Micah was not sure he wanted to live to see another day.
Especially not after seeing the combination of numbers the cash register was displaying.
If he had to be honest with himself about his financial situation, even the number of digits was already a problem.
Now, it's generally considered bad form to stare for too long at the grand total when shopping. Micah knew that, but he could not help it.
Nothing could stop him.
Not Bezalel standing behind the counter and wearing that perfect mask of customer service friendliness to hide his awareness of Micah's predicament. Not Avery hovering near him expectantly and pretending not to see the total cost. Not Felicia tapping her foot impatiently while waiting in line after falling victim to the sales associate's upselling.
Micah stared and stared. He stared like he could embarrass the screen into lowering the price.
The screen, immune to human emotions like shame and pity, blinked the number back at him dispassionately.
Micah's mind scrambled for solutions. Avery had enough money to pay for these rings a million times over, but he wanted to be spoiled and pampered with gifts. It wasn't about who could afford what, but the willingness to pay.
Besides, Micah suspected something more nefarious. Some rich kids derived a sadistic joy from seeing peasants like him stretch themselves thin in a hopeless bid to break into the upper echelons of society.
If Avery was one such kid, then there's no way in hell he's paying.
Micah didn't give up. If increasing money was a dead end, perhaps he could try lowering the price. After all, he's friends with the proprietor.
But Bezalel would not cheat him, that much he was certain of. The price displayed was surely reasonable, if not on the lower end. It's very likely that the older man, knowing him, had already discreetly applied a discount. Not a big one, of course, because a massive reduction in price would make the goods look cheap.
It's not like Micah could really bargain either. He simply couldn't bring himself to eat into Bezalel's bottom line. More importantly, no girlfriend wanted to hear about how her partner "scored such a great deal" when buying her a gift because he haggled like housewives at a wet market. And Avery might be a man, but he very much thought like a girlfriend.
Micah racked his brain for a silver lining and found one. One sad, sad morsel. Felicia was going to buy so many items—the sales associate was still convincing her to get more—that she was going to be stuck at the counter for a long, long time. Long enough for Micah and Avery to shake her off their trail. That's the bright side to the situation.
In other words, there's nothing that could be done.
Micah handed his credit card over to Bezalel with a stony expression, secretly praying that blood plasma would skyrocket in demand. How that could happen and what that meant for society at large, he frankly did not care.
'I can keep selling blood as long as my body produces it' was the mantra he kept repeating in his head to (barely) keep the tears from flowing. But Micah was financially strapped, not mathematically challenged. He knew selling plasma would not be enough, not even if he lived for another century and went back to Schering-Kagan Plasma Donation Center every four weeks instead of the current eight.
Thankfully, he had an extra kidney.
Micah was no stranger to such measures. It had taken a lot to appear just respectable enough to show up on the periphery of Adeline's social circle.
Because aristocrats never married true commoners.
The media had spun the recent spat of marriages between young nobles and commoners as rags-to-riches fairy tales.
Nothing could be further from the truth.
The union that had started this all—and made Micah's own marriage possible—was between one Alexander Fulton (now Prince Alexander) and Princess Annalise of Karnarvon. News of their upcoming wedding sent more traditional folks into pearl-clutching fits a few years ago. They were bemoaning the deterioration of social order, the fading impartiality of the royal family, the dilution of prestige…
None of those fears came to pass, because Alexander Fulton was not some gold digger who had conned a sheltered princess into marriage. No, his father—coincidentally also named Alexander Fulton—owned six of the most popular restaurant chains in the country. Princess Annalise might be the so-called baby of the royal family, but she hadn't been an actual child for many years. She knew exactly what she was getting into.
At best, it was a riches-to-more-riches story.
A long time ago, someone had given Micah an unsolicited bit of well-meaning advice that he promptly ignored: "Poor boys shouldn't think of marrying rich girls."
Even then, he knew he shouldn't look poor. He didn't want Adeline to think he was only with her for her money. And the best way to do that was to act as if he was content with his lot in life, as if he was living comfortably enough that he could ignore finances when choosing a wife.
It was not an easy pretense to maintain. Micah had to sell his blood, inherited paintings, and a significant chunk of his mother's dowry to appear upper-middle class. His mother gave up her dowry readily. But the paintings…
They were not, in his not-so-humble opinion, great works worth a lot of money, because mediocre artists had always existed. Selling them should not have been a difficult decision, but his mother cried and begged him to spare them, because they were once owned by his father.
Micah felt like the most unfilial bastard in the world watching her plead, but remembering how bad it'd be to appear poor steeled his heart.
Because even if Adeline could accept a peasant, her friends and family most definitely could not. His poverty and pretty face would damn him to a lifetime of suspicion. His clean record would be taken to mean that he just hadn't had his chance yet. They would monitor his every move, waiting for him to expose himself as a greedy, little—
"Thief!"