Unwrapped (The Camdyn Series Book 5)

  Unwrapped

  ACamdyn Series Christmas Novella

  By

  Christina Coryell

  Books by Christina Coryell:

  The Camdyn Series

  A Reason to Run

  A Reason to Be Alone

  A Reason to Forget

  For No Reason

  Unwrapped

  Girls of Wonder Lane

  Simply Mad

  Crowned

  Facebook: www.facebook.com/AuthorChristinaCoryell

  Twitter: @c_tinacoryell

  www.christinacoryell.com

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher. To contact the publisher, submit a request at www.christinacoryell.com.

  Copyright © 2015 by Christina Coryell

  Cover image copyright © 2015 by Erica McKimmey Photography

  To Tammy,

  Because I can’t write a best friend story without thinking of you. Thank you for being mine.

  Chapter One

  “Officially the worst Christmas in the history of Christmases,” I blurted, dropping my phone on the bed. Usually the drama in the room was provided by my best friend and roommate, but I couldn’t seem to control my despair.

  Camdyn half-closed the book she was reading, keeping her finger between the pages. “This I gotta hear.”

  “That was my mom. Apparently they’re going to be spending Christmas in Florida with Aunt Shelly again.”

  “Bummer,” Camdyn said, twisting her mouth sardonically to the side. “How will you ever get all the sand out of your bathing suit?”

  I normally enjoyed her quick wit, but not so much when she employed it on me.

  “You know I can’t go to Florida. Don’t you remember last year?”

  Shudder—last year. Immediately upon our arrival at Aunt Shelly’s condo, I was met by my new step-cousin Todd, who was all of fourteen and already six-foot-two. He quickly gave me a rundown on exactly how smokin’ I was, and I spent the entire Christmas holiday avoiding that kid and sleeping with one eye open.

  “Oh, yeah, the weirdo cousin. We all have one, don’t we?” She paused, tilting her pretty blonde head to the side. “Except me, because I have no cousins. And that really has no bearing on your problem, so I digress.”

  Rising from my bed, I stepped over to the window of our dorm room and looked out onto the street, which was mostly deserted on that cold Missouri day. Letting out a sigh, I watched my breath fog the glass and then painted a little snowflake with my finger. Missouri doesn’t always have white Christmases, but at least there was a chance. In Florida? Not so much.

  I exhaled another heavy breath, which caught the attention of my roommate enough that she actually placed the book facedown on the bed. For the girl who always had her nose in her studies or a pen on the paper, that was quite a statement in and of itself.

  Camdyn stepped up behind me and wrapped her arm around my shoulders. “I hate seeing you like this, and I don’t want to hear any weird stories about Cousin Creepy when you come back to school. Why don’t you come home with me?”

  Go home with Camdyn? It would mean my first Christmas not spent with my parents. Not that home actually felt like home anymore, really.

  Growing up, we made our home in Cape Girardeau, where my dad was a professor at Southeast Missouri State. Naturally, I chose to go to the University of Missouri, just so I wouldn’t be picked out of the crowd because of my dad. He teasingly labeled me a traitor, but sometimes I wondered whether he was actually joking.

  Last year, he took a position in Nebraska and my parents sold my childhood home. All of my Christmas memories were forevermore available solely in my mind due to the fact that random strangers now occupied my bedroom, my living room, and that totally perfect hollowed-out space across from the fireplace with the large bay windows. That was where a Christmas tree belonged, not in a rectangular Nebraska sitting room.

  Having no Nebraska Christmas memories, my parents chose to spend that first holiday in the comfort of Aunt Shelly’s new home, and I foolishly went along. Not only did Todd creep me out at every waking opportunity, but Aunt Shelly seemed insistent that we only eat seafood during that visit. Seafood is definitely not my first choice for Christmas. I like tradition, and our traditions included turkey, stuffing, and pumpkin pie.

  Well, I was wise to the situation now, wasn’t I? And I had a choice in the matter.

  “Do you have pumpkin pie?” I asked as Camdyn slid her arm off my shoulders and leaned against the wall.

  “Yeah, and my grandma’s the absolute best cook. I promise you won’t be disappointed.”

  “Okay,” I agreed hesitantly, studying my friend. “What about Charlie, though? He won’t mind?”

  “Charlie?” Her amusement was short and to the point. “Don’t be worried about Charlie. At worst, he might tease you like he does me. He’ll probably ignore you, though. He’ll be too good to socialize with us, since he’s in school to become a pharmacist. I’m sure he’ll be trying to lord it over me how wonderful he is.”

  She gave a quick eye roll, and I couldn’t help but laugh. Being an only child, I didn’t have an older brother to torment and tease me, so I wasn’t sure how many of her stories were exaggerations.

  “So, you in?”

  Camdyn remained there with one foot on the floor and the other perched against the wall, looking every bit like one of those posters you see at the mall for clothing advertisements. Why God saw fit to pair me with a roommate who happened to be the most perplexing girl within a five mile radius was beyond me, but any hesitation I had upon first meeting her had long since melted away.

  “How can I tell you no?” I reluctantly agreed, and she made a clicking noise with her tongue as she displayed a huge smile. “No, seriously, how? I’d really like to figure it out.”

  “You don’t want to tell me no, because you know I’m right.” Pulling herself away from the wall, she returned to her bed and picked up her book, setting it in her lap as she resumed her cross-legged position. “You’ll miss your chance to see that guy, though…what was his name?”

  “Philip?”

  Admittedly, Philip was rather interesting. Not perfect or anything, mind you, but he kept me mildly distracted last year. We only saw him once, on Christmas Day when Aunt Shelly’s brother-in-law from her previous marriage brought his kids over. Philip was a year younger than me, business major, liked to play rugby, and not entirely unattractive.

  “Yeah, your Aunt Shelly’s nephew, right?” Camdyn stated, the corners of her mouth drawing upward. “On second thought, you can’t date your cousin’s cousin. That’s totally creepy.”

  “It’s Christmas. I’m not looking to find the love of my life. I’d settle for good, old-fashioned caroling, trimming the tree, eating until I can’t move…”

  “Then you will definitely be in the right place, because there will be no one to date at all. It’s a win-win for you.”

  “Very funny.” I plopped down on my own bed. “What are you studying so intently over there?”

  “Mao Tse-tung. This Chinese History class is going to be the death of me, since I’ve already had my grade docked. I absolutely have to be perfect on this final just to prove my point and to protest the blatant injustice that was perpetrate
d upon me.”

  Finding it impossible not to laugh, I attempted to hide it behind my fist. Camdyn was completely devoted to her studies and had to be the best academically, but the rest of the time she had a habit of being a rather overdramatic goofball.

  “Would the world stop turning if Camdyn Taylor was rewarded a B in Chinese History?”

  “It would be a blatant injustice,” she repeated, not looking up from her book.

  Poor Camdyn–she had been rather indignant over the Chinese History fiasco for a couple months, since her ex-boyfriend Blake showed up out of the blue in front of her class and proposed to her. The room erupted into laughter when she refused him and questioned his sanity, but the professor wasn’t in a jovial mood. He vowed to dock her grade, and so far hadn’t relented.

  She’d been the target of misguided admiration after that incident with Blake Kennedy, because it took a unique woman to harness the attention of the handsome, aloof athlete. Not only did she manage to do just that, merely by tripping over the guy, but she also held him captive for months only to drop him like a hot rock at the end of the year. She thought they were just having a fling, but he didn’t feel the same. Why the poor sap thought he should return to publicly humiliate himself by proposing was another story altogether.

  “So do you think you’re going to ace it, Miss Smarty Pants?” It was nearly impossible for me not to goad her, since she was constantly on my back about studying.

  We were polar opposites, Camdyn and me. I rarely ever bothered to crack the books outside of class. My life was usually quite normal and routine, while Camdyn was a disaster waiting to happen. We even looked like opposites, with her naturally wavy blonde hair versus my own milk-chocolate-brown, straight-as-a-board variety. We completed each other’s weaknesses in the best ways, though.

  “Of course,” she stated breezily. “I have a whole scenario in my head where I’ve imagined that I’m an impoverished Chinese woman. My husband has recently died and I’m alone with my baby, so things are rather difficult.”

  “You and your imagination. You should write books about those stories in your head.”

  “I prefer to keep them in my head where I can tweak them and improve them.” Leaning forward, her face grew serious. “I have a close friend who has inside dealings with the Kuomintang. We’ve been forbidden to have a relationship, but our affections for one another cannot be quelled. I fear there will be a revolution soon, and my love will be unrequited. Dear God, don’t let my love perish!”

  Biting my lip, I tried not to laugh at her wide blue eyes. “Perish in the revolution?”

  “No.” Going back to her previous posture, she brought her book up toward her face. “Perish in the clutches of a disastrously undeserved grade.”

  Chapter Two

  “B Plus!” Throwing her duffel bag into the trunk of my red two-door coupe, Camdyn turned to me again with her hands on her hips. “Can you believe it? The nerve of that man! I guarantee you he proposed to some woman early in his life and she turned him down, so he’s taking it out on me.”

  She had been going on about her grade for a solid hour. If some professor had given me a B on my final, I would have been hugging him after class and jumping up and down. Some crazy antagonistic professor decided to give Camdyn a B, and suddenly the only option was to drive my car to her grandmother’s. If I would have allowed her to drive in her mental state, it might have diminished our chances of making it to St. Louis alive.

  “He’s decided I’m the poster child for misplaced devotion.” Pulling the passenger door closed behind her, Camdyn linked her fingers behind her head and stared at the sunroof. “I should launch a complaint against him on behalf of all women who have been saddled with undesirable proposals. As though I wanted Blake to interrupt the class and tell me that I was his soul’s running partner. Yick. If he wanted to propose, he should have at least done it eloquently and properly. And he might have done a little research into whether the girl was interested or not.”

  “Well, maybe you’ll get lucky and no one will ever propose to you again.”

  “I should hope not.”

  She stretched the seat belt across her abdomen and planted the soles of her tennis shoes against the dash with her knees against her chest, her pink sweats reaching just to the top of her shins. Not telling her to remove her feet from the dash took every ounce of patience in my body.

  Ignoring my motherly instincts about the car made me shake my head a little as I pondered our different quests in life. My idyllic plans consisted of settling down in the suburbs, raising a couple kids, going to recitals, cheering at ball practices, and cooking gourmet meals for my wealthy doctor husband. (That last part was just a suggestion.)

  The fact that dreams weren’t guaranteed to become realities didn’t stop me from comparing my situation to Camdyn’s. I wouldn’t have minded having someone propose to me in history class. (Not that I would take Chinese history...too many facts to remember.) If I had even one iota of affection for the guy, I would have probably said yes. Unlike my cynical companion, I was a sucker for romance.

  “Oh, by the way, Charlie’s not very happy with me for inviting you to Christmas.”

  Naturally she waited until I started the car to inject that tidbit of information. Twisting my head in her direction, I allowed my mouth to drop open.

  “Are you kidding me? What am I supposed to do with that?”

  “Relax,” she said, dragging her feet down from the dash. “I explained the weird cousin situation, and the whole aversion to seafood, and he understands.”

  “You told Charlie about Todd?” Even in the chill of the below-freezing day, my fingers threatening to fuse like ice to the steering wheel as my car attempted to bring the heat up to a useful temperature, I could feel the burning in my cheeks.

  “Um, yeah, to do you a favor. Don’t worry, it mellowed him out. Besides, he was only annoyed because he said it was his time to relax and unwind, and he thought he might have to entertain you.”

  Whenever Camdyn brought up her brother, I tried to walk a fine line of moderate interest without getting too involved. One of the worst stories she ever told me was about her thirteenth birthday, when she invited some girls over for a sleepover. She found out when she went back to school on Monday that they only agreed to come because they wanted to see Charlie. She had a hard time trusting friends after that point, and I could hardly blame her. Camdyn and I had been thick as thieves from day one, and I was her friend because she was the milk to my Oreos. The peanut butter to my jelly. That unique person I could go without seeing for a month and know we would pick up right where we left off, finishing each other’s sentences.

  Still, the thought of Charlie believing I was an idiotic, flaky friend of his kid sister set me on edge. Even though we hadn’t met, I’d spoken to him on the phone. He had an easy, pleasant timbre to his voice, and seemed genuinely nice. Camdyn had given me all sorts of information about him, and despite the fact that she told me about the many goofy things they had done over the years, I knew that he had to be at least semi-serious, since he was studying to be a pharmacist.

  “As though you’d want to be entertained by Charlie,” Camdyn added as she stared out the window, giggling to herself.

  ♥

  “I’m home!” Camdyn called as she threw open the front door, dropping her bag to the floor. The scent of cinnamon swam toward me through the air, overwhelming my senses as I pulled the door closed behind me. My friend was off like a light, nearly sprinting into the adjoining kitchen, leaving me standing in the entryway awkwardly clinging to my blue paisley suitcase like I was waiting for the concierge to return to the hotel lobby. Deciding I might as well try to follow her, rather than stand there all day, I placed my suitcase on the carpet and stepped further into the delicious smell.

  “Oh, I missed you so much,” I heard from a voice that was soft, light, and full of emotion. This house was old-fashioned, marked by olive-green appliances, worn linoleum, delicious aromas
of food cooking, and quiet, loving voices to welcome her home. It was very Mayberry-esque.

  My mind drifted to the homes I had known. The one in Cape Girardeau was filled with rich, dark woods, my father’s musty old books, and the scent of lemon furniture polish. The only thing uncertain in that house was whether I might slide across the floor when I stepped off the stairs onto the hardwood with my socked feet.

  That scene faded, and the house in Nebraska began to push its way into my mind. Pristine and lifeless, those same books not yet unpacked from their boxes, with white carpet, stainless steel appliances, and a slight whistle from the vents when the heat or air conditioning kicked on. Like a sanitary hospital scene, really—a veritable insane asylum. If I sat there in the silence long enough, listening to the hum of the ductwork, it was quite possible I would go out of my mind.

  No wonder Mom and Dad wanted to go to Florida for Christmas.

  “This must be the beautiful Trina I’ve heard so much about.”

  Rapid blinking in response was probably not the most polite way to greet Camdyn’s grandmother, but hearing my name had startled me out of my mental reverie.

  “I’m so glad to finally meet you, Mrs. Taylor,” I said as she stepped toward me, a warm smile lighting her face. I had expected Camdyn’s grandmother to be petite, blonde, and rather boisterous. Instead, she was rail thin and taller than my friend, very soft spoken with a mass of dark silver curls bouncing to her shoulders.

  “Please, call me Willa,” she insisted as she moved past my outstretched hand and pulled me into a warm hug, squeezing me gently. “Thank you so much for being a good friend to my girl.”

  Whether it was from the whole Mayberry vibe I had noticed a moment before, or the fact that I was feeling a bit sentimental about missing my old home, or simply because Camdyn’s grandmother smelled like a mix of roses and vanilla, I nearly lost it. In fact, my eyes were stinging so fiercely, I’m still a little amazed that I didn’t start sobbing right on the poor woman’s shoulder.