“What are you doing?” he 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 cleaned up before your hands get infected,” Rory said, turning the shower on.

“I don’t need help, Rory. Go on 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 about 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, then he was afraid that 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. He sure as hell didn’t like waiting around for the phone call letting him know that his best friend died all alone, because the stubborn ass**le 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 take over.

“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 at work. When he did show up he was late and he always left early and I know you don’t want to talk about it, but I think he had a problem.”

“Like you said, he quit so let it go,” he 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 work through the pain and 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 at the moment. 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 f**king bad it hurt losing his best friend.

“You can’t or you won’t?” Rory demanded as he stepped into the shower.

“Both,” he 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 ass**le was trying to be noble to the end and Connor f**king 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,” he said, feeling his hold on the situation slipping and he didn’t want her around when it did.

“Not until we talk,” she said, stubbornly.

“There’s nothing to talk about,” he 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 few 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 f**k you?” he demanded harshly as he turned around and faced her, feeling his control snap. Even knowing that he was probably going to do something to lose the love of his life, he couldn’t make himself reign 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 someone was Rory.

“Is that the problem, Rory?” he asked, stepping into her. “You’re pissed because I haven’t f**ked you?”

“No, it’s not!” Rory snapped as she tried to stand her ground against him, but he was done playing games.

“Then what’s the problem, Rory? Huh?” he asked, stepping into her 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 ass**le and I want to know why!” she snapped, trying to shove him back, but he refused to move. He moved into her, resting his arms against the wall near her head and caging her in with the rest of his body.

“It doesn’t matter,” he 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 just simply pissed him off.

“No, it doesn’t,” he snapped as he leaned in and pressed a kiss to her neck in the spot that he knew drove her crazy. If he wasn’t going to be able to work himself into exhaustion then he’d f**k Rory until he couldn’t remember his own name, never mind the pain that was driving him out of his f**king mind, he decided as he continued to kiss her neck.

“Talk or stop touching me,” Rory demanded, but he ignored her and kept kissing his way down to her beautiful br**sts.

Escape, that’s all he wanted to do and Rory’s body would allow him to do just that. He just needed to escape, he told himself as he moved to kiss his way down to that dark rosy nipple that he loved.

“Goddamnit, Connor! Stop touching me and tell me what the hell is going on with you!” she yelled as she placed her hands on his shoulders and shoved him back, robbing him of the escape that he needed.

“It’s none of your f**king business!” he yelled back, knowing that he’d hit a dangerous point and forced himself to step away from her before he did something really stupid.

“Bullshit!” Rory screamed, getting right into his face and cutting him off when he tried to step out of the shower and leave so that he could calm down, but she wouldn’t let him.

“Get the f**k out of my way, Rory,” he said, tightly through a clenched jaw. When she didn’t move, he yelled, “Now!”

“No!” she yelled right back. “You’re not leaving this shower until you tell me what’s going on!”

“Fuck that,” he snapped, picking her up and moving her to the side so that he could leave. He needed space, needed to calm the f**k down, but of course the damn woman wouldn’t let him have that.

“I told you that you weren’t leaving until you told me what’s going on,” she said, getting out of the shower and moving to block his path, but he simply ignored her as he grabbed a towel and headed for the door.

He didn’t make it far. In fact, he’d barely made it five feet into her bedroom when Rory took him by surprise and tackled him, taking him off guard and down to the ground. It was something that she hadn’t done since she grew br**sts and that unfortunate incident in the apple orchard when she went to teach him a lesson, but instead ended up giving him a glance at her developing br**sts that had him grinning like a fool.

He wasn’t grinning now. No, now he was pissed. Barely aware of what he was doing, he rolled them over and pinned Rory to the floor, ignoring her dog’s demands to be let in the room and the pain shooting through his hands as he held her arms down.

“You really want to know what’s going on, huh?” he asked, roughly, settling himself between her legs and grinding his hardening c**k against her damp slit. “Huh?”