All Chapters of Falling for My Best Friend's Brother: Chapter 121 - Chapter 130

404 Chapters

121: The last two days

Avery's POVI sat on my bed with my back against the headboard and my phone in my lap and I thought about all of it.Two days. I had been ignoring him for two days and every time his name came up on my screen I had told myself I just needed a little more time before I could respond without saying something I would regret. The problem was that the more time passed, the more there was to say, and the more there was to say, the harder it became to know where to even begin.It had started with the photograph that Jade had turned the laptop toward me to show me, and the two faces in it that I had not been able to stop seeing since.Not the document filing on its own. Not even Dean being gone. The photograph was the thing I could not put down, because it had faces in it. And one of those faces belonged to a man whose son sat next to me in a lecture hall twice a week and had been texting me every day since Dean left. It belonged to the father of a man I was having feelings about.Did Liam kn

122: Confirmation mail

Avery's POVI got up and went to my desk when the notification came in.The notification was from my university email. I almost ignored it. I was not in the mood for anything administrative tonight. But the subject line was visible in the preview and I read it before I could decide not to.'Project Group Update — Business Management.'I opened it.Dr Fonn had sent it. The email said that Zoey Banks had been added to our project pair with immediate effect and that all three of us would meet as a group at the next scheduled session. It said the addition of a third member would bring useful breadth to the project. It thanked us for our flexibility and wished us the best with our work.I read the email twice.So that was it. No second conversation. No checking back with me. Just an email at the end of the day confirming that a decision had already been made and all I had to do now was show up and be flexible about it. I sat at the desk for a moment and did not move.I closed the laptop an

123: Not concerned

Avery's POVHe did not message me once since the day Zoey Banks invaded our class.After two days of texts that I had left unanswered, Liam had gone completely quiet. No good morning. No checking in. No asking about Dean. Nothing from Monday evening through to Thursday night. I told myself it did not matter. I had been the one ignoring him, so his silence was the natural consequence of that, and I should have been relieved. I had wanted space. He was giving me space. That was what I had asked for, in the most indirect possible way.I was not particularly relieved.I noticed the absence of his messages the way you noticed when a sound you had gotten used to suddenly stopped. It left a shape in the day where something had been and was not anymore. I did not go as far as checking whether he had somehow messaged and I had missed it. I told myself that was because I was not bothered, not because I knew the answer was no and did not want to confirm it.I did not message him either.Friday m

124: Tutor her

Avery's POVI looked at her. I looked at Liam briefly. He was watching me with the careful expression he had been wearing since I walked past him in the corridor."Sure," I said.She smiled. She had a way of doing it that was open and easy and hard to find anything wrong with, and the fact that I was aware of looking for something wrong told me where I was standing with her."I am still trying to find my footing with the reading list," she said. "I know I missed the first half of the semester and I am trying to catch up properly. I was wondering whether the two of you might be up for a session where you walked me through the core material. Not the project specifically, just the background reading so I am not behind.""A tutoring session," I said."Exactly. Just an hour or two, nothing formal. It would really help me get up to speed before the session next week."Liam made a sound beside me that was not quite a word. I did not look at him.Zoey looked at him. I looked at him. He had hi

125: The library

Avery's POVHis text came in at just past seven in the evening.'This is almost a week of no replies from you. I understand if you need space but I cannot let our academics suffer. Let's meet at the library tomorrow, for our project. Four o'clock. Let me know if that works.'I read it twice. I put the phone down on the desk and looked at it from a small distance. Then I picked it back up.He was not asking how I was. He was not asking about Dean or the house or any of the things he had been texting me about all week. He was being completely practical, which was fair, and which was somehow harder to receive than the concerned messages had been. At least with the concerned ones I had something to push back against. This had no edge to it at all and I felt bad that I had ignored him to the extent that he didn't think it was necessary to ask me another question about my well-being that I may not answer.I typed, 'That's fine by me. We haven't worked on it all week. We are a little behind.

126: Take me back

Liam's POVI was very much aware of Avery's discomfort. She looked like she was clearly waiting for me to say something else to her. But I wasn't going to stoop that low. She had refused to reply to any of my messages, checking on her for the past few days and then went ahead to make it look like it was my fault that Zoe followed me all the way here. Not that it mattered to her or affected her in any way. Whichever way I wasn't going to give her the satisfaction of being the first to check on her again. Zoey came in ten minutes later.She walked through the library door with her bag over one shoulder and her coat still on, moving with the unhurried energy she had always had. The kind that said she had nowhere more pressing to be and was not particularly concerned about the time she had kept us waiting. She scanned the room until she found us, and then she crossed the library like someone walking into a room she had already been invited into.She sat down beside me, not across from me

127: Sorry again

Liam's POVI looked at her for a second without speaking.Avery had gone very still across the table. She had her pen in her hand and she was looking at it rather than at either of us, which was her way of giving us space without actually having any. Zoey was looking at me with the patient expression she always used when she was saying something she had already decided on and was not going to be talked out of, and the library was quiet enough around us that I could hear the second hand on the clock near the door."Zoey," I said.She looked at me with the expression that meant she was not finished and was not going to be easily redirected."I mean it, Liam. I did not come all this way to be treated like this. I just need you to hear me out properly, without you cutting me off or telling me this is not the right time. If you would just—""We are in a library," I said. "We are three people at a table trying to finish a project that counts toward all of our final grades, and right now you

128: Talk back

Avery's POVZoey turned back to Liam like I was not sitting two feet across from her.Like she had swatted at a minor inconvenience and filed it away, and the subject was now closed as far as she was concerned. Like the person she had just spoken to like that was a background detail in a scene that was entirely about her. She had said it and turned away without waiting to see how I received it, like the outcome did not particularly interest her.I looked at her profile. She was already talking again, her voice back in the soft, focused register she used when she was directing something exclusively at Liam. Like the twelve seconds in which she had spoken to me the way she had were a minor chapter that was now finished. Like she had dealt with it and moved on and the subject was no longer available for discussion.I knew this type and I had known it for a long time.She was the type who was used to being the most important name in every room she entered. Back at wherever she had transfe

129: Say something

Liam's POVZoey looked at me.The colour was still high in her face and her jaw was still tight. Her eyes had the quality they got when she was composing herself under pressure, which I had seen many times before. Controlled on the surface and something else entirely underneath it. She looked at me the way she always did when she needed something and was working out the angle."Are you going to say something?" she said. Her voice was even but there was effort in the evenness."About what?""About what just happened." She gestured toward Avery without looking at her. "She sat there and spoke to me like that and you said absolutely nothing."I looked at her. I took a second. There were three people at this table and two of them were waiting on me, and I was not in any hurry to give either of them the wrong impression about where I stood or why I was taking my time before I answered. Avery had not moved from her seat. She was sitting with her hands clasped on the table and she was watchi

130: How long

Avery's POVWe worked in silence for about twenty minutes.The session had the quiet of a ceasefire rather than actual peace. The kind of quiet where everyone at the table was aware of everyone else at the table and nobody was saying anything about it. Zoey was writing something but I could tell from the pace of it and the way she kept stopping that she was not making much progress. Liam had his head down and was typing at the pace he moved when he was genuinely thinking through something rather than filling a page, which was what Liam looked like when he was actually working rather than giving the appearance of it.I made myself focus.We were on the regulatory compliance section. I had done the reading and the structure of my argument was clear in my head, so the words were coming, which helped. The problem was that sitting at this specific table with these specific two people required a certain amount of background energy just to maintain the appearance of calm, and every few parag

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