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: 272: You liedLiam's POV "Which bar?"The two words came out of Avery's mouth before the rest of her brain had caught up with them. I watched it happen in real time. The question leaving her mouth with the genuine confusion of someone who had not been asked what she expected, and then the half second where she heard herself, and her eyes went to my face properly, and the colour shifted. She knew what she had said. "Never mind," she said quickly. "I know which one you mean." "Do you?" I asked. "Yes. Obviously. I work there." She picked up her mug and wrapped both hands around it and did not look at me. "I just was not sure which part of the strip you meant." I kept my voice even. "You said which bar. Like you did not know which one I meant." "Liam." Her voice came out sharper than she probably intended and she put the mug down hard enough that the coffee shifted. "I know where I work. I was just distracted." "Avery." I looked at her. "I went there." The kitchen went very quiet. She turned
Last Updated: 2026-06-03
Chapter: 271: The only wayLiam's POVI sat in the coffee shop for another twenty minutes after Zoey left.Not because I had anywhere useful to be. Just because I needed the time to get the anger down from the level it was at to the level I could actually function at. The anger at Zoey was the easier one. I could set that aside because she was gone and there was nothing further to do with it. The anger at myself for going there in the first place was harder to let go of. I had walked in hoping for a straight answer and walked out having called a woman a prostitute, which was not how I had expected the evening to go.But I had nothing. That was the only fact that mattered right now. The information I came seeking, I didn't have it yet.I turned the options over and they were fewer than I would have liked. I could stop looking on my own. I could wait and watch and let the thing I already knew go unaddressed until it got heavy enough to crush whatever was left between me and Avery. Or I could go to Avery directly,
Last Updated: 2026-06-03
Chapter: 270: AshamedLiam's POVFor a full two seconds I said nothing at all.I looked at Zoey across the table and she looked back at me with that calm certain expression and the silence between us was the kind that happened when someone had said something so far outside what you expected that your brain needed a moment to confirm it was real.Then I laughed.It was not the warm kind, just a short sharp sound with nothing funny in it."You are serious," I said."I am completely serious," she told me.I looked at her for a moment without speaking. Whatever I had expected from this conversation, whatever version of it I had been running through my head on the drive over, it had not included this. She had spent all of that time in the coffee shop being careful and measured and the whole time she had been moving toward this moment.I pushed back my chair and stood up. "You want me to sleep with you in exchange for the name of a venue." I looked down at her. "You actually thought I was going to say yes to tha
Last Updated: 2026-06-02
Chapter: 269: ConditionsLiam's POVThe words fell between us and neither of us moved.Zoey was watching me with the expression she had when she knew she had said something that was going to follow a person for a long time whether they wanted it to or not. Not triumphant, not even particularly satisfied. Just certain."You asked her about it," she said. "About where Brianna and I were that night." She read my face and I knew she was reading it correctly. "And you did not get what you needed."I said nothing."Whatever she told you did not hold up, or she would not give you a straight answer at all." Zoey looked at me steadily. "I know you, Liam. I know what you do when you have a problem. You try every option within the situation before you go outside it. You go quiet, you ask the right person directly, and only when that does not work do you go somewhere else." She leaned back in her chair. "You are not here because you think I went somewhere interesting with Brianna. You are here because you asked Avery for
Last Updated: 2026-06-02
Chapter: 268: Spend the nightLiam's POVZoey picked up on the second ring."Liam," she said, and her voice had the particular quality it got when she was already thinking before she spoke. "This is unexpected. I'm surprised you're calling me by this time of the night but I'm happy you are.""I need to see you," I said. "Tonight if possible."A pause. "Is everything alright?""I just need to ask you something and I'll prefer to do it in person. It won't take long."She agreed to meet me at a coffee place near campus at nine thirty. I got there first and took a table at the back, ordered nothing, and waited. She came in ten minutes later, her coat still on from outside. She sat down across from me and looked at my face with the careful attention she had always brought to things she was trying to read."You look like a man who has had a difficult evening," she said."I have had an interesting one." I looked at her straight. "I need to know something.""Ask.""Where did you go with Brianna? That night. The venue. I n
Last Updated: 2026-06-01
Chapter: 267: Surprising herLiam's POVAfter that encounter with her, I let my intrusive thoughts go and decided I was just going to surprise her at work and see what happens. On the day I planned it, Avery kissed me goodbye at the door at half past six and said she would be back sometime around 2:00 a.m."Late shift?" I asked, leaning in the doorway."The Friday ones always run long." She pulled her jacket on. "Don't wait up."I watched her walk down to the street and get into her car. When the engine started I went back inside and sat on the sofa and looked at the wall.I stayed there for exactly thirty minutes.Then I got my jacket.I was not angry. I was not planning to cause a scene. I just wanted to walk into that bar and see her face when she saw me and understand for myself what the problem was. If she was there and happy to see me then I had nothing to worry about. If she was there and not happy to see me I would know which conversation to have. Either way I would know something, and right now I knew n
Last Updated: 2026-06-01
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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