Marry Ex's Billionaire Uncle After Divorce (Aurora and Jasper) novel Chapter 254

Chapter 219: On Me

(Author’s POV)

“If you don’t want me to take responsibility for you,” he said pleasantly, “then I’d like to ask – who’s going to take responsibility for me?” He paused. “Last night was my first time.”

The room went completely silent.

Aurora stood very still and said nothing at all.

(Aurora’s POV)

Olivia’s face went completely red.

“That is a lie,” she said, her voice sharp enough to cut glass. “An absolute, shameless lie, and you know it.”

Gavin pressed his lips together and looked wounded. Genuinely, infuriatingly wounded.

“I’m just asking,” he said, his tone perfectly mild, “whether you’re really going to stand there and pretend it didn’t happen.”

Somehow, in the space of thirty seconds, the entire situation had inverted itself. Olivia, who had every

right to be furious, now looked like the villain – the heartless woman who’d led a man on and walked away without a backward glance. Gavin looked like someone quietly nursing a bruise he was too dignified to

mention.

Olivia spun toward me. “Aurora. Say something. Tell him.”

I opened my mouth, closed it, and looked sideways at Phineas.

He was watching the whole thing with the particular expression of a man who had already mentally left

the building. I could see it – the faint tightening around his jaw, the way his gaze had gone flat and distant.

It was late. He wanted to go home.

He leaned slightly toward Gavin and said, quietly, “If you’re serious about this, come by the house

tomorrow. In daylight. There’s no point dragging it out tonight.”

Gavin nodded once, as though that were perfectly reasonable. But then he turned to Grandpa Redmond,

and I realized the whole scene had been staged from the beginning.

Olivia had blocked him on everything. Every platform, every number. He had no way in. So he’d come here, to the one door she couldn’t lock against him – her grandfather’s living room – and made his case in front of an audience before she could shut that door too.

“Sir,” Gavin said, and his voice shifted into something earnest and unhurried, “I’m not asking for anything unreasonable. I’d just like Olivia to unblock me. That’s all. So we can have a real conversation.”

Grandpa Redmond looked at him. Then he looked at Olivia. Then back at Gavin, and the expression on his face was unmistakable – the barely–contained approval of a man who had already decided this was

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Chapter 279 On Me

exactly what he wanted.

Claim

The Sterling family. Old money, impeccable reputation, the kind of match you couldn’t engineer better if you tried. As far as Grandpa Redmond was concerned, this was already done.

Olivia made a noise that was somewhere between a laugh and a scream.

I stepped forward. “Okay. I think we’ve all had enough for one evening.” I kept my voice calm and even. “Everyone’s tired, and this is not the kind of conversation that goes well after midnight. Let’s pick this up tomorrow, with fresh eyes, when nobody’s running on fumes.”

Grandpa Redmond seemed amenable to that. Gavin stood, straightened his jacket, and looked entirely

unbothered.

Olivia did not unblock him. She made that very clear to the room before anyone could assume otherwise.

Before Gavin left, he caught my arm near the doorway.

“A moment,” he said.

I stopped.

He looked at me directly, no performance in it. “I intend to do right by her. I want you to know that.” He

paused. “If you could put in a word-”

“Do you actually like her?” I asked. “Or is this about something else?”

He didn’t hesitate. “Yes.”

I studied him for a second. The two of them had barely spoken before last night. The speed of it didn’t sit

right with me, and I knew – better than most – how much damage Olivia’s last relationship had done. How long she’d spent putting herself back together afterward.

“Then do the work yourself,” I said. “I’m not handing you a shortcut.”

From just behind me, Phineas’s voice came, dry and unhurried. “A man your age asking someone else to

do his courting for him is, frankly, embarrassing.”

Gavin had the grace to look slightly pained.

Phineas put a hand at my back and steered us both toward the door.

The drive home was quieter than the evening had been. We sat together in the back seat, the city moving

past the windows in streaks of amber and white. I was still half–processing the entire spectacle – Gavin’s calculated innocence, Olivia’s fury, Grandpa Redmond’s barely–concealed delight.

I became aware, slowly, that Phineas was looking at me.

Not at his phone. Not at the window. At me.

“Is there something on my face?” I asked.

He didn’t answer that.

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Chapter 219 On Me

Instead, he reached over and brushed a loose strand of hair away from my ear. His touch was light, unhurried. When he spoke, his voice was low.

“Why did you pull back earlier? At the venue.”

My chest did something I didn’t ask it to do. “I didn’t pull back.”

“Your expression changed.” He said it simply, without accusation. “I saw it.”

“I was just-”

He dipped his head slightly and pressed a quiet kiss to the corner of my mouth.

I stopped talking.

“Whatever went wrong,” he said, in the same even tone, “was on me. I’m sorry.”

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