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.
Baca
Chapter: 373: First conversationAvery's POVI did not eat breakfast.I stood in the kitchen for a while, looking at the gap in the fence, and then I put on my jacket and I went over. The street outside was quiet in the way it always was this early, nobody out yet, just the sound of my own footsteps on the pavement.It was early. His car was still in the drive. I did not check for Carter's. I knocked before I could stand there long enough to change my mind.Liam opened the door.He looked at me the way he had been looking at me every time we accidentally crossed parts since our falling out."Are you looking for Jade? She's in her room." he said."I need to talk to you," I said, before he could turn around and walk away.He stepped back to let me in.We went to the kitchen. I did not sit down. He leaned against the counter and crossed his arms and waited, like as if he knew exactly what I was going to say."Is your dad home?" I said.Something crossed his face. "He left early. Why?""Because what I am about to tell yo
Terakhir Diperbarui: 2026-07-19
Chapter: 372: My bestfriendAvery's POVJade was in our kitchen when I came back in.She did not ask what happened. She looked at my face and she knew that it must not have been good.I took the chair across from her.Neither of us said anything."She told you everything," Jade said. Not as a question."Yes."She looked at the table. I watched her face change from different expressions. She had been living with Carter in that house for almost five months. Carter at her breakfast table. Carter's shoes in the hallway."Are you okay?" she said finally."I do not know yet. I think knowing the truth is better. Even when it is this.""Is it?"I nodded slowly."What are you going to do?""Tell Liam.""When?""Tomorrow. I have been waiting for him to talk to me for weeks now. Maybe I just need to approach him physically first."She looked at me for a second."Do you know what you are going to say?""Not yet. But it has to be all of it. Not a bridged account. Everything.""He is not going to take it easily.""I know.""H
Terakhir Diperbarui: 2026-07-18
Chapter: 371: What she knewAvery's POVShe stood across from me in the kitchen and did not sit down, and I understood that she needed to be on her feet for this the same way I needed to be standing rather than seated. Some conversations required that. The ability to move if you needed to. The option to turn away."Carter told me before we married that he had done things he was not proud of," she said. "He said there was money he had moved through a company that was not entirely clean, and that he had paid people to keep quiet about it. He was not detailed. I did not push him to be. I told myself that everyone had a past and that what mattered was the man he was now, not the man he had been then."She paused."I believed that because I wanted to," she said. "I want you to know I am not confused about that."I held that. She had known there was something beneath the surface and she had chosen not to dig. I understood that. I had done the same thing with Dean, year after year, telling myself the situation was mana
Terakhir Diperbarui: 2026-07-17
Chapter: 370: Seeing Jade's momAvery's POVI stood outside the door for a long time before I knocked.I had knocked on this door thousands of times. I knew the sound it made from both sides. I knew the gap under it let in a draught in winter and that the handle stuck slightly if you turned it too fast. I had been in and out of this house since I was eight years old, done homework at that table, eaten there, waited for Jade to finish getting ready while she ran late for everything.Now Liam lived there.And Carter Harrington.The man whose name was on a document with my biological father. Who probably knows what arrangement that kept my biological father away from me before I was born. Who had built a respectable life on top of that and moved into this house four months ago when he married Jade's mom, and who I had been eating next door to and passing on the path and nodding at over the fence ever since, without knowing what that name actually meant to my own life.I had not known.I should not have had to know.But
Terakhir Diperbarui: 2026-07-16
Chapter: 369: Harder questionsAvery's POVMy mom was at the kitchen table when I came downstairs, hands wrapped around a mug of tea, staring at nothing. The morning light through the window made her look older than I had ever noticed before, or maybe I was only seeing it now because I finally understood what she had been carrying beneath the ordinary face I had known my whole life.She looked up when I walked in."Avery," she said. "I did not think you would want to see me this morning.""I need to ask you some things," I said, taking the chair across from her. "Harder things than last night. Are you able to do that right now, or do you need more time?""I owe you whatever time it takes," she said. "Ask.""How much money. Total. Everything he took from us over the two years he lived here. I want the real number, not a rounded guess."My mom closed her eyes."I never let myself add it up properly," she said. "Because I think if I had seen the total, I would not have been able to keep functioning day to day. But if
Terakhir Diperbarui: 2026-07-15
Chapter: 368: more questionsAvery's POVPorter Construction Ltd.Registered 1998.Carter Harrington. D. Porter.We had found it in under ten minutes once Jade remembered the right search terms.Jade and I were at the reading table in my room looking at it on the screen and neither of us said anything."It is real," Jade said."It is real."There was something about seeing it there again. Names on a document, a registration date, a company that had existed and folded before I could read. Not a story someone was telling me. A record. Something that had existed independent of anyone's memory of it, immune to the way time changed what people thought they remembered.I thought about all the conversations I had had with Jade over the years about Dean."What do we do now?" she asked."Tonight, nothing. We sleep on it. And tomorrow I ask my mom if she knows the name Carter Harrington beyond just having him as a neighbor.""And if she does," Jade said."Then we know what this is."Jade looked at me."Are you okay?" she a
Terakhir Diperbarui: 2026-07-14
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.
Baca
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
Terakhir Diperbarui: 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
Terakhir Diperbarui: 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
Terakhir Diperbarui: 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
Terakhir Diperbarui: 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
Terakhir Diperbarui: 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
Terakhir Diperbarui: 2026-04-03
Masuk
