All Chapters of Falling for My Best Friend's Brother: Chapter 291 - Chapter 300

Brianna's POVNikki had told us to arrive at nine and sit at the tables on the left side of the room, far enough from the stage that the lighting would not reach us properly but close enough that we would have a clear line of sight when the performance started.We arrived at eight fifty.Zoey ordered a drink without looking at the menu and I did the same. We sat with our backs to the left wall, looked at the stage, and did not talk much. There was not a lot to say while we were waiting. We had said most of it already, and the rest of it would come after, when we had seen what we came to see and could have the conversation it warranted.Beside me Zoey checked her phone for the second time in ten minutes."Stop checking it," I said quietly. "If Colton texts you in here, it will look exactly like what it is."She put the phone away. "I am not used to waiting for things.""Get used to it tonight," I said. "This is the easy part."The room filled steadily. By nine thirty it was warm and bu

Brianna's POVNikki picked a bar she knew near the Velvet Underground, a quieter place than the club, the kind that had enough background noise to keep a conversation private.I got there first.Zoey arrived two minutes later and sat down without taking her coat off, which was what she did in rooms she had not decided about yet. Colton came in at seven on the dot, scanned the room with the efficiency of someone who needed to know the layout before sitting down in it, and came to the table.Then Nikki.She came in from a different direction to the rest of us. She had been nearby already, watching the arrivals before she joined them. That told me enough. Someone who spent four years running the back of house at the Velvet Underground did not walk into new rooms without checking them first. When she sat down she had already read everyone at the table. I could see it in the order she looked at us, Colton first, then Zoey, then me last, the way you looked at an arrangement you had been bri

Brianna's POVNikki sent the file at one in the morning.I was still awake. I had not been able to sleep. We had all agreed that we all did not need to be present in the club for the video to be made. The anticipation of the file had sat in the room with me all evening and the brain did not settle into rest when something like that was pending. My phone lit up with a message from her, and the file was there. I opened it before I finished reading the message.The video was three minutes and forty seconds long.I watched it once on my phone in bed with the screen brightness turned down and the volume just above silent. Then I watched it again. The first time I watched for the footage. The second time I watched for what the footage would do to someone who knew her. By the end of the second viewing I already knew it was enough. The mask did what it was supposed to do for a stranger. It did less for anyone who had sat three feet from Avery Nash in the athletics complex and watched her m

Avery's POVLiam came over that evening and I was not ready for him.Not physically. The house was fine, the kitchen was clean, there was food in the fridge. I was not ready in the way that mattered. The version of me he expected was not the version standing in the kitchen.He let himself in with the key I had given him two months ago, found me in the kitchen, kissed me on the side of the head, and sat down at the table and started talking about his day.I listened. I responded. I laughed when something was funny. I asked a follow-up question about something Tate had said at training.And every thirty seconds my brain checked the number.The shares had been at fifty that morning. By noon they were at a hundred and twelve. By four they were at two hundred and thirty. The clip was moving slowly but it was moving. Every time it moved it reached someone new, and every someone new was a person who might know someone who might eventually send the link to Liam Harrington and say hey have yo

Liam's POVI told Avery I was going to see Tate and spend the night at his place. So when she got back from work tonight, I would neither be at her place nor mine.It was the first time I had lied to her about where I was going and the lie rode with me the entire drive across town. I had spent weeks telling Avery that secrets and dishonesty were the thing that broke people, and now I was driving to a club behind her back. I did not miss the hypocrisy of it.But I could not tell her.I could not sit in her kitchen and say I am going to the Velvet Underground to find a woman I used to talk to in a private room before we were together. There was no way to say it that ended well, and I did not want to watch her face while I said it. So I lied about Tate and drove and parked two streets away, because I was not stupid enough to leave my car outside the venue where anyone could see it.I walked in at nine fifteen.The room was busy but not full and the lighting was the same low warm amber I