All Chapters of Falling for My Best Friend's Brother: Chapter 241 - Chapter 250

Avery's POVThe squad dispersed in the way squads did after home wins.The energy broke naturally into smaller groups, girls drifting toward the changing rooms or toward friends in the crowd, the celebration settling from the collective into the individual. I stayed at the sideline position and ran through my post-game notes the way I always did. I kept my eyes on my clipboard and my face on the job.Keely came past on her way out and squeezed my arm once without saying anything.I watched Mia go. She was walking with two of the neutral girls, not with Brianna's group, her bag over her shoulder and her head down in the way she held it when she was thinking about something. She did not look back.Brianna was at the far end of the sideline gathering her kit with the three girls who had signed alongside her. Her back was to me and she was talking and gesturing and everything about her posture was relaxed and warm. The expression I had seen on her face three minutes ago might as well have

Brianna's POVMia's room was on the second floor of the freshman block.I had been there twice before, both times in the first two weeks of semester when I had been building the relationship carefully. I knew which floor, which corridor, which door with the small whiteboard on it that still had a welcome message from move-in day that nobody had wiped off yet.I knocked at eight fifteen on Saturday morning.I heard movement inside and then silence. Then the kind of quiet that meant someone had looked through the peephole and was deciding something. Then the door opened.Mia looked like someone who had not slept well. Her eyes had the slightly raw quality of a person who had been thinking too hard in the dark for too many hours. She was in a sweatshirt with her hair down. She looked at me with an expression that was not surprised and not welcoming and somehow managed to be both of those things at once."I was going to text you," Mia said."I know," I replied. "That is why I came in pers

Avery's POVPractice ran for ninety minutes.Brianna was in her position for all of it, with perfect counts, perfect spacing, eyes forward, the professional compliance that had been her presentation all season. I ran the session, called the formations, captained my squad through the work, and watched her from the corner of my eye the way I had been watching her for weeks and gave nothing away.After the session ended and the squad began to disperse, Vega caught my eye from across the track and gave me a small nod toward the building entrance. I picked up my bag and went.Vega was waiting in the corridor outside her office."You are staying," she said quietly. "I need a witness.""Understood," I replied.She opened the office door and I went in and sat in the chair against the side wall, not the chair across from the desk, the one off to the side that made it clear I was present but not the subject of the conversation. Vega sat behind the desk and we waited.Three minutes later Brianna

Avery's POVThe notification came through at half past six on Monday evening.I was sitting at my kitchen table with my laptop open, a plate of food I had made and not yet eaten, and Liam's text from earlier in the afternoon still on my phone screen. I had been trying to work out how to respond to it in a way that covered everything and had not yet found the right version.The email was from Dr. Osei's office. I saw the subject line before I opened it and felt something tighten in my chest that had been tight for so long I had stopped noticing it.'Welfare Review — Formal Closure Notification.'My heart started beating faster in my chest while I opened it.I read it once.Then I put both hands flat on the table and read it again, because the first time had gone too fast to feel real.The welfare review of the cheer squad leadership structure had been formally closed. New testimony submitted to the review file combined with documented observations from the coaching staff over the revie

Brianna's POV He put his glass down. "Come on," he said. "We have been working toward the same thing for months. We are on the same side. That does not mean we cannot also just be two people in the same room for one evening." "Do not finish that sentence," I said. "Brianna." "Do not," I said. "I am serious." He leaned forward with his elbows on the table and looked at me with the expression that probably worked on other people in other rooms and said, "We both just had a hard night. There is nothing wrong with taking a break from it." "A break," I said. "An hour," he said. "Two hours. The complaints are submitted. The programme director has the document. None of that changes tonight regardless of what we do in the next two hours." I looked at him. I had spent eleven months believing Colton Reeves was an ally. That what we were doing was built on shared goals and shared frustration and a shared understanding of what this programme owed both of us that it had not given. I had