Marry Ex's Billionaire Uncle After Divorce (Aurora and Jasper) novel Chapter 82

Chapter 55: The Crash–1

Chapter 55: The Crash

(Author’s POV)

Victoria got the call before she’d even made it back to the parking garage.

She was at the hospital within twenty minutes.

“Jasper.” She pushed through the curtain and stopped. He was sitting up in the bed, head wrapped in white gauze, face the color of old chalk. “You scared me half to death.”

Jasper didn’t answer right away. He was staring at the wall across from him.

Ethan’s words on the phone still lingered in his mind, refusing to fade.

“I’m fine,” he said, finally.

“You are not fine. You have a head wound and-”

“It’s a concussion. I’ve had worse.”

Victoria pulled a chair to the side of the bed and sat down hard. Her hands were shaking. She pressed them flat against her knees and tried to breathe, but it came out ragged, and then the tears started without her permission.

“You could have died,” she said. “Do you understand that? Your brother is already gone. If something happened to you-” Her voice broke. “I don’t know what I would do. I genuinely don’t know.”

Jasper closed his eyes.

She kept talking because she didn’t know how to stop. She told him he should have taken a driver, that no one with his responsibilities should be behind the wheel alone on a highway, that she had told him a hundred times to stop handling everything himself.

“Mother.” His voice was flat. “My head hurts.”

She stood up immediately. “I’ll get the doctor-”

“Sit down.”

She sat.

His gaze made her fall silent.

Chapter 55 The Clash F

“Go home,” he said. “I just need a couple of days.”

“I’m not leaving you here alone.”

“I want to be alone.”

“Jasper-”

Claim

“When you get back,” he said, “don’t tell Rosalind. Don’t say anything about the accident.” He paused. “And don’t contact my sister–in–law.”

Victoria blinked. He’d never called Sienna that before. Not like that. Not with that particular

flatness in his voice, like the word was a door being shut.

She opened her mouth. Closed it.

“I think Sienna should come,” she said carefully. “She’d want to know. She’d want to be here with you. It would be better than a nurse you’ve never-”

“No.” He said it without looking at her. “Nobody. I need two days, and then I have to get to Riverton City.”

“Riverton City? In this condition?”

“The partnerships won’t wait.”

“Jasper, you have a concussion-”

“Mother.” He turned his head toward the window. “Please.”

She pressed her lips together.

The guilt had been sitting in her chest since the moment she got the call. If he hadn’t been told about Aurora’s miscarriage while he was driving, he wouldn’t have had the car accident.

She stood, picked up her bag, and leaned down to press her hand briefly to his arm.

He didn’t pull away. But he didn’t look at her either.

She walked out of the ward and stood in the corridor for a moment, and then she thought of

Aurora.

This was her fault too. All of it.

(Aurora’s POV)

I came out of the hospital into the late afternoon and stood on the pavement for a moment, not moving.

Chapter 55 The Crash–1

The visit to Leo. Martha’s voice. Victoria’s hands reaching for me. The elevator ride down.

I didn’t want to go home and cook.

Clam

I pulled out my phone and typed a message to Phineas: *Something came up. I won’t be back for dinner tonight.*

His reply came in under a minute: *Fine.*

I had just started to think that he was, occasionally, a reasonable person to work for.

Then the second message arrived: *In the future, a heads–up before 6pm would be appreciated. Some of us don’t have dinner plans.*

I stared at the screen.

He had a private chef on speed dial. He had a car and a driver and an assistant who could book a table at any restaurant in this city with a single phone call. He had, as far as I could tell, the resources to solve every logistical problem known to man.

I typed back: *That’s what restaurants are for.*

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