#MNGirl (Midwest Boys Series Book 1) Read online

  #MNGirl

  By A.M. Brooks

  Copyright © 2020 A.M. Brooks

  All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express permission of the author except for the use of brief quotations in a book review. This book is a work of fiction. Names and characters are the product of the author’s imagination. Thank you for respecting the hard work and creativity of this author.

  Note: This story may not be suitable for persons under the age of 18.

  Cover: Amanda - Pixel Mischief Design

  Formatting: Elaine York - Allusion Graphics

  Editing and Proofing: Rebecca - Fairest of All Book Reviews

  Proof Reading: Athena and Darlene - Sisters Get Lit.erary

  Acknowledgements

  Playlist

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  More from A.M. Brooks

  Connect with A.M. Brooks

  *** This book is the first in a brand new series that I am so excited to share with readers. I left a part of my heart in this book. That being said, I have a lot of people who I owe a huge shout out too. ***

  My Husband- Thank you for letting me live my crazy dream. I know you miss me when I’m in the cave and on busy weeks when my manuscript is due for editing, and yet you don’t complain…much (Haha). Thank you for continuing to be a great dad to our babies while I’m working and building my business. We’re lucky to have you! XOXO

  My Family- Thank you for continuing to be supportive and cheering me on. You guys are my #1 fans and your encouragement means the most to me. I’m sorry for the random texts and calls that sometimes happen. I promise the reasons are within the pages. I love you!

  Kiki and the girl boss squad, Colleen, Nicole, and Kristina, at The Next Step PR -Thank you for your hard work, dedication, and guidance. Thank you for working on my emails, sharing all my info and release materials, and creating eye catching flatlays and designs for my book. I appreciate everyone’s push for #MNGirl to be seen and promoted. I’m so thankful to be part of this team!

  Darlene and Athena- Sisters Get Lit.erary-Thank you for taking on the challenge of being my PA’s. Our calls and calendar are my favorite! Having you both on my team has made it easier for me to step back and just be able to write. Thank also, for beta reading and proofing this manuscript. I can’t thank you enough for all that you ladies do!

  Rebecca- Fairest of All Book Reviews - I can’t thank you enough for editing and helping me craft the perfect version of this story to share with my readers. I appreciate your time and making me feel my book was your top priority.

  Amanda Simpson- Pixel Mischief Design- Thank you for patiently working with me on this cover. You took my idea and created and something unbelievably perfect. Thank you for honestly answering all my emails and offering advice when I need it. I’m excited to work on this series with you!

  My Readers- Thank you for your purchase. It is because of you that I can continue to write and live my dream. I love you all! I’m happy to share the first book in this brand new series. I hope you enjoy the beginning of Ciaran and Saylor’s story. Welcome to the Midwest Boys Series!

  XOXO Ashton

  Pity Party- Melanie Martinez

  Die For Me- Post Malone (Feat. Future and Halsey)

  King of Everything- Wiz Khalifa

  Antisocial- Ed Sheeran and Travis Scott

  Breathe- Mako

  Friday Night Lights theme song- W.G. Snuffy Walden

  Holding Out for a Hero- Elise Lieberth

  Codeine Crazy- Future

  No Guidance- Christ Brown and Drake

  All the Good Girls Go to Hell- Billie Eilish

  Lie- NF

  Ruin My Life- Zara Larsson

  Money in the Grave- Drake and Rick Ross

  Time- NF

  Roxanne- Arizona Zervas

  Heartless- The Weeknd

  Everything I Wanted- Billie Eilish

  7 Rings- Ariana Grande

  What Happens in a Small Town- Brantley Gilbert and Lindsay Ell

  I’m So Tired- Lauv and Troye Sivan

  Kick It In The Sticks- Brantley Gilbert

  Highest in the Room- Travis Scott

  Mirrors on the Ceiling- Mike Stud

  Breaks Down- Brantley Gilbert

  Falling- Trevor Daniel

  Wow. – Post Malone

  Man of Steel- Brantley Gilbert

  Give Me Back My Hometown- Eric Church

  Youg Dumb & Broke- Khalid

  Girls Need Love- Summer Walker and Drake

  Nights Like This- Kehlani and Ty Dolla $ign

  Servin- A Boogie Wit da Hoodie and 6ix9ine

  Take It Outside- Brantley Gilbert

  Somethin’ Bout A Truck- Kip Moore

  God’s Country- Blake Shelton

  Back in Black- AC/DC

  Ride- Chase Rice

  Surrender- Natalie Taylor

  Cryin Game- Bad Wolves

  Heartless- Diplo and Morgan Wallen

  Spotify Playlist

  Saylor

  “I don’t think anyone is coming,” my best friend, Oaklynn, whispers next to me, while gripping my hand tightly between hers. My eyes scan the room one more time, taking in the pastel pink, lilac purple and teal balloons, the gold confetti over the tables, and the three-tiered strawberry cake with pink whipped frosting that sits uncut. An angry flush covers my cheeks, and I swallow the painful lump in my throat.

  “Let’s wait a little longer,” I tell her, hating the way my voice wavers with indecision.

  “Say,” she starts to argue, then slams her perfectly pink glossed lips closed, when she sees the sheen of tears in my eyes. It’s my seventeenth birthday, and we’ve been planning this party for the past eleven months. Oaklynn had pulled extra volunteer hours at her mom’s charity, so her mom would call and make the reservation for us. I had stashed away the majority of my allowance each week, foregoing movies, nights out with friends, and the perfect pair of Versace Medusa high heels in order to pay the cost to rent the top floor party room at one of New York’s upscale restaurants. I was not leaving before midnight, even if no one else showed up.

  “Nash said he was on his way,” I remind her gently, while running my free hand over the plum, crushed-velvet skirt of my dress. Of course, that was over two hours ago when my on-again, off-again boyfriend had texted me. Turning my phone over in my hand, I check the screen again. No messages and no missed calls. It suddenly felt like all the blood was rushing to my head, and it hurt to breathe, which only makes me grip Oaklynn’s hand tighter. I’m fully aware of the questioning and lingering gazes of the minimal staff that were assigned to this party tonight. They’ve stayed diligently in the background, but I can hear the murmurs.

  “The staff need to leave,” Oaklynn says, leaning closer to me. “The manager needs to cut them from their shift if no one is coming.”

  A lone tear falls down my perfectly contoured cheek, and I wipe it away furiously. My chest heaves because I know what I need to do. “Okay,” I tell her, signaling that we will leave. I don’t want to hold people up or keep them away from their families. I’m not a brat, and despite the designer label I wear on the
outside, I would rather die than be the cliché rich girl from the Upper East Side. But, as I make this decision, I swear I hear my heart crack in my chest for yet another time this week.

  “It’s going to be okay,” she tells me, pulling my frozen body into hers, hugging me tightly. I want to believe her, but the horror of the past few days crashes into me all over again.

  “I can’t believe he didn’t come.” The words fall from my lips, as I swallow down another surge of anger.

  “Nash is an asshole, Saylor. His mommy probably told him he couldn’t come after all the publicity.” She waves her hands around. “You can do so much better than him, girl.” I nod, knowing she’s right. Nash Aimsworth is an enigma at Trinity Prepatory, our elite private school, in Manhattan. He’s lusted after by girls, while guys are dying to be in his group of buddies. Nash plays sports, and he is in the top of his class academically. Ivy League schools have been showing an interest in him since his sophomore year. He’s the classic boy every society mom wants their daughters to date. He’ll grow up to own one of the most lucrative companies in the world, and he carries all this on his plate with a crooked smile and a hidden, cunning gleam in his eye. He’s a senior while I’m a junior, and every girl in school has told me how lucky I was to have caught his eye on my first day. That was last year, and, since then, nothing with Nash has been quite the fairytale that the female population likes to think it is.

  We often go back and forth on if we’re a couple or not. We went to parties on the weekends and often spent time at his parent’s club. I didn’t need a grand gesture, but if we’re together, I’d like to know we aren’t seeing other people. Nash is gorgeous. I know it, and he knows it. His thick dark hair is always styled perfectly, and his deep brown gaze glitters with mischief. He may have been trying to get my attention the first time I saw him, but he also had two of the most popular girls in the senior class draped all over his body, feeling up his sculpted arms, which were thanks to his years of playing football. Of course, he was also the all-star quarterback of the school, and his influential family had just donated the money for a brand-new stadium. Everything I had seen and knew about him screamed egotistical manwhore. I should have known better, but I had been intrigued by the confidence he has. He carries himself in a way that doesn’t allow others to look down on him. For a girl who was changing schools and didn’t have many friends, I was lacking that confidence in myself. I thought I could be the one to change his playboy ways and I stupidly ignored the red flags that had been waving in my face.

  For the first few months at my new school, I had been known as “new money.” I learned quickly that it was not a friendly endearment from my peers. I didn’t grow up wealthy and privileged. I had not been in class with them since they were wearing golden diapers at their elite preschool. My family was new to having money. This made me an outsider -- someone who was in the running to achieve a scholarship or place on a team that they had already spent years working toward. I was a target because I was someone who didn’t understand the hierarchy that ruled from inside the academy; the fact that the older the money, the higher up the food chain a person sat.

  Oaklynn had done her best to shield me, to warn me and protect me, but she could only be in one place at a time. Monopoly money was shoved in my locker on a daily basis. Within my first week there, my regular underwear had been exchanged for a sparkling G-string during gym class, and I was constantly asked if it was my mom or I who had been prostituted to help further my dad’s career. One kid, who excelled in technology classes, went out of his way to produce my face in a porn flick. He swore up and down that that was how I earned my tuition. Yeah, kids are cruel. The kids at Trinity Prep, though, took things to a whole new level.

  It wasn’t until I caved and started going on dates with Nash that the outright bullying stopped. Once in a while, I would still hear bitch or whore muttered under people’s breaths in passing. I guess as much as they loved Nash, they also feared him. I clung to him and the little bit of protection dating him offered. In the beginning, he was different. I thought I knew who he was from all the time we spent together outside of school. In the end, though, I found out he wasn’t the world’s greatest boyfriend, and I wasn’t proud of myself for the way I used his name to survive last year in high school.

  At the beginning of this year, everything was manageable. No more pranks occurred. The name calling stopped, and I was making friends. So, I guess I was lucky Nash liked me. My past and the fact that my family hadn’t always been wealthy had never been an issue for Nash. His mother, maybe, and maybe that was why he kept dating me. My lips pucker at the sour thought. At this point, I know for sure he isn’t coming. He probably is at home or with his friends, instead of being here for me on a night like this. A night when my whole world was crumbling around me, and I needed the two people who I thought were on my side despite my family issues, to be here.

  “Are there any news crews out there?” I ask timidly. The last thing my family needs is another headline this week.

  Oaklynn peers over the balcony and shakes her head. “Not yet, the room was under my mom’s name, so they probably don’t know the party was for you.”

  “I’m sorry,” I tell her, my voice cracking from the weight of this colossal disaster.

  “It’s not your fault, babe,” she soothes me, shaking her head. “I can’t believe all these douche canoes didn’t show up. Who cares what your dad did? They’re still your friends!” Were they though?

  When I move my head in agreement, the pressure in the front of my skull builds and thrums painfully. I thought they were my friends, too. I should have known tonight would be a disaster, especially when people started distancing themselves from me since the news broke at the beginning of the week. I chose to ignore it, just as I chose to ignore my dad’s shady phone calls at odd hours of the night, the way we suddenly had money to move to Manhattan and attend the most prestigious schools, the way he started going on business trips and would be gone for days at a time. The biggest sign should have been the wear and tear I noticed in my mom, but I closed my eyes to it all. I knew she rarely slept. Even though she was lavished by my father in designer label clothes, shoes and make-up, the smile on her face was tense. She stopped making our evening meals and let staff, because we had staff now, too, do it. She suddenly had headaches when my younger sister, Mila, would ask her for help in math. All this should have been the biggest clue that our world was about to be flipped, but I kept on going as if things were normal.

  On Monday, a local New York news station broke the story that my father, Calvin Torre, had been laundering money through the company he started five years ago, as well as a litany of other fraudulent practices. Before noon, every major channel, including CNN, was covering the story. My dad had bankrupted thousands of people who had invested with him and broke business deals with the parents of the kids from the school. And now, our family was being investigated by some of New York’s finest criminal investigators. It was also discovered his company was involved with oversea accounts, making his crimes international. His face was plastered over every television screen in the country. Needless to say, prison time was hanging over his head. And what made everything worse was the fact that people questioned how my mom, my sister, and I had no clue what was happening. Our family was torn apart in front of the nation. Paparazzi waited outside our home to tail my mom as she dropped us off at school. We were accused and found guilty, without having the opportunity to defend ourselves.

  By Tuesday, we were made aware that my father had depleted a different offshore account in the Virgin Islands, purchasing a one way ticket to Cuba. He was gone, and the coward that he is left my mom and me to face the world by ourselves, to be shamed and ridiculed for his sins. When my mom’s monthly payment for Mila’s Christian middle school bounced, they were unsympathetic and gave my mom one week to pay or Mila could no longer be enrolled.

  On Wednesday, my school locker was checked, making sure I wasn’t stashing a
ny evidence or information on my father. I stood by, fuming, while the principal wore a smug smile. Almost like she enjoyed humiliating me more with this process. The school was now fully aware what was happening with my family because of my father, and that’s when my peers, people I had started calling friends, couldn’t meet my eyes. The whispers started. The glares commenced. The shunning at lunch tables and lab stations had my stomach dropping. I was used to being looked down on by them. I was able to get past their prejudice that I wasn’t good enough because I hadn’t been born into a blue-blooded family. But now my family and I were seen as criminals, and the hate that flared in their eyes and the evil twists in their lips are what made the week completely suffocating.

  Thursday, I started receiving notifications that the friends I had invited could no longer make it to my party. But I refused to cancel. I refused to let the fuck up that my dad was responsible for have any impact on the person I was. Even if it was only my best friend and boyfriend who showed up, I had a point to prove. I wanted to show everyone that this wasn’t going to break me.

  Today, my mom kept me and my sister home from school because there had been numerous threats to our family and my father. She tried to hide most of them without us seeing. But even if she destroyed the letters in the mail, it didn’t stop the YouTube videos. People holding grudges, people who lost everything because of my dad made videos with graphic details about how they wanted to kill him. Another detailed everything about myself and Mila and the best way to kidnap us before school. My face paled after it was over. As if that wasn’t bad enough, the police were currently working on trying to figure out who threw the brick through our living room window with another death threat attached to it. My mom couldn’t work; her anxiety and lack of sleep over canceling clients made her more on edge. For the first time since we first moved into this home, her face broke with real emotion: fear. As I was getting ready for my party, we fought the whole time I curled the long strands of my dark auburn hair and rimmed my deep brown eyes in black liner. She didn’t want me to go, and I kept reminding her this wasn’t my problem. It was between her and my dad.