His hands were torn up, bloodied, blistered, and he could hardly move them without agonizing pain shooting from the fingertips and up through his arms. Over the past month, he’d fucked up his hands with his late-night adventures, but never like this. He’d be lucky if he could move his hands today, but with his luck, his hands would probably get infected and he’d be seriously screwed.
He walked over to the bathroom sink and carefully opened the medicine cabinet. When he didn’t spot what he needed, Connor closed the door and looked beneath her sink, cursing as crippling pain shot through his hands, but at least he found what he needed. He grabbed the bottle of peroxide and stood up, only to have the bottle ripped from his hand.
“What the hell did you do to your hands?” Rory demanded, sounding very much awake now and looking extremely pissed.
“Nothing. They’re fine,” Connor said, trying to close his hands and when that didn’t work, he tried putting them behind his back and out of her sight, but Rory was too damn stubborn to let it go and leave him alone.
She grabbed onto his left arm and yanked it forward. Before he could pull it back, she was holding his bloodied hand and glaring up at him. “Yeah, they’re real fine, Connor,” Rory said with a sigh as she released his hand and stepped past him.
“What are you doing?” Connor asked, kind of hoping that she’d just go back to sleep and forget all about this so that he wouldn’t be forced to lie to her.
“Helping you get your hands cleaned before they get infected,” Rory explained as she turned on the shower.
“I don’t need help, Rory. Go back to bed and get some sleep,” Connor said, trying not to think about how exhausted he suddenly felt.
For the past couple of weeks, he’d been running on barely two hours of sleep a night and putting in twenty hours a day and it was catching up to him. As much as his body was begging for him to stop, he couldn’t. He just couldn’t. If he didn’t stay busy, stay focused on something other than his life, he was going to lose it.
“Is this about Andrew quitting?” Rory asked, and although he’d been waiting for her to get around to bringing it up since Andrew decided to quit and cut him out of his life, he wasn’t ready to talk about it. He didn’t want to talk about it, didn’t want to think about it, and he sure as hell didn’t want to wait around for the phone call letting him know that his best friend had died all alone because the stubborn asshole was too damn proud to let Connor be there for him.
“Leave it alone, Rory. It’s over,” he said, shoving aside the agony that once again threatened to destroy him.
“I know that you’re upset that your friend quit,” Rory said, sounding sympathetic as she checked the temperature of the water, “but it’s probably for the best. He wasn’t showing up for work. When he did show up, he was late, and he always left early. I know that you don’t want to talk about it, but I think he had a problem.”
“Like you said, he quit, so let it go,” Connor said, yanking his shirt off and tossing it aside, ignoring the fresh wave of pain that shot through his hands as he forced his hands to remove his pants and boots.
“I can’t,” Rory said, moving to step in front of him, but he was in no mood to deal with her or anything else right now. He just wanted to take a shower, pass out for a few hours, and get his ass back to work where he could work himself into exhaustion and forget about how fucking bad this hurt.
“You can’t or you won’t?” Connor demanded as he stepped into the shower.
“Both,” she snapped, yanking the curtain closed.
He stepped beneath the hot water, allowing it to seep into his pores and work its way down to his hands, stinging his sensitive skin as it washed away the blood. It wasn’t enough to make him completely forget, but it was enough to keep him from losing it, something he’d been fighting since Andrew told him over beers and a Yankees game that he had a rare form of Leukemia and that he wasn’t going to fight it.
Andrew had type AB negative blood, a very rare blood type. The chances of finding a matching donor were very slim and Andrew didn’t hold out much hope of finding a match, but the main reason why Andrew was refusing to look? Because he would rather see the bone marrow go to a child or someone with a family, someone that would be missed. Andrew wasn’t married, broke up with his girlfriend last year, and his parents died years ago, leaving him all alone, so in his book, his death wouldn’t be a loss. The asshole was trying to be noble to the end and Connor fucking hated him for it.
“We’ve put this off for long enough,” Rory announced as she stepped into the shower behind him.
“Go away, Rory,” Connor said, feeling his hold on the situation slipping and he didn’t want her around when it did.
“Not until we talk,” Rory stubbornly said.
“There’s nothing to talk about,” Connor said tightly, forcing his eyes shut while his hands clenched by his sides as he tried to stay calm. He needed her to leave so that he could focus on pretending that everything was okay just for a little while longer.
“Oh, really? How about the fact that I’ve barely seen you over the past month? You don’t smile. You barely say more than a two words to me when you do see me. All you want to do is work. You look like you’re going to kill someone anytime someone mentions Andrew. You haven’t touched me in a month and-”
“You want me to fuck you?” Connor demanded harshly as he turned around and faced her, feeling his control snap and even knowing that he was probably going to do something to lose the love of his life, he couldn’t make himself rein it back in. He didn’t want to hold it back any longer, couldn’t. He wanted to put his fist through the wall, scream at the world, and have someone to take his anger out on, and right now, that person was Rory.
“Is that the problem, Rory?” he asked, stepping closer to her. “You’re pissed because I haven’t fucked you?”
“No, it’s not that!” Rory snapped as she tried to stand her ground against him, but he was done playing games.
“Then what’s the problem, Rory? Huh?” Connor asked, moving until she had no choice but to back off and once she did, he didn’t stop until he had her back against the shower wall.
“My problem is that you’re being an asshole and I want to know why!” Rory snapped, trying to shove him back, but he refused to move. He moved into her, resting his arms against the wall near her head as he caged her in with the rest of his body.
“It doesn’t matter,” Connor said, leaning in to kiss Rory when she turned her head away.
“Yes, it does,” she said in that mutinous tone that used to drive him crazy, but now it pissed him off.
