He scowled. “Oh, I don't know, that you were currently working on a week-long bender of booze, drugs, and hookers. I told him you were sleeping and that blowing up your phone wasn't going to get you up anytime soon...clearly."
"Ugh, there's no way he accepted that."
"He didn't."
"So?"
He sighed. “Do youreallywant to know what I said? It's just going to piss you off."
Great, what fucked up thing had he said? "Well, now I have to know."
"I told him that if he was any sort of decent captain, then he should be more worried about your well-being than whether or not you were awake to answer his phone call. A call, probably meant to bitch you out more than anything else. You were safe, in one piece, and you weren't going anywhere to do anything stupid, and that's all that should matter to him right now, he could deal with the paperwork and whatever issues arose on his own for now, since he was the one who signed up for the job he has. I told him to treat it like one of his officers was down, and if he kept calling, I was going to shut your phone off. He did this weird growling thing at me, and I told him that when you were up and ready to function, Kayden or you would contact him, and you could come in and deal with the fallout of whatever happened. He called me a few names that I've been called before, and wanted me to tell you that if you're going to do something stupid today, do it where someone can keep an eye on you, then threatened me and hung up."
"Threatened you?"
"Yeah. Said that if I let or made you do something stupid, he would make my life a shitshow. I would have told him my life has been that way since I was a kid, but he hung up before I could. Interesting guy. Kind of a prick, but I can respect that when he has to deal with people like you all the time."
Well, I'd be pissed, but it was kind of hard to deny when I knew full well I'd given my captain plenty of trouble over the years. Now I'd gone and added another layer to his already growing pile. I'd always had a hard time keeping control when people endangered others, but now I'd really gone off the deep end. It would be a miracle if the guy survived long enough to make it to trial, and that was if it didn't get thrown out because of what I'd done. And that wasn't counting the fact that I'd assaulted that woman while she'd been handcuffed and not a threat.
"Quit," Mason muttered, pushing himself to the edge of his seat and staring at me. "Don't do that."
"Don't do what?" I asked, rubbing my face again with my aching hand, blinking when I realized it was wrapped in gauze. I didn't remember that happening, but I remembered more pain while I was at the bar. I must have hurt my hand, probably glass, from what I could remember.
"You wear your emotions on your face," he snorted, gesturing vaguely toward me. "And you're beating yourself up for whatever happened."
"I beat the shit out of two people who weren't threats," I muttered.
"Really?"
"Really."
"Because of whatever with the kid?"
Hate boiled through me again, clearing my head a little more as I remembered the blood. "Yes."
"Wow...okay."
I looked up. “Why do you sound surprised?"
He laughed. “Well, I'm not surprised you were acting out of defense or whatever for a kid, that’s right in line with what I've seen from you. I'm surprised because hearing you so pissed is weirdly a turn on."
I stared at him. “Seriously, right now?"
He shrugged. “Emotions don't make sense, and they don't exactly have good timing. Plus, it makes sense. A lot of what we've done together has involved anger, so it kind of makes sense that my brain would take your anger as a signal for sex. Plus, it's a little sexy to hear you get so pissed in defense of someone else."
"You have...so many problems."
"Tell me something I don't already know
"I'm grateful."
He blinked. “What?"
"To you. For helping me. And I'm not pissed at you for it. Or for what you said to my captain. So there's two things you didn't know."
He stared at me for a moment before a smile made itself known. It was a little thing, even shy, seeming so at odds with the guy I knew. Yet it also made sense because I had already come to the realization that there was a lot more to him than met the eye. The Mason I thought I knew wouldn't have interfered to help me, he wouldn't have...stood up for me to my captain, and he wouldn't have taken care of me for however long I’d been there. Even his suite showed more about him than I would have ever dared to assume, someone who had their passions and an inner world with more complexity and color than simply being a hedonistic jackass.
"Yeah, well, give it time, I'm sure I'll find a way to piss you off again," he said with a shrug.
