, well, they haven’t been great, and maybe we need a little break.”

Pain, a sudden, intense feeling, hits me square in the chest. Like a dagger to the heart. Seven years of loving this man, the only man I could ever imagine being with, has just shattered my world. He’s leaving, and he doesn’t want to take me with him.

The tears that threatened to fall are now coming thick and fast, and I swipe them away with the back of my hand.

“How could you do this? I agreed to stay in New York for you. I turned down an internship in London for you.”

Yeah, that was a tough one to accept. Straight out of college this past summer, my professor put me forward for a six-month internship in London working at Burberry, but I knew Carson would never go. He needed to remain stateside to join his father’s company, and so I turned it down.

My fingers twist the promise ring on my left hand that has remained there since I was sixteen.

A promise from Carson that he was mine, and I was his, and one day he would marry me.

I have worn that ring every day since. Even through his betrayals.

But now, that ring that I’ve worn like a badge of honor and devotion suddenly feels like a heavy chain weighing me down, and I want to rip it off.

But he is right. We haven’t been us since we graduated college.

But you don’t throw something away because it's not perfect anymore; you work to fix it.

I reach for the closet thing, one of my purses, and launch it at him. He has the good sense to duck and narrowly avoids a Prada purse to the temple.

“I swear to god, Carson, if you don’t start using words, I will tear this closet apart and bury you under it.”

He holds his hands up in defeat. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” he says, his tone panicked.

“I just think we need some time apart. We’ve been together since we were so young, I think we need to experience life before we settle down, you know?”

I run a frustrated hand through my freshly highlighted hair and exhale a long breath. “Okay, so let me get this straight. You want a break, a pause. Get some life experience, sow your wild oats, then come back to me when you are done, and we settle down and get married.”

“Yes, exactly.” Was that excitement in his tone?

Is this motherfucker for real?

I take slow steps toward him.

“If you think for one second, I’m going to wait for you whilst you live it up in LA, fucking god knows who, you are out of your damn mind, Carson. I’m not a dumb eighteen-year-old anymore. I’m nearly twenty-three and I am not taking your shit any longer. You either want me, or you don’t.”

I wait for him to speak. I wait for him to choose me. He pushes his hand through his wavy golden hair and closes his eyes tight, and I know then that I’ve lost him. Seven years, all our plans, gone, just like that.

“I’m sorry,” he whispers, reaching for my face, and I slap his hand away.

“Don’t touch me,” I snarl. “Just get out.”

“I still love you, Ken—” I cut him off, not able to listen to his bullshit.

“Don’t you dare. You don’t love me. If you did, you would have talked to me before you agreed to take the internship. You would have asked me to go with you. You wouldn’t be breaking my heart the day before Christmas. So no, you don’t love me.”

Maybe he did once, a long time ago. If I am honest with myself, he stopped loving me the minute he kissed Hannah Laurence.

But I was stupid and na?ve, and I didn’t want to fail at being a girlfriend.

Failure isn’t accepted in my family. We were Kensington's; we always came out on top. I’m the youngest. I’ve aways been the one who never really cared until all my sisters started making careers and great life choices, so I decided I needed to buckle down and sort my life out.

When I got with Carson, my parents were so happy, and I thrived off the praise and adoration.

I got accepted into a top fashion school, and I had everything.

Now I had no job, no career prospects, no home, no boyfriend. And it’s Christmas. Fuck my life.

Carson slides past me. I remain still, facing the wall.

Listening to him place his suitcase on the floor and wheel it out of the room.

I wait until I hear the noticeable sound of the front door shutting before I let myself fall to the floor and weep into one of his college sweaters I find beside me. I bring my knees to my chest and sob.

Today sucks. This may be the worst Christmas ever.

Deciding I won’t waste another minute crying over this ass of a man, I get up, dust myself off and go in search of my phone.

I check flights to The Hamptons, and all of them are full.

Of course they are! I check the drawer, and of course, the car keys have gone.

Not only did this prick dump me on Christmas Eve, he’s taken the car.

With no car and a cab costing the earth, I book myself a train ticket, knowing it will take me hours, but hey, I had time to kill.

I can use the time to read a self-help book, research for jobs, a new apartment, how to poison my now ex without leaving any evidence and mentally prepare myself for spending the holidays as the only single person in my family.

Yeah, Merry fucking Christmas to me. This is, without doubt, the worst Christmas and birthday ever.