Micah Johnson Goes West (Get Out, #2)(28)

“See, there he is!” Sam said triumphantly. “Told you!” To Micah he yelled, “Hurry up! This guy’s trying to fine me!”

“What, he didn’t give you the automatic footballer pass of privilege?” Micah asked, throwing his bag in the back.

“He must be an Eagles supporter.”

Micah looked at the inspector as he opened the passenger door; the guy nodded, unimpressed. Micah grinned, and was barely in his seat before Sam floored the accelerator and they were headed towards the freeway.

“So, how was the fam?”

“Their usual selves.”

“Fantastic. Were they happy to see you?”

“They were ecstatic. Beyond words, even.”

“Were you?”

He knew Sam was needling him because he wasn’t engaging in the conversation. “I was happier than I’ve ever been in my life.”

Sam gave him a long enough look that made him nervous in regards to him keeping his eyes on the road and their lives out of potential danger.

“Traffic!” Micah reminded him.

“You don’t seem your normal chirpy self,” Sam remarked, becoming a cautious driver once more.

Micah gave him the hairy eyeball. “Are you being sarcastic now?”

“A little,” Sam teased.

“It’s just you’re so chipper that even when you’re being sarcastic you seem really genuine.”

Sam shrugged. “Maybe that’s why I volunteered to take you on. Yin and yang, and all that.”

“I think they already have a patron saint for lost causes.”

“Talking to you is like talking to Dane sometimes,” Sam sighed.

Micah didn’t like the comparison. “How is Dane? Looking forward to my return?”

“Speaking of lost causes….”

“Yeah, I figured as much.”

Obviously uncomfortable, Sam quickly changed the subject. “You must really miss them.”

“My family? Affirmative.”

“I mean, I was lucky,” Sam said. “I got drafted by the team I wanted. You know better than anybody else that doesn’t happen to everyone.”

“Are you trying to make me more depressed?”

Sam’s eyes flitted with concern. “You’re depressed?”

“No, Dr. Mitchell! I’m just making conversation.”

“So am I.”

“I met up with my ex.” It was out of Micah’s mouth before he really even finished thinking about it. Why was his mouth always getting him into trouble? Emma would say it was his subconscious wanting to spill everything despite thinking he didn’t want to, and she was probably right. She always was. She would have told him not to meet Kyle as well. Maybe that was why he had never told her beforehand.

If he was expecting Sam to become uncomfortable with the subject at hand, he was disappointed.

“I take it the meeting didn’t go too well, then, huh?”

“Understatement of the year. He has a new boyfriend.”

“Ouch,” Sam said, in a genuinely sympathetic tone. “That sucks.”

“It’s not like I was expecting him to become a monk.”

“Yeah, but it probably seems really quick. We’ve all been there.”

“Yeah? You have?” Micah tried not to sound too disbelieving.

Sam laughed. “Of course! But it sucks even more when you broke up even though you didn’t really want to. I mean, circumstances really worked against you guys.”

“I know we weren’t going to be together forever, I mean, we’re only eighteen—”

“Plenty of people get together at eighteen and stay together.”

“Depressed enough, remember?” Micah reminded him.

“Sorry.” Sam had the tact to look properly admonished.

“But still,” Micah continued, staring out the window as the freeway slowly became highway and the suburbs that hugged the beaches came into view. “I just hoped we would have had longer together than we had.”

“So, were you expecting him to have another reason for wanting to see you?”

Micah refused to stop staring into the distance, looking for the first glimpse of ocean. It was the best thing about his new home. He could grow to love it here, if it wasn’t for everything else. “Yep. The stupidest of all reasons.”

“You thought he wanted to get back together.”

“Like I said, the stupidest.”

The ocean appeared as they crested a hill, and Micah actually lost his breath at the sight of it. It was a calm day, and there was barely a ripple the further out you looked. He almost believed they could walk across it and arrive on the shores of Rottnest Island.

“No.” Sam shook his head emphatically. “Not stupid at all.”

Micah didn’t say anything. It wasn’t like Sam could say anything to convince him otherwise.

“You’re lonely.”

“Maybe.”

“Then we’re going to have to fix it.”

Micah didn’t like the sound of that.





Chapter 8


FOR THE next couple of weeks, the coaches ran them hard, trying to get them to sustain their crop of wins, so Sam was distracted from his task of trying to get Micah a boyfriend. Micah thought it amusing that Sam didn’t use the more blokey “laid,” as het males seemed to do with one another—but maybe that was because Sam was properly shacked up with Maia, and he knew Micah wanted more than just a one-night stand.