Page 42 of Bad Rebound

“Right.” He turned to the worker, gave him her order, brushing her aside when she tried to pull out her card to pay. “I’ve got it.”

She grabbed the pretzel, he pocketed the candy, and picked up the soda, not wanting her to carry the cold drink.

“Good?”

“Yeah,” she said, and her smile had taken on an edge he hadn’t seen from her before. “Thanks for the…food.” A nod to the snacks. “I didn’t get a chance to eat dinner.”

“Oh, Mel. Why didn’t you say something earlier?” He turned back to the counter. “I’ll get you something that’ll actually fill you up—”

“No. Thanks.”

Firm enough that he actually stopped.

Mel firm?

That was…strange.

So was the look in her eyes.

“You okay?”

“Fine.”

Now she was the one doing the clipping out, rolling her shoulders as though she were shaking off an annoying buzzing bug.

“Let’s go.”

She took off for the stairs leading down to their seats, having to pause because the game had begun, and they needed to wait until a whistle to move along the aisle.

“What happened?” he asked.

A sharp breath. “I am capable of deciding when and what I want to eat, you know.”

He rocked back slightly on his heels as her words collided with his eardrums—harsh and hard, and definitely not anything like the Mel he’d come to know during his brother’s relationship with her sister. “Mel—”

A glare at him, at his hands, full of her drink, her bag. “AndI can carry my own things.”

The whistle blew.

She spun away from him, started marching down the stairs, fury in each step.

Blinking, thoroughly shocked and more than a little confused, he stared after her.

Then he realized he was staring and not moving, so he started descending, moving toward their seats.

“I’m sorry,” he said as he caught up with her.

“Yeah, you said that before.” Cold words and she didn’t turn to face him. “I’m not incapable.”

No, she wasn’t.

He’d been helping.

He’dthoughthe’d been helping.

But instead, all he’d managed to do was piss off one of the most patient people he knew and make her think thathethought she was incapable.

Was that what he’d done to Cora?

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