Liability (Suncoast Society #33)(4)

Scratch that. His voice mail notification bubble popped up, indicating a new message.

With a sigh, Mason stepped outside the office, away from the entrance, and played the message.

“Well, I guess you’re just too damn busy to talk to me. If you decide you want to talk to me, give me a call.”

Fuck him. Mason angrily punched the delete button and seriously considered adding Freddie to his blocked caller list.

Thank god I never gave him my work number.

He was about to put his phone away and head inside the club again when his phone buzzed with a text message alert.

YRU not ANSWRING ME?

Mason felt his right eye begin to twitch. No, he was no English major, but he despised text-speak with a passion and had told Freddie that countless times.

Okay, this was starting to go beyond pissing him off. Mason could tell that if he didn’t respond to Freddie soon, this kind of bullshit would continue, cycling between petulant and nearly sickeningly sweet apologies until Freddie got what he wanted.

Freddie might not consider himself to be kinky, but he was definitely being a brat.

Mason called him.

Freddie answered before the first ring even went through. “Oh, my god, I was getting so worried about you! Why haven’t you answered your phone? I thought you didn’t have to work today?”

Mason decided that this was the time for Freddie to see the real him. The Dominant, the sadist, the man who would no longer tolerate this kind of bullshit. The side of him he’d mostly kept cooped up around Freddie because he hadn’t wanted to be an * to the guy.

The side he probably should have shown Freddie all along instead of pulling back and settling, which wasn’t fair to either of them.

“Because I’ve been busy, and I’m out with friends tonight. What did you want?”

There was a long pause from Nebraska before suspicion layered the younger man’s tones. “What friends?”

“Not that it’s your business, but old friends I haven’t had time to see since I’ve been back. What did you want that was so urgent?”

Freddie predictably switched to the sweet voice. “I miss you. I wanted to talk to you.”

“We’ve talked every day this week. I told you yesterday that I am not available to talk at your whim.” Freddie worked at a credit card call center and frequently worked nights, so his daytime waking hours were spent texting Mason, or so it felt like.

Freddie’s behavior also seemed to be cyclical, settling down for a couple of weeks at a time after Mason had to put his foot down before slowly ramping up again.

They were now approaching the upper limits of Mason’s tolerance for this.

“Don’t you miss me?”

Mason pinched the bridge of his nose. “We’re friends. Just friends. Please stop doing this. I told you that I’m not doing a long-distance relationship, and that you need to go out and meet new people and find someone else. Start dating.”

“I’ve been looking online for a job down there,” Freddie quickly said, totally ignoring the latter half of Mason’s statement. “I was thinking about applying where you’re at. Wouldn’t that be great? Tell me the name of the company you’re at, and I’ll apply. You could put in a word for me with HR there and maybe we could commute together and everything.”

Oh, f*ck no.

Mason, fortunately, hadn’t told Freddie the company’s name, although anyone who wasn’t a total Google idiot could probably figure it out. Fortunately, Freddie usually wasn’t ambitious, or able to remember a lot of fine details that he didn’t think were incredibly important.

“No, I’m not going to do that.”

Another long pause from Nebraska. “Why not?” Petulant hurt crept back into Freddie’s tone.

“Because for starters, I don’t think it’d be a good idea to be working at the same employer. Secondly, I told you that you are a free agent now. We are not a couple, and we have not been a couple since before I moved. Go out and meet…someone.”

Mason had almost said someone your own age, which he knew would be a horrible mistake because then Freddie would go off on him like crazy. Apparently it was an emotional trigger, courtesy of his * family.

Aaaannd back to whiny petulant voice. “Is that what you’re doing tonight? Meeting someone?”

“Again, that’s none of your business. I was honest about myself from the start.” Time to go for broke. “You aren’t kinky. You aren’t submissive in the slightest. You damn sure aren’t a masochist, and—”

“But we had a lot of fun in bed!”

“And I told you from the get-go that we needed more than that to make a long-term relationship. I warned you from the very beginning that I would be honest with you and I wasn’t making you any promises. I’m a Dominant who needs at the very least a submissive partner. Preferably a masochistic one. Hell, you’re still figuring out who you are. I thought you wanted to go back to school. Didn’t you say your mom told you she’d help you out with that if you did?”

“But I miss you.”

Mason tried not to hold it against the guy, but he was over this and definitely over Freddie and his cute bubble ass and eager mouth. Which in retrospect weren’t nearly as cute when considering all the bullshit he’d had to put up with during their time together and since then.