All Chapters of Falling for My Best Friend's Brother: Chapter 371 - Chapter 380

Avery's POVShe stood across from me in the kitchen and did not sit down, and I understood that she needed to be on her feet for this the same way I needed to be standing rather than seated. Some conversations required that. The ability to move if you needed to. The option to turn away."Carter told me before we married that he had done things he was not proud of," she said. "He said there was money he had moved through a company that was not entirely clean, and that he had paid people to keep quiet about it. He was not detailed. I did not push him to be. I told myself that everyone had a past and that what mattered was the man he was now, not the man he had been then."She paused."I believed that because I wanted to," she said. "I want you to know I am not confused about that."I held that. She had known there was something beneath the surface and she had chosen not to dig. I understood that. I had done the same thing with Dean, year after year, telling myself the situation was mana

Avery's POVI did not eat breakfast.I stood in the kitchen for a while, looking at the gap in the fence, and then I put on my jacket and I went over. The street outside was quiet in the way it always was this early, nobody out yet, just the sound of my own footsteps on the pavement.It was early. His car was still in the drive. I did not check for Carter's. I knocked before I could stand there long enough to change my mind.Liam opened the door.He looked at me the way he had been looking at me every time we accidentally crossed parts since our falling out."Are you looking for Jade? She's in her room." he said."I need to talk to you," I said, before he could turn around and walk away.He stepped back to let me in.We went to the kitchen. I did not sit down. He leaned against the counter and crossed his arms and waited, like as if he knew exactly what I was going to say."Is your dad home?" I said.Something crossed his face. "He left early. Why?""Because what I am about to tell yo

Avery's POVI made dinner for three, and it was the strangest thing I had done in weeks.Dean came down when I called him, and he stood in the doorway for a moment before he sat, the way a guest sat in someone else's house rather than the way he used to sit here, sprawled and certain of his place at the table, elbows wide, never once asking if the chair he took was the one someone else wanted."Thank you," he said, when I put a plate down in front of him."Do not make it a thing. It is dinner. Nobody is being kind."My mom sat across from him and did not look at him directly for most of the meal. Her eyes stayed on her plate, on the window, on anything that was not his face. I understood that. There were years of things between them that a plate of pasta was not going to smooth over, and I did not expect it to."How is your course going," Dean said, looking at me. It was such an ordinary question, the kind of thing anyone might ask across a dinner table, and it landed strangely in a r

Avery's POVDean did not come back.Not that day, not the next, not the one after that. His phone went straight to a message saying the number was no longer in service, and after four days of trying it my mom stopped trying altogether. I knew despite what she said, she still had feelings for him. But she looked obviously very disappointed and upset that she was able to fall for his scam once again. He was moving from place to place and didn't have any other option of a place to hide from his debt collectors other than with us.He definitely must have gotten a tip that his loan sharks came looking for him at our house. That must be the only reason why he would not return after several days. I thought, by the end of that week, that we had heard the last of him. Part of me almost believed it. But another part of me had spent enough of my life learning better than to believe anything about Dean was ever really finished.Then, on Thursday evening, the house phone rang. Nobody used that n

Avery's POVDean's things were gone from the spare room by the time I came down the next morning, boxed up and left by the door the way my mom had promised. She had not said much about it since, and neither had I.Liam had stayed on the step until well past midnight, and there had not been anything else to say once he finally left, just the quiet of two people who had said enough for one evening and knew it.The house felt different this week. Lighter, in the way after something heavy had finally been carried out of it.Vega called me into her office on Tuesday."The hearing is set," she said, before I had even sat down. "Friday, two o'clock. The board wants this resolved before the season moves any further, and honestly, so do I.""What does the format look like.""You give a statement first," Vega said. "Brianna gives hers after. The board can call up to three squad members to speak if they think it is relevant to either side. It will not take longer than an hour, but I want you pre