All Chapters of Falling for My Best Friend's Brother: Chapter 101 - Chapter 110

404 Chapters

101: More secrets

Avery's POV"You look like you can breathe again," Liam said."I can." I stopped in the corridor and turned to face him properly. "You waited out here just to walk out with me?""Of course I did. I needed to be sure that you're fine with the new Professor.""Liam.""I thought you might want someone in the corridor to walk with you after," he said. "That is all."I looked at him for a moment. I thought about how much I had enjoyed his company so far. "Coffee?" I said."Already planned for it."We walked to the cafe. He ordered without asking because he already knew what I took, and we went to the corner table. I put both hands around the cup the way I always did and looked at him."I want to tell you some things," I said."Okay.""Other real problems I have. I guess we solved Professor Cross' problem so well that I think it's only wise to tell you about other issues I have." I looked at the table. "I have been thinking about it all week. Even when you cannot help fix something, telling

102: Back off

Liam's POVJade stood in the kitchen doorway with her bag on her shoulder and her face doing something complicated.She looked at me. She looked at Avery at the kitchen table. She looked at the two cups on the counter and the kettle that had just stopped boiling. She looked back at Avery."Hi," she said. It came out flat."Hi, Jade," Avery said. She said it easily, no edge on it, which was more than Jade deserved after the conversation I had heard about from Friday."I thought you were at the library until seven," I said."I finished early." She put her bag down by the door. She pulled out a chair at the far end of the table and sat down. She was doing the thing she had been doing for weeks, the carefully polite silence that was louder than anything she could have said. I watched her do it and I was done with it."Jade," I said.She looked at me."Stop."She blinked. "I am not doing anything.""You are sitting at this table with that face and you are doing it very deliberately and I a

103: Dean is gone

Avery's POVI went for a run on Tuesday morning before anyone in the house was awake.I needed to move. The conversation with Liam the day before had given me something I had not expected, which was a clean feeling, the feeling of a weight that had been shifted from one set of shoulders to another, even though it did not disappear entirely. I had been carrying a lot alone for a long time and I had put some of it down, which made me feel lighter than I had in weeks.I ran for forty minutes. Around the block and down by the park and back up the hill that always killed me, twice, because the second time I made the top of it without stopping and that felt like something I needed today. I needed to do one hard thing and finish it. The hill was the easiest version of that available at six in the morning. The air was cold enough to hurt my lungs a little on the way up and I was grateful for it. Physical discomfort was a good thing to focus on when your head had too much in it.I got home at

104: Gone for good

Avery's POVI went back downstairs.My mum was still at the kitchen table with her mug. She looked up when I came in and read something in my face before I had said a word."Avery. What is wrong."I sat down across from her. I kept my voice even because I needed her to hear what I was saying and not just react to how I was saying it."I had money hidden in my room," I said. "Cash. Two thousand dollars. I had been building it up for a while, a bit at a time, and I kept it in an envelope taped to the inside panel of my bookcase. It is gone."She looked at me. "Are you sure that is where you put it?"I stared at her."Are you asking me if I imagined it," I said. "Two thousand dollars.""No, I just — sometimes when you put things away carefully you forget exactly—""I did not forget." My voice was harder now and I let it be. "I know exactly where I put it and I know exactly how much was in it. I have been putting money in that envelope for months. It is not there.""Maybe he borrowed it,"

105: Not fine

Avery's POVI looked at his message for a moment before I typed anything back.'How are you feeling today? And I'm sorry again about Jade yesterday. She had no business doing that.'I typed a response. ‘I am okay, Dean left this morning and took something from my room and I am furious but I am handling it.’I deleted it.I typed another response. ‘Fine. Could be better. Jade was fine. Do not worry about any of it.’I deleted that too.I typed one final response. ‘fine, and Dean, my mother's boyfriend is gone.’I sent it before I could change my mind.The reply came back in under a minute.'What do you mean gone. And are you actually fine or are you just-saying-fine.'I put the phone down on the desk and picked it up again. There was too much to explain in a text. Too much that would come out flat without a voice behind it. I was still too raw and too angry to be deliberate with my words, and typing made me slower and more careful, which was the opposite of what I needed right now.I r

106: Still very angry

Avery's POV I stood very still with my jacket in my hand.The screen had locked again. The kitchen was quiet. My mum was still near the window and she had gone very still like a person who has been caught and is deciding which direction to go."When did you call him," I said.She turned to face me properly."You just received a text," I said. "Just give her time. That is what he said to you. Which means you called him this morning, told him what I said, and he is now giving you instructions on how to manage me." I put my jacket on the counter. "When.""Avery—""Before or after I came downstairs and told you what he did."She closed her eyes for a moment. "After," she said. "After you went back upstairs the second time. I needed to ask him directly. I needed to hear it from him.""And what did he say.""He admitted it." She said it quietly, the way you said something you already know is going to be used against you. "He said he needed the money urgently and that he should have asked f

107: My best friend

Avery's POV I was annoyed to see Jade at that moment when I was in a heated argument that needed sorting out with my mum. "I heard you on the phone with Liam this morning. He wasn't exactly discreet when he called you. So I heard everything." She kept her eyes on mine. "I came to check on you."I looked at my mum. My mum looked at the counter. There was nowhere useful for the argument to go now. The three of us in that kitchen felt suddenly too many, or maybe just wrongly arranged, like furniture that had been moved and not put back."I cannot talk about this right now," I said.I picked up my jacket and my bag and walked past Jade into the hallway. I heard her footsteps behind me without needing to look.We walked two streets down without talking. I had too much in my head to make conversation and Jade seemed to understand that. She walked beside me at my pace with her hands in her coat pockets. "I'm sorry about yesterday Avery. I try to make things better but I keep on making it

108: I will leave

Avery's POVIt was good to have her back. Not the Jade from the last few weeks, who was more stuck up on making sure I avoided her new step brother Liam than caring about being my friend at all. I didn't want to admit it, but her absence really affected me these past few weeks. guten Liam was there to pick up the slack while she was in her head. If not, I may have gone crazy by now with all the things I had gone through in her absence. I paused at my front door and looked at the house. I was honestly not looking forward to going back in there. Even though my anger had reduced a bit, I was still upset that my mom would rather side with Dean than me.I was very tired of it happening over and over again. I was tired of being the person who held it together while everyone around me looked for reasons not to. I let myself into the house. My mum was still at the kitchen table with a fresh cup of something hot in front of her. She had the look of someone who had spent the last hour going

109: Dean and Carter?

Avery's POVNeither of us moved when the doorbell rang.My mum's hands were still wrapped around her mug. She looked at the hallway and then back at me.The bell rang again.I stood up. I walked down the hallway and put my hand on the door handle and held it there for one second before I opened it.Jade was on the step with her laptop bag over one shoulder and the expression she wore when she had something important to tell me."Why didn't you just open the door and come in?" I asked, surprised to see her again. It was very unusual for Jade to knock."I tried the handle and the door was locked. I guess you locked it as soon as you got in.""Oh." I paused. "I guess I did. Is there something you need?""I found something," she said. "I would have texted but I thought you would want to see it in person rather than hear about it."The relief that went through me was quiet and immediate. It was Jade. It was only Jade. I had not known until that moment how much I had been bracing myself to

110: The company

Avery's POVI looked at the screen for a long moment after Jade had stopped scrolling.The kitchen was quiet. My mum was upstairs and the house felt very still.Dean's face was confirmed on the left. The second box was empty. Someone had gone back at some point and removed the photograph that would have settled the question, and that deliberate removal was doing something to the doubt I had been trying to hold on to. Coincidences did not erase themselves. whoever was the owner of the picture that was in that box had asked that his picture be taken down from the site. He removed the one thing that would have confirmed the face behind the name. And in doing so they had left behind the evidence of the removal itself, which told you more than the photograph would have."Walk me through the rest of it," I said. "Everything you found. From the beginning."Jade nodded. She scrolled back up to the top of the filing and we went through it together, line by line, the way you went through someth

...

9 10 11 12 13

...

SCAN CODE TO READ ON APP