Marry Ex's Billionaire Uncle After Divorce (Aurora and Jasper) novel Chapter 285

Chapter 250 Propose to Me Again

Chapter 250: Propose to Me Again

(Aurora’s POV)

My first instinct was to dismiss it entirely. Before this arrangement began, Phineas and I had existed in completely separate worlds. I couldn’t think of a single reason I would be the person he’d carried with him all these years.

The corner of his mouth curved up. He didn’t rush to explain. He didn’t seem to care whether I believed him or not. He simply draped one arm around my shoulders, right there in front of Patrick, and steered me

out of the consulting room at an unhurried pace.

Patrick stood in the doorway and watched us go. He shook his head slowly, the expression on his face somewhere between disbelief and resignation.

I didn’t look back.

In the car, my thoughts were a complete mess. The pregnancy news and what Phineas had just said were tangled together, and I couldn’t pull them apart. I leaned against the seat and stared out the window at the moving lights.

Phineas didn’t tell the driver to take us home. He leaned forward and gave a different address, something in Midtown. I heard it and couldn’t immediately place it.

A large exhibition hall. I wasn’t sure why.

(Author’s POV)

When the car stopped, the building was dark. Every window was black. The place was clearly closed for the night.

Aurora stepped out and looked up at the unlit facade, uncertain.

Phineas made a brief gesture to the staff waiting nearby. A moment later, lights came on inside – not the harsh white of maintenance lighting, but warm exhibition lights, the kind designed to show things at their best. They came on section by section, illuminating display platforms, mounted panels, projection

screens.

The space looked exactly as it had years ago, during a technology showcase. Everything arranged as it had been then, as if the room had been waiting all this time.

Aurora stood in the entrance and stared.

Phineas moved to stand beside her. “This is where we first met,” he said quietly. “You were presenting a project. I was in the audience.”

(Aurora’s POV)

Something shifted in the back of my memory.

alt

Chapter 250 Propose to Me Again

I was pulled back to the year I graduated. I’d just joined the R&D department at Aether Life Sciences – Jasper’s company – and I was leading the public presentation for my first project. I remembered being so nervous my palms were sweating. I stood at the podium and looked out at a room full of faces I couldn’t really see, focused only on getting through my notes without losing my place.

I had no memory of Phineas being there. No memory of anyone in particular watching me.

“You were wearing a dark navy blazer,” he said. “Your hair was pinned up. When you got to the key data points, you traced each one on the screen with the laser pointer. You didn’t look up once. You were completely focused.”

He remembered it more clearly than I did. He described it in enough detail that I couldn’t argue.

“I didn’t see you,” I said.

“I know.”

“Then how-”

“You weren’t looking for me,” he said simply. “I was looking at you.”

He told me then – told me everything. That at the time, I’d already had a boyfriend. Jasper. That he’d seen that and said nothing. He’d stood in that audience and watched me walk off the stage and go back to

someone else’s life, and he’d done nothing except remember.

Then I got married. Then I got divorced. And then he built a situation that brought me into his.

He said all of it without apology. His voice was level, like he was describing something that had simply happened and couldn’t be changed. But I stood there listening, and I felt something clench hard in my

chest.

I started running back through things I’d told myself were coincidences. Gavin appearing in my life at exactly the right moment. The job offer. The contract marriage that had seemed so cleanly transactional. Every piece of it, placed with precision.

None of it had been accidental.

I was still processing that when he moved.

He lowered himself onto one knee in front of me.

He reached into the inner pocket of his jacket and took out a ring. Not the one from our original arrangement – I’d never seen this one before. A platinum band set with an oval diamond, clean and unadorned.

He lo

low. “Not because of a contract. Not because of any condition. Just

< Chapter 250 Propose to Me Again

Something gave way inside me, quietly and without warning.

+25 Points

I thought about everything he’d done over these months. The things I’d told myself were just part of the arrangement – the way he showed up when things were bad, the way he handled problems before I even named them, the way he stayed. I’d convinced myself it was professionalism. Duty. Habit.

But standing here, in a room he’d had lit up just to show me where we started, I couldn’t hold onto that

version anymore.

Every careful, deliberate thing he’d done had the quality of someone who was in over their head and trying not to show it. Someone who didn’t know how to say the thing directly, so he built it into every action

instead.

It had always been for me. Just me.

***

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