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: 068: Sitting in the carLiam's POVI sat in the car for a long time without starting the engine. I reclined my chair a little and just sat there there thinking.The club entrance was visible in the wing mirror, a couple of people going in and the door closing behind them. I watched it for a moment and then looked at the steering wheel. The conversation was still running in my head in full, every piece of it, and I had learned the hard way over the years that driving while my brain was doing that particular thing was not a good idea. So I sat."Get it together," I said quietly to myself in the empty car. The words did not do much, but saying them out loud made me feel slightly less stupid than just sitting there staring at nothing.She said she liked me more than she should. Those were her exact words. And that was exactly why she could not give me what I was asking for.I had turned it over about a dozen times since I walked out of that room and it still sounded wrong. Not because I did not believe her. I di
Last Updated: 2026-04-18
Chapter: 067: Going homeAvery's POVI drove home just after 2am.The roads were quiet and I kept both hands on the wheel and the radio off. The drive was about twenty minutes and I used all of it trying not to replay the conversation in loops, which worked for about the first five minutes and then stopped working entirely. I kept coming back to one of the last statements he made. When he said my words were the most frustrating thing anyone has ever said to him. I thought about the fact that he was not even wrong. It was frustrating. I knew exactly why it was frustrating and I was the one making it that way. I did not have a better option and it felt kind of awful.By the time I pulled onto my street I thought to myself that I was really just going to sleep it off and I'll be better by morning.If only I knew how wrong I was.The front door was unlocked, which was strange by two in the morning. I let myself in and looked around so I could see if something was wrong.Dean was in the living room. The television
Last Updated: 2026-04-18
Chapter: 066: He leftAvery's POVHe stood there for a moment after I said it.He was looking at me and I could see him deciding what to do with what I just said to him. It sounded ridiculous even to me, but it was the truth. I couldn't tell him the truth as Avery and I didn't want to lose him as Scarlett.Then he spoke. "That is the most frustrating thing anyone has ever said to me."He was not angry when he said it. At least he didn't look like he was. But he was not warm either. He just looked, like he said, frustrated."I am sorry," I said. The words came out smaller than I wanted them to."Sorry doesn't really fix it.""I know.""Then why say it at all? What is even the point of any of this?"I had no good answer for that. I had asked myself the same question more than once tonight and I had not come up with an answer.And then he opened the door and walked out.I sat back down in the room for a minute after he left. I did not move. I just sat there with my hands in my lap, looking at the door he had
Last Updated: 2026-04-18
Chapter: 065: Not have youLiam's POVI looked at her and I tried to find a way in my mind to erase my frustration about the situation.That was what I did with everything. There was always a way through in every situation if you were thorough and serious enough to find one. Just like I found a way to deal with Colton and his childish antics.I went through everything she had said. The mask and the life she had outside the room and the consequences of revealing herself. I turned it over and over in my mind, but it brought me back to the same point every single time. I could not build something with a person I was not allowed to know. Not in a week, not in a year, not in whatever patient timeline I had been imagining when I told my best friend Jace it was worth trying. That was just the truth of it. Staying in this room for another minute or even another few hours was not going to change the reality of it. I had sat with harder things than this and found a way through, but those things had always had a door some
Last Updated: 2026-04-17
Chapter: 064: Her replyLiam's POVShe looked at me like the question was either a foolish one or that I was foolish to ask it."Of course I like you," she said. "That is not the issue."I was glad to hear that she at least liked me, but I was still frustrated by the situation. "Then what is the issue? Because from where I am sitting it looks very much like the issue."She stood up and moved to the other side of the small room, not far, just enough to put some space between us. She stood there with her arms crossed but not in the defensive way, more like she was trying to hold herself together. The room actually felt smaller than it usually did right now."Liking you is exactly the problem," she said. "If I did not like you, this would be easy. I would tell you no and it would be done and I sure as hell wouldn't lose sleep over it." She stopped to look at my face."I'm sorry but it's the truth." She continued. "The fact that I do like you is what makes everything about this so much harder than it should be."
Last Updated: 2026-04-17
Chapter: 063: Just your nameAvery's POVHe leaned back on the cushion, but he was not done talking."But I am not asking for everything right now," he said. "I am just asking for this. What is already here between us. The thing that is happening in this room right now.""What is already happening between us is going to make you want more," I said. "That is what I am telling you. I am not saying you are greedy or unreasonable. I am saying that is how it works when two people are actually having something with each other the way we have been. It grows. And when it grows you are going to want the things I cannot give you and we will be in a worse version of exactly this conversation.""You keep deciding things for me.""I am not deciding anything for you," I said. "I am telling you what I cannot offer. Those are different things and you know they are."He said something under his breath that was not quite agreement to me and not quite an argument either. Then he stood up and moved to the other side of the room the
Last Updated: 2026-04-17
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: 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
Chapter: 083: Final touchesLeon's POV The wedding coordinator had colour-coded her checklist. Pink for confirmed, yellow for pending, red for urgent. When I sat down at the dining table and saw it spread across three pages, I understood that this woman took her job more seriously than most people took anything in their lives.Eleanor stood at the head of the table looking like she had been awake since four in the morning and was proud of it. "We have nine items still in yellow," she said, before anyone had even opened a notebook. "I want every one of them pink before we leave this table." "Good morning, grandma," I said.She waved her hand. "Sit down, Leon. Anastasia, sit. We have a lot to get through."Anastasia sat across from me and pulled the seating chart toward her without being asked. She had a pen out and her reading glasses on before the coordinator finished saying hello. I watched her scan the chart quickly, not really bothering to take her time. Within thirty seconds she had already marked two thin
Last Updated: 2026-04-02
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