LOGINAvery's POVJade opened the door before I knocked.She stepped back to let me in and I went through and the door closed and the warmth of the house hit me and for one second it felt like every other time I had walked through this door in thirteen years. Jade then turned around and I saw her face and it did not feel like that at all.She was holding her phone. The photo was still on the screen."How long," she said."The kiss was last night," I said. "The feelings have been building for longer than that.""How much longer.""A few weeks," I said. "I did not act on anything until last night. Nothing happened between us until last night."She set the phone down on the side table face down and looked at me with the expression she used when she was deciding which version of angry to lead with."You sat in this room with me," she said. "You sat across from me at that table and I asked you directly, Avery. I looked you in the eye and I asked you and you said nothing was happening.""At the t
Avery's POVI typed the message while I was still in the car park.'Can we talk? I need to tell you something. It's important.'I sent it and watched the ticks turn to delivered and started the engine and pulled out before I could change my mind about the wording. The wording was not perfect but it was honest and it was direct and it did not give her a version of the situation before I had a chance to give her the real one in person.The drive back was a bit longer than fifteen minutes. I used all fifteen of them.I needed to think through what I was going to say before I got to her door because this was not a conversation I could wing. Jade did not respond well to winging. She responded to clarity and honesty and a complete picture, and if I showed up at her door with a partial version she would pull at the edges of it until the whole thing came apart anyway, so I might as well arrive with the whole story ready.So. How to say it.I could start with Liam. That was the most important
Avery's POVHis flat was exactly as I remembered it.Football memorabilia on one wall, training schedule pinned to the fridge, shoes lined up by the door. He set his coffee down on the counter and turned to face me with the expression he had been building since he opened the door. Settled. Reasonable. The version of himself he deployed when he thought he had the upper hand."I'm glad you came," he said."I'm sure you are," I said."Look, last night got out of hand," he said. "I want you to know that the message, the way it was sent, that was not how I wanted to handle this. Brandon overstepped.""Brandon overstepped," I repeated."Things got heated," he said. "I saw you in that car with him and I reacted. I am not proud of it." He looked at me with the expression he used when he was performing sincerity. "But the fact that I reacted like that should tell you something, Avery. About how much I still care.""It tells me something," I said. "Just not what you think it tells me."He studi
Avery's POVI put my mug down and looked at the street outside the kitchen window."I changed my mind," I said.Liam looked at me from across the table. "About going to Jade?""Before I go to Jade," I said, "I need to go to Colton." I turned to look at him properly. "He sent me a deadline. He told me I had twenty-four hours to go back to him and apologise or he would use Jade against me. He thinks that threat is still able to work on me. He thinks I am sitting here right now afraid of what he is going to do next." I picked up my keys from the counter. "I need him to understand that he has no power over anything in my life. Not my choices, not my friendships, not who I am with. I need to say that to his face before I do anything else. And I need him to hear it from me directly rather than through Brandon Cole's phone."Liam was quiet for a second. "Do you want me there?""No," I said. "This is not something you do for me. This is something I do for myself."He nodded. He did not argue
Liam's POVShe opened the door before I knocked.She had obviously been watching for me from the window, which told me she had been sitting there doing exactly what I had been doing on my side of the wall, waiting for the other person to arrive so the thinking could stop being solo.She looked tired. Not the kind of tiredness that came from a bad night's sleep, although that too. The kind that came from thinking about something for way longer than it deserved."Come in," she said.The kitchen was warm. She had the kettle on and two mugs already out, which meant she had probably expected me to come over since she sent me the message thread. I sat down at the table and she poured coffee into both mugs and put one in front of me and sat down across from me with hers. We looked at each other for a second."Did you sleep?" she said."Not much," I replied. "You?""Maybe two hours," she said. "I kept going back to the photo.""The angle of it," I said."The angle," she agreed. "Someone was o
Liam's POVI did not sleep well.I had known I was not going to sleep well before I even got into bed, which was why I lay there for an hour looking at the ceiling before I gave up and went downstairs and sat in the kitchen with a glass of water and the thread Avery had forwarded me open on my phone.The photo was the thing I kept coming back to.Not the message. The message was definitely from Colton. The logic of it was Colton, the way it aimed straight at the one person it would hurt most to involve. That was how he operated, I had watched him do it on the training field for months, he found the weak point and applied pressure to it rather than confronting anything directly. The message was exactly what I expected from him.The photo was different.Someone had been standing on that street monitoring Avery's house at such an ungodly hour. Which meant they had either followed one of us, or they had been parked up watching the house for long enough to see me come out and get into her
Avery's POVHe did not answer straight away.I had asked about Jade like I was asking about a random stranger I didn't know. He was quiet as if there was an elephant in the room for a second or two before he picked it up. I lay still and waited and told myself I was just curious, that it was a natu
Liam's POVI was three blocks from the library and still talking to myself.Who the fuck does she think she is?I kept walking with my hands deep in my pockets and my jaw so tight it ached. I had gone over it three times already and the answer was the same every time. Jade had stood on those steps
Avery's POVFor a moment nobody said anything.Jade stood two steps below us on the library steps with her shopping bag in her hand. I wondered how she knew where we were. Either way, the look on her face was not the quiet, contained version of hurt she had worn all afternoon at practice. This was
Avery's POVBrianna definitely had it coming and I wasn't going to let her get away with making me look bad this time.“I'll see you later.” Priya said and I watched her walk away.I took deep breaths to pace myself before springing into action that definitely would have consequences.I stood at th







