Checkmate

Chapter 36

September

“What time is it?” Rory asked around a yawn as she rolled over onto her side so that she could face him as she struggled to keep her eyes open.

“A little after two,” he said softly, resisting the urge to go to her and kiss her, because he knew that if he did that he would want more, need more from her and he couldn’t do that to her, not now.

“You’re just getting home?” she asked, but made no move to get up or open her eyes this time. For the first time in months, he was thankful for the exhausting hours they put in every day. It was probably the only thing stopping Rory from asking a million questions that he didn’t want to answer.

“Go back to sleep, baby. We have to get up in a couple of hours,” he said, smiling for the first time in hours when Rory let out an annoyed little growl and flopped back over onto her stomach.

He walked into her bathroom, carefully closing the door behind him, wincing as pain shot through his battered hand. For the last couple of hours he’d been able to ignore the pain in his hands, but now that he wasn’t busting his ass and taking all his frustration and anger out on two by fours and sheetrock, he was starting to feel all the damage he’d done to his hands. He held up his hands and cursed.

Shit!

His hands were torn up, bloodied, blistered and he could hardly move them without agonizing pain shooting from the finger tips and down 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 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, he closed the door and looked beneath her sink, cursing as crippling pain shot through his hands, but at least he found what he was looking for. 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,” he 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 of course 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,” she said with disgust as she released his hand and stepped past him.

“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 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 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 fucking 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 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,” 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 fuck 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 fucked 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 asshole 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 fuck Rory until he couldn’t remember his own name, never mind the pain that was driving him out of his fucking 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 breasts.

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 fucking 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 fuck 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 fuck 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 breasts 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 breasts 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 cock against her damp slit. “Huh?”

“Yeah, I’d love to know why you’re being a prick,” she said, not sounding scared, but just pissed, Rory level pissed as she tried to get her arms free, but he wasn’t ready to let her go yet. Not yet.

“Because my best friend is dying,” he announced, watching as the anger quickly disappeared from Rory’s beautiful face and was replaced by sympathy.

“Oh my God……,” she mumbled.

“Mmmhmmm,” he said, continuing to grind against her. “Leukemia, but you want to know the real kick in the ass? He has a chance, a fucking chance to live and he’s ignoring it. Do you know why?” he asked, barely aware of the way that his voice shook or the way his body trembled as he spoke.

“No,” Rory said, her voice hollow as she laid there, no longer fighting him.

“Because the asshole has a rare blood type and he’s afraid that if he takes the bone marrow that he’ll be taking away the chance for a kid or someone with a family’s chance to live. He doesn’t care that I need him and that I’m going to miss him,” he said, grinding against her, harder. “He doesn’t fucking care!”

He kept grinding against her, not feeling anything as he looked down at her, watching as the tears rolled down her beautiful face. “He doesn’t care that I’m going to miss him. He doesn’t care that he’s making me watch him die and he won’t let me fucking help him! Now that he quit, he doesn’t have health insurance and can’t get the medicine that he needs. He won’t even let me be there for him now. The stubborn asshole doesn’t want anyone to see that, but I need to. I need to be there for him and let him know how much I love him and he won’t give me that!”

“Shhh, it’s okay,” Rory said, putting her arms around him and pulling him down, but he wouldn’t allow it. He didn’t remember letting her arms go or moving to get away from her and didn’t care. Suddenly he couldn’t stand the thought of her touching him, of her comforting him. It made it feel too real, like his best friend really was dying and there was nothing he could do. He couldn’t deal with it, just wanted to pretend for a little while longer. He-

“Shhh, baby, it’s okay,” Rory said as she gently pushed him back down until he was sitting on the floor with his back against the bed. Before he could move, she was climbing onto his lap and straddling him. He went to push her off, desperate to avoid her touch, but when he moved to push her off he found himself instead grabbing her and pulling close, suddenly desperate for the comfort that she was offering him, needing it more than his next breath.

“Everything is going to be okay, Connor,” Rory said soothingly as she wrapped her arms around his head and held him against her chest. “Shhh, it’s okay.”

He tried to tell her that it wasn’t, but he couldn’t. The only thing that came out was an agonized sob and then another and another until all he could do was hold onto her as he lost control and finally gave into the pain.

“What do you mean, you and Connor aren’t coming in today?” Craig demanded, sounding stressed and for good reason. They had less than two months to finish the hotel and they were barely keeping their heads above water. They should be at work, but Connor needed some rest and she needed to do something.

She leaned over and kissed Connor’s cheek as he slept, his stubble tickling her lips and making her smile sadly as she looked down at him. He’d been shouldering this secret for far too long. She hated seeing him in this much pain and she refused to let it continue. With that in mind she said, “Our cousins aren’t coming in today either. I need their help with something.”

“This has to end,” Andrew said, his legs giving out beneath him, dropping his ass to the ground before he could make a half ass attempt to hold himself up against the wall. He was tired, too damn tired and couldn’t wait for it to end.

He was ready. He’d said his goodbyes and accepted his fate. He’d just wish fate would stop fucking with him and get it over with, because he wasn’t sure that he could-

“Rory?” he asked, sure that he was seeing things as he watched the stunning woman climb through his window. When two very large men followed her inside, he prayed that they were there to finish him off. The woman hated him, always had and he really couldn’t blame her, because he had been an asshole. He’d love to say that he’d had an excuse to treat her the way that he did, but unfortunately he’d been a dumb kid, a jealous dumb kid who’d crushed on her and hated the fact that Connor loved her. Connor was his best friend, more like a brother and because of him, he never tried anything with Rory, but once upon a time he’d dreamed of making her his own. He’d hated that she was off limits, but as the years passed he realized that he’d simply been harboring a childhood crush on her and had been a complete asshole to her for no good reason.

“Oh good, you’re ready to go,” she said, smiling when she spotted him.

Frowning, he looked down at his bare chest and boxers and had to wonder what she was talking about. He moved to open his mouth, but no words came out as he watched more men crawl through the window, a lot more. A few he recognized, but most of them he’d never seen before. He knew by their builds, their dark hair, and bad boy looks that they were all related and they were all looking at him.

“W-what’s going on?” he asked, hating how weak he sounded.

Rory gestured a few of the men forward. “Nothing much. We’ve just come to get you and end the bullshit.”

“Oh shit,” he mumbled when they came for him.