Marry Ex's Billionaire Uncle After Divorce (Aurora and Jasper) novel Chapter 84

(Aurora’s POV)

Phineas Everett.

I turned the idea over in my head for exactly one second, then let it go.

“Livvy,” I said, “have you lost your mind?”

“What? I’m just saying-”

“You’re not just saying anything. You’re suggesting I develop feelings for the man who signs my paychecks and also happens to be my ex–husband’s uncle.” I set my glass down. “That’s not a joke. That’s a disaster.”

Olivia had the grace to look slightly embarrassed. “Okay, fine. I was just throwing it out there.”

“Throw it somewhere else.”

“I hear you, I hear you.” She raised both hands. “I take it back.”

I didn’t say anything more about it, but the thought lingered for a moment longer than I wanted it to.

Not because of Olivia’s logic – though I could see the dark humor in it, Jasper watching me become his aunt – but because it wasn’t even a real possibility. Phineas was untouchable. Decades of running the Everett empire, not a single rumor attached to his name. Whatever his private life looked like, it was exactly that: private, and entirely outside anything I could imagine stepping into.

And more than that, I was still buried under the wreckage of the first marriage. I hadn’t even cleared the rubble yet. The hearing was still ahead of me. Leo’s situation was still unresolved. The miscarriage was still something I hadn’t fully let myself feel.

I wasn’t capable of wanting anything from another person right now. Not even from someone as formidable as Phineas. Especially not from someone like that.

What I wanted was simple. Get the divorce done. Find a bone marrow match for Leo. Get as far from Jasper as geography and circumstance would allow. And then, eventually, figure out what a life that belonged entirely to me might look like.

That was enough. That was more than enough.

“Forget Phineas,” I said. “Forget all of it.”

< Chapter 50: 8**** Harassment

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Olivia nodded, but she was watching me with that particular expression she got when she thought she understood something I didn’t. I ignored it and reached for my glass.

We sat quietly for a while after that. The bar was low and warm around us, and I let myself sink into it.

Then I started talking.

I told her about Martha. Not the scene at the hospital – she already knew that part. I mean the older version of it, the pattern underneath.

The way Martha had always looked at Sienna like she was something precious and looked at me like I was a problem she hadn’t solved yet.

How Sienna got the gentleness and I got the corrections. How I used to tell myself it was because Martha had raised Sienna from childhood, that it was just familiarity, that it didn’t mean anything.

“I don’t understand it,” I said. “I’ve never understood it. How do you give a stranger’s child more than you give your own?”

Olivia didn’t try to explain it. She just refilled my glass and said, “It’s not about you. It never was.”

“I know that.”

“Do you?”

I looked at her.

“Knowing it and feeling it are different things,” she said.

I didn’t argue.

By the time we’d been there two hours, I’d had half a bottle of beer on top of the wine, and the room had developed a gentle, unhelpful sway. Not spinning. Just soft around the edges.

Olivia noticed before I did.

“I’m calling my driver,” she said.

“I’m fine.”

“You just missed the bar with your elbow.”

“I was reaching for my bag.”

Chapter 56 8***** Harassment “Your bag is on the other side.”

I straightened up. “I’ll get a cab.”

“Aurora-”

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“I’m serious. I’m fine.” I held up one hand and counted off my fingers, one by one, with great deliberateness. “See? All five. Fully functional. Completely sober.”

Olivia stared at me for a long moment.

“That’s not how that works,” she said.

“It absolutely is.”

She exhaled, clearly deciding this was a battle she wasn’t going to win. She pulled out her phone and called a cab herself, then walked me out to the curb and photographed the license plate before the car pulled away.

“Text me when you’re home,” she called after me.

The driver was a middle–aged man with a rigid posture and the expression of someone who had made certain decisions about his evening and was not interested in complications. He looked at me in the rearview mirror as I settled into the back seat.

“Just so you know,” he said, “if there’s any vomiting in this vehicle, the cleaning fee is a hundred and fifty dollars.”

I looked at the back of his headrest.

A hundred and fifty dollars.

I sat up straight.

There was something clarifying about a specific number. Not a vague threat, not a general warning – a hundred and fifty dollars. I could feel my stomach making calculations it hadn’t been making before. I fixed my gaze on the streetlights moving past the window and issued a firm internal instruction to every organ below my ribcage: behave.

This city had already taken enough from me. It wasn’t getting another cent.

I made it back without incident.

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