Page 66 of The Barn: Frost and Q
He saw Chauncey stumble beside him, and he whipped around and grabbed the man, forcing himself to keep them both upright.
“Don’t you fucking fall. Don’t you fucking do this to me and become some motherfucking cliche from some dumbass action-adventure movie, you motherfucker!”
There’s no question that he was going to lose here. He might have already. There was no winning here for them, but he’d be damned if he lost Chauncey. Not today.
He couldn’t save everybody, but he’d be damned if he was gonna lose everybody either.
Twenty-One
It was damn near impossible to pace effectively in a wheelchair.
Oh, Q could manage it just fine, thank you, but it just wasn’t satisfying.
He zipped back and forth and forth and back, wearing marks in the ungodly expensive wood floors. He hadn’t heard from Frost in more than twenty-four hours, and it was driving him out of his goddamn mind.
He knew how it worked. He got it. They were busy. They were fighting fires, and SAT phones didn’t always work, especially not when they had been dealing with a motherfucking eruption.
But he also knew he had been on the line when the flashover happened, and he’d heard the screams as they’d run.
He heard them over and over, and he wanted them to?—
“Stop.”
Quentin blinked up at Carson. He hadn’t even realized the man was in his rooms with him. “What?”
“You have to stop. He’s going to be fine. I refuse to acknowledge any other option, so you’re just going to have to fucking stop it.”
“I can’t just stop it. That’s my guy that’s out there, you know? That’s my man, my husband. I don’t have to just stop it.” Carson wasn’t being reasonable, dammit. Worrying was Quentin’s stock in trade.
“Yeah, you do. Because when he comes home?—”
He loved that thought. Not if, but when.
“—he’s going to need you to have your shit together. He’s going to need you to be able to hold the center. And I’m gonna help you. And so is Boone, and so is Tug. We’re all going to fix this as best we can. But you?” Carson glared at him. “You are going to have to keep your shit together.”
He blinked, kind of staring at Carson a little bit. “Did you give the same talk to Frost when I got shot?”
Carson shrugged. “The same one? No. Was it close? Hell yeah. It was super close. It was a little bit easier with you because one, I practiced more, but two, you’re prepared. You’re ready for shit to go wrong all the time. Frost, not so much. So?—”
He kind of chuckled a little bit. Mostly because he didn’t know what else to do. “I just want him to come home and be okay. Actually, he doesn’t even have to come home if he doesn’t want to. He can stay out there and work, but I need him. I need to know he’s all right.”
“Yeah. Me too, man. I hate this shit.”
He glanced at Carson, surprised. “What?”
“I’m not a fucking adrenaline junkie; I’m a goddamn oil man who owns a hobby ranch. I ride horses. I have a four-wheeler. My idea of a fun time is to—well, I mean I have some ideas that aren’t any of your affair but—my big idea of a fun time is to just get the hell out and about on my four-wheeler, possibly do some fishing. How the hell I managed to hook up with a bunch of adrenaline junkies, I don’t know. But I did, and so here we are.”
“You poor abused man. Shut up.”
“I’ll tell you what.” Carson pointed one finger at him. “I know that you are not a traditional submissive, but I have done nothing for you to be ugly toward me, and I don’t appreciate it.”
His lips parted. He had been playing, not being an asshole. “I’m not being ugly. I’m just giving you shit.”
“I don’t appreciate it. Please don’t do it anymore. I don’t like it.”
He nodded. “All right, yes, Sir, I’m… My apologies.”
“Thank you. So, what are we going to do?”
