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322: Theory
Date de publication:
2026-06-24 22:40:57
Dernier chapitre
Falling for My Best Friend's Brother 324: Denial
Liam's POVI drove home.Not to her door. I drove to my own door and stayed in the car with the engine off and the street quiet around me, and then I went inside.I did not turn the lights on.I went to the kitchen, pulled a chair out at the table in the dark, put my hands flat on the surface, and stayed there.I did not know how long I stayed before my phone rang. Long enough for the house to go cold around me. Long enough for the street outside to go from the occasional car to nothing. Long enough for it to feel like something done rather than something still happening.Tate's name appeared on the screen.I answered."Talk to me," Tate said.I turned the phone over in my hand and looked at the dark wall and thought about where to start. There was no clean place because the whole thing ran together."It was her," I told him.Tate was quiet."The mask fell," I told him. "During he performance. It came off her face and the lights were on her and I was at the bar and I saw her face." I
Falling for My Best Friend's Brother 323: CAUGHT
Avery's POVHe was in the doorway and his face was already past the question.Nikki disappeared. I did not see her go. One moment she was in the corridor and the next she was not, and none of that mattered because the only thing that mattered was Liam standing six feet away with the backstage door open behind him and his eyes on my face.My uncovered face.The wig was still on. The costume was still on. But the mask was in my hand and nothing stood between what he was seeing and the woman he had been with since autumn, that was nearly three months ago.He now knew.I could see it. He didn't look surprised to see me here. The recognition had not just arrived. It had obviously happened out in the audience when the mask fell and the lights hit my face, he must have been in the audience watching it happen. He probably came backstage to confront me about it."Liam," I started.He did not move."Are you Scarlett?" Liam asked.His voice was quiet. Not angry. Not cold. Quiet in the way that
Falling for My Best Friend's Brother 322: Theory
Avery's POV I grabbed the mask from the floor. My hand was moving before the thought finished. I pressed it to my face, turned, and walked offstage. I did not run because running turned a malfunction into a catastrophe, and I was not ready for that. I walked at the pace of a woman handling a costume failure. I was not handling anything. The wings took me in. The stage lights dropped away behind me and the moment I crossed into the dark my legs went. I caught myself against the wall and pressed my back to the concrete and slid down until I was on the floor. Then the shaking. The kind that came when you had been holding something back for months and it finally stopped waiting. Not the kind I had hidden from Liam in the car. Not the kind I had held through the lift after Colton. The real kind. The unexpected kind that happened when a secret your life depended on had just been revealed. I pressed the mask harder against my chest and focused on breathing. In. Out. The way you
Falling for My Best Friend's Brother 321: Her face
Liam's POVI was at the bar by nine fifteen.Same stool as the last time. Same drink I had ordered the last time. The bartender either did not recognise me or did not care and neither option bothered me because I was not here for conversation.I was here to watch.The room filled around me the way it had filled the other two times I had been in this building. The warm amber lighting. The low music between acts. The energy of a crowd settling into the wait before a performance they had come to see.I drank my beer slowly and looked at the stage and waited.The MC announced the set at nine thirty-two.She walked out.The mask was in place. The wig was in place. The costume was different from the one she had worn the last time I had been here but the way she walked was not different at all. The rhythm of it. The way her feet connected to the stage. The angle of her chin as she took her position and the lights shifted to performance level.I watched.The first section started. She danced,
Falling for My Best Friend's Brother 320: UNMASKED
Avery's POV Something touched the back of my head. Not hard. Not a pull or a grab or anything that registered as an immediate threat. A light pressure near the ribbons at the base of my skull that was there and then gone in under a second. The kind that registers before you have decided to notice it. The kind your brain filed as background noise because you were mid-performance and a light touch at the nape of your neck was not worth interrupting anything for. I almost did not notice it at all. I was mid-transition. My back was to the audience. The fourth section had been the best of the night. The music had shifted to the deeper amber lighting and the slower choreography and the room had responded the way it did when a performance hit the level where the performer and the audience were breathing together. I had felt it. The connection that only happened on the good nights. The one that made the stage the only place that existed. My hands were at my hip adjusting the
Falling for My Best Friend's Brother 319: As usual
Avery's POVLiam pulled up outside Crestwood at twenty-five past five and I kissed him and got out and went inside.Pat was at the counter again. Gerald was off on Wednesdays now, something about a doctor's appointment that had turned into a recurring thing, and Pat ran the kitchen on those evenings without needing to talk to do it."Evening," she said."Evening," I told her. "I need a few minutes before I start.""Take your time," she said, and went back to what she was doing.I went to the window and stood to the side the way I always stood and watched the street. Liam's car was still there. He was looking at his phone. Something about the way he was in the driver's seat looked different tonight but I could not name it.He pulled away.I watched the car reach the junction. It turned and was gone. I stayed at the window for another thirty seconds because I had learned to wait for the car that came back because the driver forgot something. His car did not come back."I have to go," I
Falling for My Best Friend's Brother 293: Wednesday
Avery's POVMy car would not start.I turned the key three times and got the clicking sound that meant the battery was dead. I sat in the driver's seat with my hands on the wheel and my forehead against the top of it, running the numbers on a Wednesday evening where I needed to be at Crestwood by s
Falling for My Best Friend's Brother 292: Then there were four
Brianna's POVNikki picked a bar she knew near the Velvet Underground, a quieter place than the club, the kind that had enough background noise to keep a conversation private.I got there first.Zoey arrived two minutes later and sat down without taking her coat off, which was what she did in rooms
Falling for My Best Friend's Brother 291: Bring in Colton
Brianna's POVHe met us at eleven PM that same night.We were still off campus, sitting in Zoey's car in a car park two streets from the Velvet Underground. When Colton's car pulled up alongside us, I got out and he got out. We stood in the cold and I did not bother with pleasantries."We just watc
Falling for My Best Friend's Brother 290: Watching her
Brianna's POVNikki had told us to arrive at nine and sit at the tables on the left side of the room, far enough from the stage that the lighting would not reach us properly but close enough that we would have a clear line of sight when the performance started.We arrived at eight fifty.Zoey order
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