Liam (Hawthorne Brothers Romance) Read online

  Liam

  Hawthorne Brothers Book Three

  M.L. Young

  Copyright 2016 by M.L. Young

  This is a work of fiction. Any resemblances of characters to actual persons, living or dead, are purely coincidental. The author, M.L. Young, holds exclusive rights to this work. Unauthorized duplication is prohibited.

  No part of this book can be reproduced in any form or by electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems, without the permission in writing from the author. The only exception is by a reviewer who may quote short excerpts in a review.

  Table of Contents

  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

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Taken by You Excerpt

  About the Author

  Attention: This book features alternating points of view. Each chapter is titled with the character whose point of view you are reading from.

  Chapter One

  Liam

  “Jab. Jab. Cross. Uppercut!” my trainer yelled.

  I hit the bag over and over, each time feeling the incredible force I was putting out as the shockwave from the blows ran up my arm and down my spine before dispersing into the ground through my feet. The battered old heavily duct-taped bag moved as the slightly rusted chains holding it to the ceiling squeaked.

  “Take a break,” he said, and I stopped.

  “You’re really drilling me down,” I said, taking off my gloves.

  “If you want to make it pro, you need to have all your ducks in a row with training. This stuff isn’t easy, Liam. You might be the highest scouted and most promising MMA fighter in the last decade, but you’re still a kid, and you need to learn discipline before getting into the octagon with skilled, veteran fighters,” Tino, my trainer, said.

  “I’m not that young,” I said.

  “You’re twenty-one, Liam. You’re a kid, a baby. Guys are going to zero in on that face of yours,” he said, patting it and walking away.

  Tino was a good guy and an even better trainer. He’d trained some of the greats, all from this sketchy Hell’s Kitchen gym deep in the heart of New York City. I wasn’t living here—well I was, for now—but I wasn’t from here. I was from Iowa. The heartland of America, the special place in my heart. My oldest brother, Bentley, still lived there and worked with my dad in an auto shop they owned. My middle brother, Cash, was a movie star out west, though I normally didn’t tell people that. I loved him to death—he was my brother, after all—but the last thing I needed was people knowing me as Cash Hawthorne’s brother, and not as a great fighter named Liam.

  The smell of decades-old sweat imbued into the walls of the gym wafted up my nose while I toweled off my face and hair, both of them soaked in sweat, before sitting in front of one of the fans. It was late March, just starting to get a little warm out, as the basking smells of New York were emerging after being frozen under a thick blanket of cold all winter long.

  Tino’s place was in the west 50s, nowhere near my place, which was on the Lower East Side. It wasn’t that far of a subway ride, but I tried not to touch that place after dark. I was a fighter, and a fighter a few fights away from signing with the PFC, the Professional Fighting Championship, the largest MMA promotion in the world, but I didn’t take any unnecessary risks when it came to my safety. After all, I couldn’t fight if I’d been stabbed or shot, and I didn’t trust the people in this city not to do those things to me.

  I ate one of the meals I’d pre-cooked and packaged and kept in my backpack, scowling as I slowly ripped through five ounces of plain chicken breast and a cup of white rice. I hated eating so blandly, but sometimes we have to do crazy and annoying things to reach our goals. At least that was what I keep telling myself.

  Tino told me after I was done eating that he had to leave early, something about his granddaughter being sick and needing to be picked up from school, so he’d be cutting our training short today. I loved getting better and stronger, but I wasn’t about to argue about getting out early. He really kicked my ass most days.

  It was two in the afternoon, the sun shining. The city that never slept definitely didn’t sleep during the daytime. Hundreds, maybe even thousands, of people were out on the streets, cluttering the sidewalks, which was what New York was all about this time of year. I walked past street vendors, most of them selling knockoff goods, which was a little less common in this part of the city. Usually they were all on Canal Street peddling their fake Chinese wares, but I guess some of them couldn’t cut it down there so they moved up to Hell’s Kitchen.

  Most of them never bothered me, my arms alone being big enough to deter them from harassing me, but occasionally I’d get the coked-out street vendor who wouldn’t get the hint but would eventually give up the more I ignored them. I wasn’t a bad guy, or a mean one, but I had no use for a fake Rolex. Hopefully my first fight purse would have enough for me to buy a real one if I wanted it.

  I decided to skip the subway and walk as far as I could back to my apartment. Subway fares were over two dollars, and I didn’t have an unlimited card just yet, especially now that it was nice out. My training was also cut short, so I had a little more energy than usual.

  As I walked home, I passed a coffee shop that had a sandwich board sign out front. They were having a sale, coffees for only two bucks, which was rare outside of the junky burnt coffee stands around the city. I gave it a shot and walked inside to see a line of about ten people in front of me. I had nowhere else to go, I thought, so I stood in line as the baristas behind the counter worked like busy little bees as they filled cup after cup of coffee.

  As I stood there, I noticed one woman behind the counter. She caught my eye and all my attention. She was working quickly, and I noticed a drop of sweat roll down her cheek before she wiped it away with her sleeve. She didn’t see me, too busy to notice, and the more I watched her, the further entranced I became. She was beautiful.

  Chapter Two

  Jessica

  Slinging coffee was my life.

  Well, that was only partially true, but at this moment it was a bitter reality that I had to deal with. I was a barista, a damn good one at that, but it wasn’t my passion. Some of my coworkers were hipster doofuses who treated coffee like it was their life, but to me it was just a job. Sure, I enjoyed a cup of coffee as much as the next person, and I picked up a lot of skills doing this job, but it was just coffee to me at the end of the day, no matter what fancy Italian or French name they gave it.

  I had dreams of something much bigger. I was enrolled at NYU, a school I never thought I’d get into, and was practicing to become a lawyer. I knew it was going to be a challenge, and I was about to start my final year of undergrad in the fall, but I couldn’t have had more positivity and belief in myself than I did right now. Working in this hot little café made me even
more determined not to end up like the rest of these people here. I had big plans for my life, and I planned on achieving them.

  The owner had this bright idea to have a day selling coffees for two dollars, which were normally at least four dollars. Sure, it brought in more people and plenty of them said they’d be back because it tasted decent, but it also made a lot more work for us, which definitely wasn’t appreciated.

  I stood behind the counter, a few others with me in the tiny space, as we bumped into each other and elbowed one another more than a few times. There just wasn’t enough room for all the people who came in for this kind of promotion.

  The customers asked for coffees one after another, most of them assistants and corporate servants out on coffee runs for their bosses. The rest of them weren’t regulars and probably just came off the street because of the sign out front. I interacted with them, handing them their coffees and trying to keep a smile on my face even though I was sure my mascara was starting to run because of the heat.

  I heard a deeper voice from by the counter and peeked down the line like I did with a lot of the people who came up to buy, no matter who they were. There was a guy, probably about six feet tall, with brown hair, slightly tanned skin, and stupidly huge biceps.

  “He’s cute,” Lena, one of the other baristas, whispered.

  “Yeah,” I replied while I looked at him.

  He looked down at me, my eyes quickly averting away and back down in front of me, as my heart began to race a little and I hoped he didn’t catch me staring at him. He wasn’t my normal type of guy, meaning I’d never dated an in-shape workout kind of guy, but it didn’t bother me. He had a nice look about him, and as he walked down the line and waited for his coffee, with one cream and one sugar, I peeked at his shirt while he looked at his phone.

  “Tino’s Gym,” it read in faded red print.

  Was that around here? Did he work there? Was I going to have to go get a gym membership and just bump into him one day? No, I wasn’t that creepy, but it did pique my interest.

  “Here you go,” Lena said, sliding me the coffee before starting on the next order.

  “Liam?” I asked, looking at the name on the cup.

  “Yes,” he said, putting away his phone and looking up.

  “Here you go,” I said, smiling.

  “Thanks,” he replied, the side of his lip perking up a little.

  His hand touched mine, like it was intentional, as he took the cup from me. We looked at each other for a second, maybe even a few seconds, before he turned and left the coffee shop. I snapped out of it, getting back to slaving away behind the counter like nothing even happened. Hell, I’d probably never even see him again. I couldn’t say how many guys I’d seen in here who were super cute and who I wanted to ask me out, even though I didn’t know them. Most of them I never saw again, just one-time customers, and he was probably one of them. Crazy how life worked that way.

  •••

  I shared an apartment with two other girls on the Upper East Side, near Harlem, which was the cheapest and biggest one we could find. We opted out of any university housing or help from them, mainly because it didn’t fit into our budgets, as none of us were rich or came from particularly wealthy families, at least by New York standards. We made the best of it, though, and put up fake pressurized walls to create the illusion of three bedrooms in a two-bedroom apartment. Needless to say, none of the bedrooms were very large.

  “How was work?” asked Emily, one of my roommates.

  I’d known Emily since we started university here, the two of us living in dorms with one another our first year out of high school. We’d gotten matched together and found each other on Facebook before starting the school year. She’d quickly become my best friend, helping me in all situations in life and being just the best person I’d ever known.

  “Interesting, to say the least. I saw a guy,” I said.

  “Oh boy, here we go again,” she said.

  “No, I’m serious this time!” I said.

  “Seeing a guy doesn’t mean anything, Jess. Now if you got his number, or gave him yours, that would be something. Did you do either of those things?” she asked.

  “Well, not exactly. But our hands touched,” I said.

  “You’re such a hopeless romantic,” she said with a laugh.

  “Hey, it’s better to love love than to hate it like you,” I said.

  “I’m just realistic. But it’s okay, I think we balance each other out,” she said.

  “You two would be dead lost without me,” Taylor, our other roommate, said as she came in through the front door.

  “Oh, what do you know?” Emily asked.

  “I could hear you two in the hallway. I’m sure everyone else could, too,” she said, setting her bag and keys down.

  Taylor was a good friend Emily and I met our sophomore year in our French class. She was the most levelheaded of the three of us, with me being the romantic, Emily being the cynic, and Taylor being the, well, the Taylor. She was essentially our den mother, if you could call her that.

  “Are we making anything for dinner?” I asked.

  “We have leftover Chinese in the fridge from Saturday. We could always do that,” Emily said.

  “Might as well,” Taylor said, opening the fridge.

  “I think we have a Housewives show taped,” Emily said.

  “Yes!” I exclaimed.

  “I don’t know how I ever let you two rope me into watching that show,” Taylor said, laughing.

  “Oh please, you love it. You know you do,” Emily said while opening the takeout containers.

  “Yeah, maybe a little bit,” Taylor said, smiling.

  We heated up our food, the egg rolls becoming a bit soggy from sitting in the fridge for a couple days, before we all sat down on the couch, squeezed in together, and turned on the show. There was something so satisfying about having girlfriends you lived with and were really close with. You couldn’t get this experience or friendship anywhere else, and I was damn lucky to have them, even if they were assholes sometimes.

  •••

  “Can anybody tell me about how Napoleon rose to power?” my French history professor, Dr. Ingle, asked as she walked in front of the room.

  I’d put off this class until the end of my junior year, instead taking the easier ones first, which I was starting to regret. I wasn’t a bad student by any means, but I did worse in history and humanities classes than I did in math, science, and anything more technical. Remembering dates and all these hundreds of people throughout history was just lost on me, even if it was fascinating.

  Somebody raised their hand, relieving me of the pressure of being called on and not knowing the answer. Dr. Ingle nodded and said he was correct. I wrote down my notes, the ink of the ballpoint pen smudging a little, while I looked at the clock and watched the minutes slowly tick by.

  “If you would, please get into your groups and work on your projects for the final fifteen minutes of class,” Dr. Ingle said.

  There were three other people in my group, mostly people I knew from prior classes, and I liked all of them. We had a group project on any French subject or person, and we chose King Louis XVI, which I knew would be a fun project, considering his life and untimely death.

  “So, how are we coming along?” I asked.

  “Are you guys going?” Tyler whispered.

  “Dude, I can’t wait!” Mike said.

  “What are you guys talking about?” I asked.

  “The fight on Friday night,” Brianne said.

  “Wait, you’re going?” Tyler asked.

  “It’s hot dudes beating each other up in a ring, of course I’m going,” she said.

  “Jessica?” Mike asked.

  “I’m not sure I’m into that stuff,” I said.

  “Oh come on, live a little. You could even bring your roommates if you want,” he said.

  “You just want to fuck Emily,” I said.

  “Well, so?” he asked, sm
iling.

  “I’ll ask them if they want to go, but I’m not promising anything. Besides, I thought MMA was illegal for fights,” I said.

  “Not anymore. They signed legislature recently to allow it to happen, sanctioned of course. Promoters are scrambling to come here and make the fights happen. Liam Hawthorne is fighting,” Mike said.

  “Who?” I asked.

  “You know, The Rhino. Surely you’ve heard of him,” Tyler asked.

  “Can’t say that I have,” I said.

  “He’s a total hottie, with big muscles and everything. He’s about one step away from signing with the big leagues, and I think this fight might cinch it, assuming he wins,” Brianne said.

  “Oh, he’ll win, all right. Don’t you underestimate him,” Mike said.

  “How are things coming along over here?” Dr. Ingle asked.

  “Oh, just great, Dr. Ingle. We’re just coming up with ideas for the PowerPoint part of the presentation. We want to make sure it’s clean and professional,” Tyler said, smiling at her.

  “Is there anything I can help you with?” she asked.

  “Nope, I don’t think so at this point,” he said, looking around at us all.

  We all chimed in, telling her no, before she said okay and walked back to her desk. I knew this was college and we didn’t have to be afraid of a teacher, but somehow we all reverted back to elementary school whenever she was around. I definitely didn’t want to get on her bad side.

  “Okay, it’s this Friday at eight,” Tyler said.

  “Where at?” I asked.

  “They haven’t released the venue yet, but they will on Friday morning. I’ll just text you the information since we don’t have class that day,” he said.