One Cruel Night

The water was near boiling, and steam billowed from the glass shower as I stepped inside. I let the jets beat down on me before scrubbing last night’s escapades off of my body and shampooing my hair.

My skin was red from the intense heat when I stepped out of the shower. I dried off my hair and then slung the towel low around my narrow hips. After brushing my teeth, I went in search of a cup of coffee. It was too early for the housekeeper to be here. So, I knew I’d have to make my own. Better coffee than no coffee in my book.

I set up a French press and left it to steep while I decided how long I would have to wait before waking Natalie up.

A good, long fucking in the morning was almost a better way to wake up than coffee.

Maybe I’d just write while she slept.

Lord fucking knew that I had way too much to get on paper. I’d come to Paris to try to silence all the shit I had been dealing with in New York. I loved my friends—the crew—but they didn’t get why I was pursuing a PhD. They wanted to party and have sex every night. My eyes slid back to the bedroom. Well, maybe I did, too. But I still had work to do. An entire philosophy dissertation that I had to write that would change the world of ethics as we knew it.

I rolled my eyes at myself. Narcissistic much?

I hadn’t proven to anyone yet that I was a better producer of philosophy than I was a consumer. And, until I got to that point, no one would take me seriously.

Especially not as a Kensington.

My mood soured at my name. That stupid fucking name that got me in wherever I wanted and left me a trust fund in the nine- to ten-digit range. The name that made people get out of my way. The name that made people wonder why in the hell I was getting a philosophy degree when I could be working with my father. The abusive bastard.

The name I had purposely not told Natalie last night.

I’d told her I wanted to be someone else, and she’d let me. It was a privilege I wasn’t usually afforded. Never in New York or at Harvard where all of the vultures circled me, hoping, one day, they’d be the one to take me off the market.

No matter that I wasn’t even twenty-five, had no intention of taking over my father’s business, and had sworn off marriage long ago. If it was anything like my parents’ arrangement, then count me out.

Natalie was oblivious to me wandering around as I changed into chinos and a button-up that I rolled to my elbows. I snagged my phone and notebook from the nightstand and went back to my precious coffee.

I opened my notebook to the latest blank page and started in on my night with Natalie. I considered the title and then wrote, It All Started on a Park Bench in Paris.

My phone buzzed, and I checked to see who the hell was calling me this early. My mother. Just what I fucking needed. Why the hell was she calling me anyway? It was nearly midnight in New York. She was a state senator in the New York State Assembly. She worked even more obscure hours than I did and cared even less about what I thought about her. She was a ballbuster and notoriously impossible to work for. Try having her as a mother.

I let it go to voice mail, but when it immediately started ringing again, I sighed and picked up. “Hello?”

My mother was crying.

My mother was crying.

My mother…was…crying.

I couldn’t fathom the fact that Leslie Kensington was actually in tears. On the phone. With me.

Then, I heard the words she had been blubbering into the phone.

I froze.

The blood drained from my body.

I couldn’t process everything else she was saying.

I just stood there.

In disbelief.

“I’m coming home,” I said and mechanically hung up.

I was in shock.

Then, I didn’t think. I just acted. I took my notebook, phone, and MacBook. I slid my feet into shoes and then was out the door and in a cab to the airport before I could even stop to process the fact that I hadn’t woken Natalie up.

Chapter 11

Light streamed in from white-curtained windows. The sun was shining, birds were chirping…or were those cars driving by below? I blinked rapidly, trying to wake up, and a huge yawn escaped me.

“What time is it?” I murmured into the empty space.

Then, my eyes adjusted.

Blue comforter.

King-size bed.

Clean bedroom.

I bolted upright and stared around the room. “Oh god,” I hissed.

Last night came back to me in a rush. Meeting Penn at the party, wandering the city with him, the club, his bed.