Page 53 of Unrealistic Expectations

Luke stepped closer to her, but he must have seen the murder in her gaze and backed off. “I was going to tell you.”

“Again, fuck off.”

He gave her a look and opened his hands to show her that he wasn’t threatening. “After everything we’ve been through, you shouldn’t talk to me like that.”

“After everything we’ve been through, you shouldn’t have gotten another woman pregnant while we were still together.”

She noticed then that Galvin had pulled Kari to the side. She didn’t know if she wanted to punch him in the face or thank him. But she didn’t want Kari to hear what she had to say to Luke, and Galvin had probably moved the woman away just in case Jessica decided to start chucking floral centerpieces at Luke’s head.

“I didn’t want you to find out like this.” Luke was still trying to defend himself.

“How did you want me to find out?” She did not have the patience for this, and she could tell that Luke was surprised by how she was talking to him. She’d never spoken to him this way when they were together. “I’m sure you thought I’d be hiding in our half-empty condo, still licking my wounds because you walked away. I was always there waiting for you, so why wouldn’t that be the case even after you walked away with the life we’d always planned for?”

“I know you haven’t been waiting around.” He nodded his head at Galvin. “I saw you cavorting with that guy all over your Instagram, and I knew you’d moved on. I questioned your judgment, sure, but I didn’t think that you’d get upset about seeing that I had done it, too.”

Jessica put her hand on her hip and gritted her teeth to keep from braining Luke with her wineglass. “You’re right. I have moved on. But I waited till after you left to do so. You clearly didn’t.”

“We weren’t happy together for a long time, and I knew that we weren’t going to end up married with children.”

“See, the problem is that you never told me that until you were walking out the door. And I don’t know if you would ever have walked out the door had you not gotten another woman pregnant.” She was close to shrieking at that point, and several people were staring at them. Out of her peripheral vision, she could see Barbie and Kelly at a nearby table. They always had her back, and she knew they would prevent her from doing anything that would get her arrested, if necessary.

“I wasn’t sure I was going to leave until I left. We had so many years together—”

“So you were thinking about abandoning your child?” When he opened his mouth to answer, she continued, “Does Kari know that?”

Luke’s shoulders dropped, and she could tell he was growing weary of trying to defend himself. Good, there was nothing that he could say that would make what he’d done defensible. “I didn’t think you’d care. I didn’t think there was enough spark left in our relationship that you would care one way or the other.”

“I don’t care that you left me. I care that you lied to me and betrayed me. I care that you wasted so many years of my life when I could have found someone else and gotten what I needed from them. Was I just convenient to have around?”

She thought back to all the times that she’d tried to be the perfect daughter so that her mother wouldn’t have to hunt for a new boyfriend to take care of them—clipping coupons, signing herself up for free lunch and free breakfast at school so that her mom could have the whole box of Pop-Tarts to herself. Maybe she was so used to making things work on their own that she’d sought out a partner who would need exactly that kind of care from her as an adult. She hadn’t ever really been in love with Luke; he’d just given her something familiar.

Fuck.

“I don’t want to make a scene. I honestly thought that you’d moved on,” Luke said. “It’s beyond me why you’d ever move on with that guy, but I’m guessing by the way that you’re reacting to seeing me that you deliberately sought out someone who I hated.”

“Shut the fuck up, Luke.” Four f-bombs in one argument with Luke was kind of a record. “I didn’t pick Galvin out because you hated him. I picked him because he’s been there for me every moment I needed him to be, from the second we ran into each other. He takes care of me in the way that I need, and that’s something I’ve never had. He makes me have fun, even when I don’t want to. And he’s tall. I like that he’s tall, and I’m not constantly making myself smaller so that he doesn’t feel like less.”

She didn’t have to say that last part. Luke was sensitive about his height, and she knew that. But it felt really good to dig in the knife in the only way she knew how.

“He also turned you into a bitch.” As soon as Luke said that, Barbie and Kelly stood up and moved to Jessica’s side. Surprisingly, Jessica didn’t feel like dealing out physical violence. As soon as she’d realized that her relationship with Luke was just the continuation of a pattern and not some grand, lost romance, some of her anger toward him slipped away. Not all of it, but enough for her to realize that it wouldn’t be worth an arrest record just to make him hurt.

“You don’t get to call me that.”

Luke stopped talking and paled, and that was when she noticed that Galvin had walked back over. Had he heard what Luke had called her? Was she going to have to bail him out of jail?

She chanced a look in his direction, and his face was twisted into a brand of anger that she’d never seen from him—not when her mother had been acting out at her house and not when his father had made digs about his chosen specialty all night. He was almost unrecognizable.

“You heard her,” Galvin said, his voice so cold that the ballroom dropped in temperature by about ten degrees. “You don’t get to call her that. And if I had anything to say about it, you wouldn’t get to call her anything.”

Luke’s lips thinned into a line that made him look mean. And old. Luke had never been blindingly handsome, but now that she didn’t believe she was in love with him, he looked less than handsome. He looked as boring as he truly was.

Jessica turned to Kari and tried to muster up a genuine smile. She probably looked deranged when she said, “Best wishes with this one.” Then, she turned to Galvin and said, “We need to leave now.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

Jessica didn’t say anything during the car ride back to his house. At first, Galvin was afraid she was going to tell the driver to drop her off at her condo, but she’d stayed silent. She also didn’t sit in the seat next to him or reach out for his hand. He had no idea what she was thinking about what had just happened.

He had guesses, of course. He knew how he’d felt when someone had stolen his first girlfriend and he’d been the last to know. When he’d finally found out, it had also been public and embarrassing. But he’d been nineteen. It wasn’t as though he and Caitlyn had built a life together. Still, he’d felt as though his heart had been beaten flat by a meat tenderizer but was still trying to beat in his chest.

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