Page 64 of Pretty ’n Peak

But there still had to be two sides to it. Even if the way Cam talked about his disability made him want to hurl, he couldn’t push all the blame away.

Austin had stopped talking and communicating at the end, too. He’d lost interest and stopped wanting to play.

He was the one who’d gone most of a year without a single ounce of interest or attraction to anyone.

Still, if there was some possibility that he could be a good Dom and partner, it made all the difference in the world. Maybe he could start trying again some day.

Or, well, he supposed that’s what he was already doing.

With Mateo.

Sweet, hopeful Mateo.

All the way back to the lodge, Austin’s thoughts tumbled back and forth. Mateo and Cam. Cam and Mateo.

And who was he, really?

The Dom he’d been for Cam for the past few years, or the one he was starting to get a glimpse of with Mateo this weekend?

When he reached the back porch, he knew where his thoughts were straying.

Was Mateo awake yet? Would he want to eat breakfast together again?

Even if Mateo went off on other adventures today, Austin would still need to check in with him the day after an intense scene.

Maybe rub more lotion on the boy’s striped back, feel the heat of those lashes under his fingers.

Austin automatically took his phone out of his pocket to check the time. He’d turned it off before heading to the dungeon last night, and hadn’t realized it was still off this morning.

You have twelve new messages and three missed calls, came the masculine, robotic voice. He’d programmed it to speak at around four times the speed of a typical speaking voice, but he parsed it all automatically.

Who the hell had contacted him that many times?

He held down the button and asked, “What time is it?”

The time is seven twelve a.m.

“Read messages.”

Only a few seconds passed while he listened to the first few, but that was more than enough.

“Call Ryan.”

The call rang twice, then connected.

“Austin. Where have you been?”

“On vacation,” he snapped. He usually didn’t mind being called in—well, he did, but it was part of the job, and they paid him an extra twenty K a year to be on-call. Usually he at least got a bit of a rush, leaping in to figure things out, even if it was an inconvenience.

But today, he was on his first scheduled vacation in over a year. And it was Sunday—not even a day when he would have been in.

He thought again of Mateo. Visions of wandering the trails together, or maybe tempting the boy into another scene—though not any impact play until he recovered—vanished in a wall of solid brick.

“Where are Yi and Vijay? And why is this even happening? I thought we’d agreed not to release the next update for two more weeks.”

“They’re already here, and this wasn’t the update. It was a patch. And I’m sorry about interrupting your vacation.”

Ryan sounded truly sorry, but that didn’t assuage Austin’s mounting annoyance. “What was the patch for? Why didn’t I know about it?”