Page 62 of Lover Forbidden
An overactive adrenal system? Yeah, sure. Who didn’t after all these decades in the war—
“Trypophobia.”
Qhuinn refocused on the brother. “What.”
“Fear of holes.” Rhage nodded up at the ceiling. “I mean, you know that there is no way V or any of his people would trigger any of the defensive systems on us. But you keep looking up there like you’re expecting something bad to happen, and you do it every time I’ve been in here with you. Like all the way back to the install—”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
He trained his stare resolutely on the steel door.
This lasted a nanosecond and his peepers were back at the pinholes.
“Don’t feel bad,” Rhage remarked. “I got arachibutyrophobia.”
Qhuinn had to glance at the guy again. “That something Doc Jane needs to give you a penicillin shot for?”
Rhage laughed in an easy and relaxed kind of way—which Qhuinn frickin’ envied. “No, that’s fear of getting peanut butter stuck to the roof of your mouth. Mary and I been working on it. I choked on a PB and J a couple of months ago and that’s when it started—”
Clunk.
As the lock released, Qhuinn hit that bar like he was giving the damn thing chest compressions in a hospital code. The relief that came with stepping through into the parking area, with all its space in every direction, was like breathing clean air after you’d held your breath from a bad smell. And as for the irrational fears shit? He didn’t know from whatever Peter-Pan-ophobia Rhage was going on about, but if he had to diagnose one for himself, he’d say it was garden variety claustro and fuck all the holes—
“Really,” he muttered at his choice of words.
“Huh?” Rhage tilted his head like a big, beautiful dog. “Or you talking to yourself?”
They came up to the main entrance into the training center, and sure, now the lock turned immediately again.
“You gotta trust me when I tell you, you don’t want to know.” He opened things and glanced down the wide corridor to where Xcor and Tohr were standing. “And no, it doesn’t have to do with food, peanut butter or otherwise.”
“Roger that,” Hollywood said amicably.
Passing by the lineup of classrooms, they stopped when they got to the patient rooms. Tohr was on his phone, texting something, but Xcor stepped up with the greeting.
“Dad—”
“Dad—”
He and Xcor clapped palms and then shoulders, and then Rhage joined in the hello’ing. As those two stepped back, Qhuinn nodded at the red can of high-test Coke in Xcor’s hand.
“That kind of night already?”
“You know it.”
The leader of the Band of Bastards was dressed for war, but he had to smother a yawn. Which was a surprise. The stocky male was strong as a bull, and on a typical night, he was the first to get out into the field to hunt. Not this evening. He seemed drained and distracted—and that was proof that he was worried about the Lyric(s) situation, too.
It had always been the way, the four of them concerned about the young and all the things that affected them.
Xcor took a draw on the can. “So to take our minds off it all, Layla and I binge-watched a show about veterinarians set in the Scottish Highlands at the turn of the twentieth century all day long.”
Yup, they hadn’t been able to sleep, either. “Not your usual gig.”
“Too right. I started watching just to be pleasant.”
“And you didn’t pass out from boredom?”
Rhage nodded as he crunched down on his Tootsie Pop. “For real.”
