Free Better Than You (The Walker Family Series Book 3) by Lauren Gilley Page B

who stood frowning with his hands jammed in his coat pockets, and not Regina.
    “Oh, shit,” she breathed as she sat back on her heels, dread slamming into her. Dread – that was a harsh realization to think that she’d rather sit through a root canal than open the door to her boyfriend.
    “Your car’s here, I know you’re home, Delta.” She jumped when his muffled voice came seeping in around the cracks. “Unless,” his tone became nasty, “whoever you’re screwing drove.”
    With a sigh, she flipped the deadbolt and swung the door wide, feet braced apart in the threshold; she’d already decided against inviting him in. “Hi.” She forced a tight smile. “Nice to see you, too.”
    On a good day, Greg was as charming as dry wheat toast. Tonight, he was pissed, but in a cold, flat, disinterested way. His brows were pulled together and a frown tugged at one corner of his mouth, but otherwise, he still had the dry wheat toast thing going on. “Don’t try to be cute,” he said. “Are you going to tell me that guy last night was your long lost cousin or something?”
    “He’s a friend.” She reached back and caught the sleeve of her wool coat, managed to flick the whole heavy thing down without leaving her post and dragged it up into her arms.
    “A friend you’re screwing.”
    “Don’t say ‘screwing’.” S he made a face as she slid her arms through the sleeves and flipped her hair out over the collar. “It makes you sound jealous and we both know you aren’t.”
    “I’m not?” H e took a step toward her that she ignored, meeting his gaze without flinching. “You think you can run around on me and I won’t mind?”
    Guilt pricked at her, but she wasn’t going to let him see it. “We never agreed that we were exclusive – ”
    “We ’re out every weekend, Delta!” She’d never heard him raise his voice before and it startled her. “Do you think I’m spending hundreds of dollars on dinners and flowers for some other woman?”
    “I – ”
    “Did you think about me at all before you threw yourself at some asshole? Or should I say several ?”
    In a gesture that reminded her, horrifically, of her mother, she stabbed a forefinger at him through the space between them. “Don’t you paint me like that! I am not like that, Greg!” And that was exactly the problem: she wasn’t like that. She was careful and precise and she weighed the long term effects of every little thing she ever did; she wasn’t the person who had grabbed a double handful of Mike Walker’s shirt and pulled him down into bed with her. She wasn’t .
    “Then what do you call last night?” He was in danger of yelling as a vein popped out along his temple and his face started to color. “You-you duck out on me and you…sneak around and…bring some guy home with you.” She’d never seen him so flustered and it tied her stomach in knots. “What the hell ? You can’t even break up with me? You have to keep me hanging around like some poor stupid bastard in case you change your mind and want me to stick around?”
    “It wasn’t like that.”
    “Then explain it to me!”
    Delta opened her mouth…and nothing came out. She couldn’t even explain it to herself; she didn’t have a chance of helping him to understand. After her own stupid teenage mistakes, she’d come to think that nothing ever “just happened” – she rolled her eyes whenever someone used it as an excuse – and was so sure that everything that “happened” to her was something she’d asked for. School, work – she got what she strove for. But Mike wasn’t anything she’d planned or hoped. At least he didn’t feel that way – really, her incessant guilt was the product of thinking she’d led him on somehow, that she’d secretly wanted this to happen.
    Greg raked a hand back through his tidy dark hair, smile false and grim. “I’m good to you, Delta. I don’t deserve this.”
    “I know you don’t. You – ”
    “And I’m not