Falling for My Best Friend's Brother
Avery Nash had two lives and one rule. Keep them completely separate.
By day she was the captain of the Crestwood University cheer squad and a Business Management student holding onto her scholarship by her fingernails.
By night she was Scarlett, masked and wigged and untouchable, dancing at Velvet Underground to cover the gap between what her scholarship paid and what her mother's deadbeat boyfriend kept taking from them.
On the night her boyfriend cheated on her with her biggest rival, Avery made one reckless decision. She followed a brooding stranger back to his motel room and gave him the one thing she had been saving.
Her virginity.
"Take off the mask. I want to see you." He had said.
"A little mystery never hurt anyone, did it?" she replied.
She slipped out before dawn, telling herself she would never see him again.
Then she rang her best friend, Jade's doorbell and he answered the door.
Liam Harrington was Jade's new stepbrother, who she hated, the transfer quarterback every girl on campus was already talking about, and the boy sitting three seats away from her in every Business Management lecture.
He was also the only person in the world who knew what Avery felt like without her armour on. He just did not know her real face.
Now Avery was living three lives at once. The captain, the stripper, and the girl quietly falling for the one man she was absolutely forbidden to want.
And the secret that started as one reckless birthday night was growing into something big enough to burn everything she had built.
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Chapter: 339: PresentLiam's POVI first noticed her on Tuesday.Not the way you noticed a stranger. The way you noticed someone you already knew when they turned up somewhere unexpected. She was at one of the long tables near the window when I came in, laptop open, head down. I went to a different section, got out my work, and started.I did not think about it for the rest of the session.On Wednesday she was in the corridor outside one of my lectures. She was leaving a seminar from the room next door when I came out. We passed within about six feet of each other. She had her phone in her hand, looked up briefly when she heard people coming out, our eyes met for about two seconds, and then she looked back at her phone and kept walking.I kept walking too.On Thursday she was in the library again.This time she was in my section. Not next to me. Two tables over and three seats down. Far enough that it was not a deliberate approach. Close enough that if I looked up I could see her.I told myself the campus
Last Updated: 2026-07-01
Chapter: 338: SpaceJade's POV I went next door on Saturday. Not Thursday when I first saw it. Not Friday when I spent the day wondering whether I actually knew who was living next door to me. I spent Friday ignoring her calls because I needed to face her myself and not talk about anything on the phone. So I went on Saturday. Two days after I saw the footage that changed everything I thought I knew about the person next door. I knocked on her door at eleven. She opened it immediately. Like she had been somewhere near the door, ready to open it, for two days. She looked at me. I looked at her. "Can I come in?" I asked. "Yes," she said. She stepped back and I walked past her into the hallway and she closed the door behind us. We went to the kitchen. Thirteen years of difficult conversations meant we always ended up at a kitchen table. I took a chair. She settled across from me. Neither of us said anything. Then I asked, "Is it you?"It was not really a question. The footage had already ans
Last Updated: 2026-07-01
Chapter: 337: Jade's reactionLAST WEEK THURSDAYJADE'S REACTION TO THE VIDEO RELEASED OF AVERY FROM LAST WEEKJade's POVMy phone buzzed at seven forty on Thursday morning and I picked it up from the nightstand without opening my eyes properly.It was a message from a girl on my course. Three words and a link.'Have you seen?'I opened the link while still half asleep.I watched it twice before I fully understood what I was watching.Then I pushed upright in bed and watched it again.The stage. The dancer. The mask falling forward in slow motion, frame by frame, the way someone had edited it to make the fall seem deliberate rather than accidental. The face. Fully lit. Three to five seconds before the hand came up.I knew that face."What the fuck?!"I said it out loud and it did not feel like enough so I said it again. I threw back the covers and stood up and then dropped back down because my legs were not sure what the correct response was. I opened the video a fourth time. Then I put the phone face down on the
Last Updated: 2026-06-30
Chapter: 336: Going onAvery's POVI walked into the first lecture of the week and took a seat at the front.Not because the front was where I usually went. I was a middle-row person, left side, the seat with the right angle to the board without feeling like I was in the spotlight. The front was where people who needed to feel visible went, or people who needed to not be visible from behind.I was the second kind this week.The view from the front was different. The board was closer than I was used to and the lecturer was closer and the space that usually existed between me and the rest of the room was gone. But nobody behind me could take a photo of my face without me seeing them do it. Nobody could lean over to a friend and point and think I would not notice. From the front I could see the door and I could see the board and I could not see the room.That was the point.The lecture was Urban Planning. I had my laptop open before anyone else was settled and my notes from last week on the screen and my eyes
Last Updated: 2026-06-29
Chapter: 335: Meeting with coachAvery's POVVega's office was small and always had too much in it.Binders on the shelves that went floor to ceiling on one wall. A whiteboard covered in formation diagrams that she never fully erased, just wrote over until the old marks became ghost layers underneath the new ones.A desk with two chairs in front of it and a single plant on the windowsill that had survived every semester I had been at Crestwood college because Vega was the kind of woman who did not let things die on her watch.I took the chair on the left at ten on the dot on Monday morning.She came in two minutes later with a coffee she had made somewhere down the corridor and settled across from me. She looked at me directly and said nothing."Thank you for coming," Vega said."You asked me to," I told her."I did," she said. "And I want to be clear before we start that this is not a formal hearing. Nothing said in this room is going to a committee or a board or anyone who is not in this room. This is a conversatio
Last Updated: 2026-06-29
Chapter: 334: Escalation plansBrianna's POVI called Colton on Saturday.Not because anything had changed overnight. The footage was still spreading and Avery was still silent and the campus was still processing. None of that required a call. I called because I had been sitting with the same thought since Thursday morning, turning it over from different angles, looking for the flaw in it, and the flaw had not appeared in two days of looking so I was ready to say it out loud to someone who would tell me honestly if I was wrong.I needed to hear myself say it.And I needed someone who understood the mechanics to tell me whether there was something wrong.He answered on the second ring."I want to file a formal complaint," I said.A pause. "Against who?""The athletics board has a code of conduct for athletes," I said. "It covers public behaviour, representation of the programme, actions that bring the athletics complex into disrepute." I had read it three times before I called him. "What Avery has been doing for m
Last Updated: 2026-06-28
A Contract With My Billionaire Ex
Anastasia's perfect marriage shattered on a snowy winter day when she caught her husband making love with her cousin. Kicked out with papers that proved her marriage was never legal, and on the verge of losing her business, a bakery passed on to her by her mother, she felt utterly broken.
When Leon Hart, the cold billionaire rival from her college days and the man she once rejected, walked into her bakery, she didn't expect mercy. Instead, he offered a deal. Pretend to be his fiancée for Christmas, and he would clear her debts and save her bakery.
But what Anastasia doesn’t know is that the contract she signs is a trap, filled with devastating fine print and fueled by Leon’s hidden agenda.
As fake feelings turn dangerously real, dark truths come to light, including Leon’s shocking connection to the accident that killed her parents. Trapped between a past that broke her and a future built on lies, Anastasia must decide how much she’s willing to lose.
When her ex-husband suddenly wants her back, she’s forced to choose.
The man who destroyed her… or the billionaire who might destroy her all over again.
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Chapter: 089: The waiting roomLeon's POVThe waiting area had metal chairs in a shade of blue that had faded to almost nothing and overhead lights that buzzed faintly and made everyone in the room look like they had not slept in several days. The floor was that particular shade of grey that hospitals always seemed to settle on, scuffed near the doors and worn smooth in front of the chairs. I stood beside the row of chairs nearest the door and could not make myself sit down.James arrived twenty minutes after I called him. He came through the entrance in his coat, still buttoned because he had not had time to deal with it on the way in. He looked at me standing next to the chairs and said, "Sit down, Leon." It was not a suggestion. I sat down.Anastasia had gone to find coffee. She came back with two cups from the machine at the end of the hall and put one in my hand and sat down on my left. I held the cup. I did not drink it. The coffee smelled burnt and faintly chemical and I was grateful to have something to hol
Last Updated: 2026-05-02
Chapter: 088: Eleanor collapsesAnastasia's POVI saw it before it happened.Eleanor was standing at the drawing room sideboard, telling the housekeeper where to put a vase. She had been moving it back and forth all day, an inch this way, an inch that way, and I was sitting on the arm of the sofa watching her with the particular kind of tired patience you develop for the people you love."No, a little to the left," Eleanor said, tilting her head. "Yes. No, wait — back again."The housekeeper shifted the vase without a word, the way someone does when they have learned that objecting will only add more rounds to the process."There." Eleanor pointed. "Right — "She stopped.Not paused. Stopped. The way a song stops when someone pulls the power cord out of the wall.Her hand, the one that had been pointing, moved slowly to the edge of the sideboard instead. Her fingers found the wood and gripped it. I watched her head drop forward a little, just a fraction, like something inside her was losing its balance before the re
Last Updated: 2026-04-13
Chapter: 087: Christmas morningLeon's POVMargaret met me at the door when I arrived at the Hart mansion at nine in the morning and told me that my grandma had been up since before 6 AM."She rearranged the drawing room twice," Margaret said. She had the expression of a woman who had seen many things in sixteen years of working for Eleanor Hart and had learned to measure which things were worth mentioning. She was mentioning this one. "She also called the caterer again.""On Christmas morning?""At seven forty-five." Margaret took my coat with the practiced efficiency of someone who had been doing it for a long time. "She told them she wanted to confirm the rehearsal dinner delivery time." She paused just long enough. "It was already confirmed."I thanked her and went to find Eleanor. I found her in the hallway adjusting the angle of a framed photograph on the wall by small increments, stepping back to assess it, then stepping forward to move it again. She was fully dressed, her hair done, jewellery on, moving with
Last Updated: 2026-04-07
Chapter: 086: Christmas EveAnastasia's POV The Hart estate on Christmas Eve felt like a breath being held.Everything was finished. Every wreath was hung, every candle set, every arrangement confirmed and signed off and placed exactly where it needed to be. There was no reason left to adjust anything but Leon's grandma Eleanor was adjusting things anyway. When I arrived at half past nine she was in the hallway asking the housekeeper to move a small vase two inches to the left. When I came back through twenty minutes later the vase was two inches to the right. Eleanor was on the phone with the florist behind me, asking about the delivery window for the wedding ceremony flowers that had been confirmed three times already that week.Leon was already there when I arrived. He was in the kitchen drinking coffee and looking at Eleanor through the doorway with an expression I recognised from the previous afternoon, the one where he was watching her carefully and keeping his concern off his face because Eleanor would n
Last Updated: 2026-04-05
Chapter: 085: Two days before ChristmasLeon's POVEleanor called me at eight in the morning to say she needed my opinion on the table arrangement for the rehearsal dinner.I had been coming to this house my entire life and I knew what Eleanor needing my opinion actually meant. It meant she had woken up early, found the house too quiet, and wanted someone there who belonged in it. I told her I would be there by ten. I said it without hesitation because there was no version of Eleanor asking me to come and me finding a reason not to.The estate looked different in the days just before Christmas. The decorations were finished and everything was exactly where it was supposed to be and there was nothing left to do, which meant my grandma had found other things to do. The caterer's first delivery of the week was coming through the kitchen when I arrived, and she was standing in the hallway directing two staff members on the placement of something that had clearly already been placed and then moved and then placed again. The tree
Last Updated: 2026-04-04
Chapter: 084: JenniferAnastasia's POVI stayed at the bakery until late that night.It wasn't the orders that kept me there. The morning prep was done in an hour and I had no real reason to keep measuring flour and reorganising the cold shelf except that the kitchen was where I went when I had too much in my head and needed to move my hands. I turned the radio on low and worked and thought about the planning session and the wedding coordinator's colour-coded checklist and the way Leon had answered me when I asked him if there was anything I didn't know.He had said no. But his face was obviously saying yes. He had always been a terrible liar and I could see right through him, and the fact that he had looked at the table for half a second too long before answering told me more than the answer itself did. I didn't bother pressing him for the truth though.I also thought about Jennifer's calls.She had called very recently, three days ago, in the evening, while I was closing up. She had used the warm voice, t
Last Updated: 2026-04-03
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