Hurt fed anger.
I was so mad I forgot myself enough to get a strike.
I made sure it was the last point I made in the game-- and I didn't say a word to him.
Adam won with a score over two hundred.
When he finished bowling the last frame, he took both our balls back to the rack while I changed my shoes.
The teenage boys (by then five lanes away) stopped him and had him sign an autograph for them.
I took my shoes back to the desk and turned them in--and paid for the game, too.
"Is he really the Alpha?" asked the teenage girl behind the counter.
"Yep," I said through clenched lips.
"Wow." "Yep." I left the bowling alley and waited for him by the side of his shiny new truck, which was locked.
The temperature had dropped by twenty degrees as soon as the sun went down, and it was cold enough to make me, in my heels and dress, uncomfortable.
Or it would have been if my temper hadn't kept me nice and warm.
I stood by the passenger door, and he didn't see me at first.
I saw him lift his head and sniff the air.
I leaned my hip against the side of the truck, and the movement caught his attention.
He kept his eyes on me as he walked from the building to the truck.
He'd thought you'd deliberately endanger a child to make him look good.
He doesn't understand that you'd never do such a thing.
She wouldn't have gotten hurt; the ball would have rolled past her harmlessly.
He owes you an apology.
I didn't say anything to him.
I could hardly tell him that the little voices made me do it, could I? His eyes narrowed, but he kept his mouth shut, too.
He popped the locks and let me get myself in the truck.
I paid attention to the buckle, then settled back in the seat and closed my eyes.
My hands clenched in my lap, then loosened as a familiar shape inserted itself and my hands closed on the old wood and silver of the fae-made walking stick.
I'd gotten so used to its showing up unexpectedly, I wasn't even surprised, though this was the first time I'd actually felt it appear where it hadn't been.
I was more preoccupied with the disaster of our date.
With the walking stick in my hands, it felt as if my head cleared at last.
Abruptly I wasn't angry anymore.
I was just tired and I wanted to go home.