Falling for My Best Friend's Brother

Avery Nash had two lives and one rule. Keep them completely separate.

By day she was the captain of the Crestwood University cheer squad and a Business Management student holding onto her scholarship by her fingernails.

By night she was Scarlett, masked and wigged and untouchable, dancing at Velvet Underground to cover the gap between what her scholarship paid and what her mother's deadbeat boyfriend kept taking from them.

On the night her boyfriend cheated on her with her biggest rival, Avery made one reckless decision. She followed a brooding stranger back to his motel room and gave him the one thing she had been saving.

Her virginity.

"Take off the mask. I want to see you." He had said.

"A little mystery never hurt anyone, did it?" she replied.

She slipped out before dawn, telling herself she would never see him again.

Then she rang her best friend, Jade's doorbell and he answered the door.

Liam Harrington was Jade's new stepbrother, who she hated, the transfer quarterback every girl on campus was already talking about, and the boy sitting three seats away from her in every Business Management lecture.

He was also the only person in the world who knew what Avery felt like without her armour on. He just did not know her real face.

Now Avery was living three lives at once. The captain, the stripper, and the girl quietly falling for the one man she was absolutely forbidden to want.

And the secret that started as one reckless birthday night was growing into something big enough to burn everything she had built.

001: Happy Birthday to me

Avery's POV

"If you drop her one more time, Brianna, I will pull you from the lineup myself."

The whole gym froze.

The music was still playing but nobody was moving. It suddenly became just twelve girls staring at me like I had said something in a foreign language, which I guess I had, because nobody on this squad ever talked to Brianna Holloway like that. At least not to her face. Not out loud.

Brianna turned around slowly. She had that smile she always wore, the pretty one that made coaches think she was sweet. But I had been watching her for two years. I knew exactly what that smile meant.

"Excuse me?" she said.

"You heard me." I walked toward her, keeping my voice steady. "That's the second time today you came off that stunt before Priya was set. If I hadn't stepped in just now, she would have landed on her wrist."

"I called the count," Brianna said, with a small shrug. "That's not my fault."

"You called it fast on purpose and you know it."

"Avery." She tilted her head like I was being difficult. "I'm just trying to make us better. Some people need to be pushed."

"And some people need to be checked," Jade said, stepping up beside me. "You've 'accidentally' botched three catches this week. All three of them Priya. Should we