To Micah shock, Adella pulled him into an unprompted hug, nearly suffocating him with her breasts. He felt slightly oxygen-deprived when she finally released him. “I was hoping you would come in again! You didn’t even try the food last time, pequeño diablo! You had poor Damon out of his mind with worry.” She winked, abruptly dropping the light scolding quality of her voice. “Not that he couldn’t use the excitement of a chase. I was so pleased when I heard he’d located you, even more so when he made you his sweetheart.”

She frowned, seeming to realize for the first time that Damon was not there with Micah.

“Where is that rat bastard, anyway? He hasn’t shown his ugly mug since that night.”

Apparently, she didn’t know what had happened between Micah and Damon.

Micah didn’t know what to do with that information, but when she demanded to know where Damon was, he couldn’t stop tears from springing into his eyes unbidden. “I-I don’t know.”

Adella’s curious expression morphed into something pitying. “Oh, you poor boy. What did that man do?”

Micah couldn’t take it. Because Damon hadn’t done anything. Micah was the one who’d fucked up, who’d ruined whatever sense of trust they’d built between them.

Adella kept speaking, and Micah was vaguely aware of the fact that she was insulting the man, a mix of English and Spanish cuss words filtering in his ears through the sound of his heart trying to beat out of his chest.

He shouldn’t have come in here.

Micah leapt up from his seat so abruptly, he clumsily bumped his elbow into the hard ledge of the table.

Adella frowned, clearly perplexed by his baffling behavior. “What-?”

The poor woman probably thought he was on drugs, but Micah couldn’t care less what she thought.

(That was a lie. He cared about what everyone close to Damon thought.)

“I-l have to go.”

Then, like a possessed person, he bolted.

Down more blocks he flew, first at a healthy jog and then a full on sprint, paying no mind to the shouts that followed after him as he shouldered pedestrians out of his way, the winter wind freezing the tears on his face before they had the chance to fall.

Eventually, when he felt far enough away from the place that reminded him so much of Damon – his lungs burning from inhaling frosty air – he stopped running. Resting against the brick exterior of a random building, Micah scrubbed his face with the overly long sleeves of his sweatshirt.

For the first time since the snow had started falling in late November, he wasn’t wearing a coat. Perhaps it’d been a subconscious fuck you to Damon since he was always on his case about dressing appropriately for the weather, or maybe Micah just didn’t care now that no one was there to care for him.