All Chapters of Falling for My Best Friend's Brother: Chapter 281 - Chapter 290

Avery's POVWednesday came the way all days I was not ready for came, which was exactly on time and completely indifferent to whether I had figured anything out.Liam picked me up at half past five. I had my bag, my jacket, the expression I used when I needed to look like everything was fine. He was in a good mood the way he often was after a football training session that had gone well, easy and warm, talking as he drove about something Tate had said on the field that afternoon. I sat in the passenger seat and laughed at the right moments, watching the streets go past the window and thinking about the route he was taking and whether it was taking us anywhere near my real job, the Velvet Underground.It was not. He was going directly to Crestwood Community Centre. Of course he was. He was a man who had offered to drop his girlfriend off at work and was doing exactly that. There was nothing suspicious about the route he was taking. I was the suspicious one, mapping everything, calcul

Avery's POVI left the Velvet Underground at twelve seventeen.I know the exact time because I checked my phone while I was still changing and twelve seventeen was already seventeen minutes past the midnight Liam was supposed to pick me up. The set had run late because I had been twenty minutes late. I missed my earlier spot and had to take a later spot which ended at that time. I changed back into my jeans and sneakers, went to the bathroom, ran cold water and worked through half the tissue dispenser and my baby wipes pouch trying to get the stage makeup off. I thought I had done enough. I got out the back door and I ran. The twelve-minute walk from the club to Crestwood community center took me six minutes at a run and the street lighting on two of the blocks was poor enough that I had to watch where I was going, which slowed me down when I could not afford to slow down.I reached the community center at twelve twenty-seven.Liam's car was parked outside and the engine was off, whic

Avery's POV"No," Liam said.He did not seem to think about it. He did not weigh it up or consider the request for any longer than it took to hear it. He said no the way he said things he had already decided before they became a question."Liam," I said."There is no reason for the two of you to need a private conversation," he told her, looking at me not at Zoey. "Whatever she has to say about the project she can say with me here.""It is fine," I told him."Avery.""I mean it," I told him. "I can handle two minutes alone with Zoey. I have handled significantly harder things this semester." I looked at him steadily. "Give us a minute."He looked at me for a moment and I could see the internal argument happening behind his expression, the part of him that did not trust the situation pulling against the part of him that had learned to trust me. "If you insist." He shrugged and turned around. "But I'll stay in the room where I can see you both." He picked up his bag and his laptop, walk

Brianna's POVZoey called me on a Friday morning and said she had something and could we meet.I said yes because I had learned that when Zoey said she had something she usually meant something worth hearing. She was not the kind of person who used that phrase loosely. She saved it for the times when the information was clear enough to move on and she had decided we were at that point.We met at the coffee place we had started using, a corner table away from the door. Zoey sat down and ordered before she spoke, which meant she had planned how to say what she was about to say and was going to say it properly."I spoke to Avery after the project meeting," she told me."I know," I told her. "I got your text.""What I did not put in the text was how she reacted," Zoey told me. "I told her I knew she was keeping something from Liam. I told her he had come to find me asking where she worked. I told her she had caused the problem herself." She wrapped her hands around her coffee cup. "She we

Brianna's POVNobody at this club moved.Not me. Not Zoey. Nikki stood there with the phone turned toward us and the photograph of Avery Nash on the screen and the name above all three of us.Scarlett."How long?" I asked.Nikki set the phone back down. "Almost a year," she told me. "She has been performing here since before this academic year started. She is one of our most consistent bookings.""And nobody here knows who she actually is," I told her. "Nobody knows her real name.""No one at this club knows her as anything other than Scarlett," Nikki told us. "Whatever she is in the rest of her life she does not bring here. She comes in, she performs, she leaves. No personal conversations, no details. Just the work." She paused. "She is very careful," she said.I looked at Zoey. Zoey looked at me.I had known for months that Avery Nash's story had never quite held. I had known since the welfare review that she was carrying something she had not shown anyone. She had been here the en