Marry Ex's Billionaire Uncle After Divorce (Aurora and Jasper) novel Chapter 211

3 Chapter 176 Don’t forget Your Meds

Chapter 176: Don’t Forget Your Meds

(Aurora’s POV)

Phineas told me that evening.

“Tomorrow,” he said. “We go to the estate. I want you to meet my father properly.”

Clam

I felt it immediately – that cold tightening in my chest that I associated with rooms full of people who had

already decided what they thought of me.

“He’s going to have reservations,” I said. “About my history. About the fact that I was married to someone

in your family.”

“Probably.”

“That doesn’t bother you?”

Phineas looked at me steadily. “If he makes it impossible, we leave. We build something on our own

terms. I’ve told you that before and I meant it.”

He wasn’t performing certainty. He just had it.

He mentioned Rosalind then – the painting, the handprint, what had happened at the dinner. I listened

without saying anything.

I wasn’t happy about it. I wasn’t smug about it either. I just felt tired.

I knew that feeling too well – standing there trying to set a boundary, trying to teach something, and having someone else walk in behind you and undo it with a single word. I had spent years in that particular

exhaustion.

Phineas pulled me into him without saying anything. His hand moved slowly over my hair.

“You won’t have to deal with that anymore,” he said quietly. “Not from them.”

I didn’t answer. I pressed my face against his chest and focused on breathing, on the steady sound of his

heartbeat, until the tension in my shoulders finally let go.

I lay awake longer than I expected after he fell asleep beside me. The house was quiet. The room was dark. I kept thinking about what it would mean to walk into that estate tomorrow and stand in front of a man who had spent the last week formally welcoming my ex–husband into his family. I tried to imagine his face when he found out. I couldn’t quite get there.

I told myself it didn’t matter. Phineas had already said it – if his father couldn’t accept it, we would leave. He had said it the way other men said *I’ll pick up dinner on the way home*. As though it were no decision

at all.

Eventually, somewhere past midnight, I slept.

I woke up the next morning to an empty bed.

< Chapter 176 Don’t Forget Your Meds

Claim

I found him in the dressing room, standing in front of the mirror, working on a tie. A plain one, dark silver, nothing flashy. But he was taking his time with it in a way that was unusual for him.

I leaned against the doorframe and watched him.

“What kind of deal are you closing today?” I asked. “Because you look like you’re preparing for a hostile

takeover.”

He caught my eyes in the mirror. There was something warm in his expression – quiet, unhurried.

“More important than that,” he said.

He turned and crossed the room to me. He didn’t say anything else. He just adjusted the strap of my dress where it had twisted at my shoulder, smoothed it flat with two fingers, and then leaned down and pressed his forehead briefly against mine.

I closed my eyes.

For a moment, in the quiet of that dressing room, with the morning light coming in through the high window and his hand resting against the side of my neck, I let myself believe him. All of it. That this was

something I had earned. That walking into the estate today was not the beginning of another long, polite

war I would have to fight in heels.

That this was just a Tuesday. And we were going to see his father.

He stepped back and looked at me for a moment – really looked, the way he did sometimes when he was

about to say something I wouldn’t have asked for and would not have known how to ask for.

“Aurora.” His voice had dropped slightly. “Whatever happens in that house today – you don’t have to

perform for him. You don’t have to charm him. You don’t have to soften anything you are. He is the one

being asked to meet a standard. Not you.”

I opened my mouth to answer and found I didn’t have anything to say back to that.

He took my hand and led me out of the dressing room.

(Author’s POV)

At the estate, William was already dressed by seven–thirty.

Dark suit, cufflinks swapped out for a more formal pair, tie knotted with military precision. Eleanor watched him from the mirror at her dressing table, one earring in, the other in her hand.

“Is everything ready?” she asked.

“Yes. Don’t take all morning.”

She turned around. “Did you pack your blood pressure medication? And the emergency kit?”

William frowned. “Why would I need any of that?”

“Phineas asked me to remind you,” she said simply.

Chapter 176 Don 11erget Your Meds

William stood very still.

He looked at his wife. He looked at the door. He looked back at his wife.

He was going to meet his daughter–in–law. And his son had told him to bring emergency medication.

Claim

He stood there in his carefully chosen suit with his carefully knotted tie, and he could not decide whether

he was more offended or simply defeated.

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