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Todos os capítulos de Caught Between The REID Brothers : Capítulo 11 - Capítulo 20

64 Capítulos

011

Harper's POVI was still annoyed about Madison. I had thought of seven good responses since that bathroom. All of them were excellent. All of them were approximately a few minutes too late.I kept playing it on a loop. “I don't know about that just yet.”Close then spoke up.“You have to come watch us, don't let us ask twice, please.” I couldn't refuse.“Okay,” I smiled and left them.I was still running response number five in my head when Ashton found me in the school library as my thoughts kept wandering.“Ahah, I knew I would find you here. Practice is in twenty," he said."I know.""You're coming, right?”"I said I would."He looked at me for a second. "You're still annoyed about Madison.""I'm fine.""You have the face you make when you're fine but it is actually just the complete opposite for being fine.”He fell into step beside me. "Is it still about Madison?"I looked at him sideways. "How did you know?""Because she has a very specific effect on you, and I can see that it c

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Harper's POV"Aleady, you're not having much fun?" Ashton asked when he saw me approaching."Yes," I said. "Can we go?"He read my face the way he had started doing without asking permission and grabbed his jacket off the hook by the door. He said something to Cole on the way out that I didn't catch and then we were in the hallway and I exhaled for what felt like the first time in an hour."You went quiet," he said as we took the stairs down."I'm allowed to be quiet.""You're allowed to be quiet. You specifically going quiet after talking to Cole means something happened.""Nothing happened. He was just being friendly.""Cole is friendly with everyone. He was specifically friendly with you for about twelve seconds in the kitchen." He held the door open at the bottom of the stairs and looked at me as I walked through. "What did he say?""Nothing important."Ashton let it go, which somehow made it worse, because him not pushing meant he trusted me to tell him when I was ready and that

013

Harper's POV"I'm sorry, but I'm going with Ethan."The words came out before I could pull them back.I heard Ashton go very still behind me.Ethan's face relieved and warm and familiar that my chest responded to before my brain could intervene. "Yeah?""Just a movie," I said quickly. "That's it.""That's all I asked for." He looked past me at Ashton just once, brief and pointed, and then back at me. "I'll grab the tickets. You good to go now?""Give me five minutes."He nodded and stepped back, pulling out his phone, giving me space.I turned around.Ashton was standing by the car with his face arranged into the version that gave absolutely nothing away. The closed one. The one I had been looking at the first week when I still thought he was just an arrogant hockey captain with a bruised ego and nothing underneath it."Ashton—""It's fine," he said."I'm not trying to blow up the arrangement, I just…. he's my best friend.""Harper." His voice was flat and even. "I said it's fine.""

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Ashton's POVI saw the post at exactly 11:47 pm.Cole had sent it without a message attached, just the link, which was its own kind of commentary. I clicked it, read the headline, looked at the photo for about four seconds, and put my phone face down on my desk.Then I picked it up and looked at it again.Harper and Ethan walking out of a theater, her laughing at whatever he had just said, him looking down at her with the specific attention of a person who wants more than they've decided to reframe as friendship.They looked easy together in a way that sat in my chest like something I was not going to examine.I put the phone down again. I got up. Got a glass of water. Drank it standing at the kitchen counter staring at the wall.The deal was simple. She showed up for me, I handled Sienna, we stayed visible together until Sportsman of the Year was decided and then it was done. That was the whole arrangement. She had not broken any term of it. She had gone to a movie with her best frie

015

Harper's POVThe cold version of Ashton was so much worse.With the confrontational version I knew where I stood. There was friction and sharpness and at least something to push against. This version, the polite, present, perfectly functional version was somehow the most unsettling thing he had ever done to me.He showed up. He did everything right. He said the correct things at the correct times and introduced me to the correct people and stood at exactly the right distance and it was all so precisely calibrated that it made my teeth hurt.I had broken something and I didn't even fully know what it was.Which was the most infuriating part because technically, rationally, I had not done anything wrong. I went to a movie with my best friend. That was it. We had popcorn and bad action sequences and I was home by eleven. There was nothing in our deal that said I couldn't do that.But I knew Ashton. Or I had started to know him, which turned out to be the same problem from a different ang

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Harper's POV"You knew what this was from the beginning."That was what he said.Five words, delivered in that even voice he used when he wanted to be honest and cruel at the same time, and I stood there on that pavement, completely speechless.I nodded once."Forgive me, just a few days spent with you. I had forgotten how much of a jerk you can be!" I said. "Thanks for reminding me."I walked away."Harper." He called my name once and I didn't stop and after that he didn't follow me, and that was the most clarifying thing that happened all night.Because Ashton Reid, when he actually wanted something, didn't stop.I made it back to my dorm, sat on my bed, stared at the wall for about four minutes and then picked up my phone and called Ethan.He answered on the second ring. "Hey. You okay?"Just his voice did something to my chest that I was not going to examine right now. "Not really," I said."What happened?""Sienna happened. And then Ashton happened. And I just—" I pressed my back

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Harper's POV"It's nothing," he said. "Can we get back to—"The phone rang again. Same screen lighting up in his jacket pocket, visible through the fabric."Answer it," I said."Harper, there's no need.”"If it's nobody important then answer it and prove it." I held his gaze. "Or I will.""You're not answering my phone.""Then you answer it."He looked at me and I looked at him and the phone kept ringing and neither of us moved and then I reached forward and pulled it out of his jacket pocket before he could stop me. He said my name sharply but I had already accepted the call and pressed it to my ear."Hello?"A pause. Then Sienna's voice came through, warm and familiar in a way that turned my stomach immediately."Hey, just wanted to say thanks for dropping me off earlier. Really appreciate it." A small laugh, practiced and light. "And don't forget about our date. You promised."I pulled the phone away from my ear.I looked at the screen for exactly one second. Then I looked at Ashto

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Ashton's POVI woke up at six fifteen and checked my phone before I was fully conscious.Nothing from Harper. Yet.I put it face down and stared at the ceiling for about thirty seconds. Friends. That was what we agreed on. That was the right call and I knew it was the right call and I was not going to spend the morning overthinking a decision that made complete logical sense for both of us.I got up.Practice ran hard. Coach had us on conditioning for the first forty minutes and I was grateful for it because physical exhaustion was the only reliable way to keep my head completely empty. I pushed through every drill, every set, every rep, and by the time we hit the break I had successfully thought about nothing except form and timing.Then my phone buzzed and my father's name was on the screen.I stepped into the corridor."You're up early," I said."Meeting at eight." No greeting, no warmup, straight into it. That was my father in every conversation we'd ever had. "I saw the athletics

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Harper's PovI went to the library after my last class because I had an essay due and absolutely no motivation to write it.I sat at my usual table in the back corner, opened my laptop, stared at a blank document and typed exactly one sentence before Ethan dropped into the chair across from me."Hey." He dropped his backpack on the table. "You look tired.""Thank you for the lovely compliment, Ethan.""Not terribly tired. Just like you didn't sleep." He pulled out his own laptop. "I need help with the economics paper. Can you explain opportunity cost without making it sound like a punishment?""It's about trade offs," I said, closing my own document. "Every choice has a cost that isn't the price you pay. It's whatever you give up to make it.""Okay that actually makes sense." He typed something. "See, you should be a professor.""Hard pass."He laughed and settled into his laptop and I went back to staring at my own blank document.Three minutes passed."So Madison wants to do a coupl

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Harper's Pov“Harper, can I borrow your curling iron?”A girl asked, she lived down the hall and she barely spoke to me, I had my suspicion that it was because The Ashton Reid was standing in front of me.“Hi, Ashton, I'm your biggest fan and—”“We'll talk some other time, Harper.”He leaves. I sat there wondering what he wanted to say.I heard about the game from two girls in my Victorian lit class."Westbrook's playing tonight," one of them said to the other, loud enough that the whole row could hear. "If they win this one Ashton's basically back in contention for Sportsman of the Year.""What time?""Seven. Are you going?""Obviously."I wrote down seven, closed my notebook, and said nothing.He hadn't told me.We had sat on a hallway floor the previous night sharing pasta and something that felt dangerously close to honesty and he hadn't mentioned a single word about a game today.I went back to my dorm, changed into a nice outfit, and left before I could find a reason not to.The

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