Falling for My Best Friend's Brother의 모든 챕터: 챕터 181 - 챕터 190

Avery's POVI walked slowly.Not because I had anywhere else to be before I left for the night, but because the changing room was at the end of the corridor and I was not ready to be around other people yet. The corridor was mine for now and I was going to use it.Third complaint.I turned it over as I walked. Not with panic, just with the flat clear-eyed attention I gave to things when they were bad and needed to be looked at properly rather than at an angle. Panic did not produce anything useful and I had learned that early enough in my life to have stopped doing it by now. What I could do was look at the situation directly and understand exactly what it was.The situation was this. Nikki had filed one complaint. She had found a second person to file a matching one, which meant she had either convinced someone or paid someone or had something over someone, and that second complaint had moved this from rumour territory into pattern territory. One more complaint and Gregg's hands were

Avery's POVI drove home on autopilot.Not dangerously. I knew the route well enough that my hands and feet did what they needed to do without requiring much from the part of my brain that was still back in the alley, still hearing Nikki's voice saying eight months is a long time like she was reading from a script she had written weeks ago. She probably had.I pulled up outside and turned the engine off and sat there. I had taken the long route home without deciding to. The back streets, away from the main road, twenty extra minutes just to avoid having to stop at traffic lights and sit still.The street was quiet. A few lights on in windows, the lamp on the corner doing its usual job, someone's cat sitting on a wall two doors down watching me with the unimpressed expression cats reserved for humans who sat in parked cars at midnight instead of going inside like sensible people.I looked at my front door. Then I looked at Liam's. The light in the front room was on. I had parked in fro

Liam's POV"Start with tonight," I said. "Write down exactly what your manager said to you in that meeting. Not a summary, the actual words as close as you can remember them. Date it, time it, note that it was a private meeting and that you were the only two people present."She was watching me carefully. "Okay," she said."Then work backwards," I said. "Every incident you can remember. The first time you noticed a client had been redirected. The first time you heard the rumour. Any conversation you had with this woman where she said something that was not a direct threat but that you understood as one. Write all of it down with as much specific detail as you can produce.""I don't have proof of most of it," she said. "It is my word against hers.""That is why you write it down," I said. "Right now you have nothing on paper. She has two formal complaints. On paper she has a pattern and you have a denial. The moment you start documenting your version with dates and specifics, you start

Avery's POV Neither of us moved for a few seconds.The message was still on the screen and I was still holding the phone and the warmth that had been in the car thirty seconds ago had gone somewhere I could not get back to. Liam was looking at me expectant, seeing the confusion on my face and I was watching him read it. His face had gone into that very still version of itself that I had learned meant he was thinking rather than reacting.He looked up at me."Why do you look worried? What is that about? Can I see it?" he said.I handed him the phone.'Cute. Does Jade know her stepbrother is making moves on her best friend in a parked car? Maybe she should.'He read it, taking his time with it, and then he put the phone down on the dashboard face up and looked at the street outside. The occasional car went past on the road."Do you know the number?" he said."No," I said. "But I have a suspicion about who is behind it."He turned to look at me. "Colton."It was not a question. I nodded

Avery's POVLiam replied to the forwarded thread in four minutes.'I see it. Are you okay?'I typed back: 'Yes. Go to sleep.''Not happening', he said. 'Do you want me to come back over?'I looked at that for a second. The honest answer was yes. The practical answer was that it was nearly two in the morning and him coming back to my house in the dark would give whoever was watching exactly the kind of footage they were looking for.'No', I typed. 'Stay there. I am fine. I just wanted you to have an update on the situation.''Okay', he said. 'But I am not sleeping.''Neither am I', I said.There was a pause and then, 'We deal with this tomorrow. Together. Not you alone.'I put the phone down and lay back and stared at the ceiling and thought about the word together and what it cost him nothing to say and what it cost me everything to accept.I did not sleep for a long time.When I did, it was shallow and full of the kind of dreams that were not really dreams, just the day's thoughts re