《Falling for My Best Friend's Brother》全部章節：第 231 章 - 第 240 章

Liam's POVColton found out by Wednesday.I did not know how. I had not told anyone except Avery, and Tate did not know I had gone. But Colton found out the way Colton found things out, which was through the network he had been building in this team since long before I arrived. On Wednesday morning before the session started he came to stand at the locker adjacent to mine while I was getting changed. He did not say anything for a moment, and I knew he was there and said nothing either.Then he said, "You went to Reyes."Not a question.I closed my locker and looked at him. "Yes," I said.He looked back at me with the expression I had not seen from him since the path between the buildings on Monday morning. Not the captain expression and not the managed composure. The real one."About the meeting," he said."About team dynamics and performance concerns. Yes," I replied.He was quiet for a moment. The changing room had other players in it but they were moving carefully around the edges

Avery's POVVega's message came through on Friday morning.'My office before your first session. Nine o'clock.'I had been expecting it since Wednesday. I had watched Brianna move through the squad in the two days between the welfare review notification and now, the quiet purposeful conversations that had nothing to do with formation prep or game day readiness. I had watched Mia stop meeting my eyes during the Thursday session. I had watched the fresher from the stunt avoid my corner of the changing room. I had known something was being built and I had not been able to stop it. I had gone to bed on Thursday night knowing that Friday morning was going to tell me what it was.I went to Vega's office at nine and sat down and she closed the door."A collective statement was submitted to Dr. Osei's office yesterday evening," she said. "I received a copy this morning.""How many signatures," I asked."Five."I said nothing."I am going to read you the key points," Vega said, "because I thin

Avery's POVI went to Liam's at four.The game was at seven thirty and I needed to leave by six. I had two hours, and I did not want to spend them alone in my house turning the five names over in my head for the fourteenth time, so I knocked on his door. He opened it and looked at me for a second, then stepped back and let me in without saying anything.His kitchen was warm. He had been making food that he'd abandoned mid-process when I knocked, something on the hob still with bread sitting out on the counter. I sat at his table and he finished making it, set a plate in front of me, then sat down across from me. We ate for a few minutes in the easy quiet.Then I said, "I am frightened."He looked at me."Not about the game," I told him. "About what happens after it. The review recommendation is coming whether we win or lose tonight. The five names are in the file whether we have the best session of the season or the worst." I looked at the table. "I have spent the last two weeks docum

Liam's POVColton had learned from the first game.He could not run the same campaign he had run a week ago. The formal concern sat in Reyes' file now, documenting a pattern of withheld throws. If Reyes had been watching from the hash mark and had seen what Tate described, then another game of Colton looking away from the open receiver would not be a captain managing his system. It would be a captain providing evidence against himself.So Colton adapted.He threw to me.The first quarter he threw to me three times. Each time on routes that were technically correct, each time into coverage that was marginally tighter than it needed to be, the throw arriving a half second after the window was at its widest. Not bad throws. Not obviously wrong. Just slightly off the optimal timing in ways that produced an incompletion, a short gain instead of a big one, a play that looked like the receiver not quite getting there rather than a quarterback throwing into closing coverage.I caught two of t

Liam's POVI did not go looking for Reyes.I had learned enough about how this programme worked to know that the conversations that mattered happened when the other person was ready to have them, not when you needed to have them. So I did my post-game, congratulated the players around me, went through the handshake line, did everything a second-semester transfer who had just scored the winning touchdown was supposed to do, and waited.Reyes found Colton first.I saw it from about thirty metres away. Reyes put a hand briefly on Colton's shoulder, the way coaches did when they needed a player to come somewhere. Colton turned and they moved away from the main celebration toward the near tunnel entrance where the noise was slightly less and nobody would overhear them easily.I did not go closer.I watched from where I was. Around me the celebration was continuing—players pulling each other in, the noise climbing—and I kept it at the edges of my attention while I watched.The conversation