Checkmate (Neighbor from Hell #3)(68)

"Does it matter?" she asked softly as she pressed down against that large bulge in his pants that her trembling body screamed for.

"Not one f**king bit."

Chapter 25

"The James brothers looked like they wanted to kill you," Andrew commented as he looked around to make sure that they were alone before he opened the small blue cooler that he had perched on the driver's side seat of his truck.

Connor shrugged it off as he looked around the basically deserted makeshift parking lot, playing lookout. It was a job that he'd perfected over the past year and one that he hated, but he knew that Andrew hated it more so he kept his mouth shut and kept an eye out for unwanted company.

"Does it have something to do with that huge shit eating grin that you were sporting this morning?" Andrew asked, chuckling as he pulled out the first of many syringes.

"In a roundabout way," he admitted, feeling his lips pull up into that grin that he couldn't seem to keep off his face. Yesterday with Rory had been.....

Amazing.

After somehow managing to drive the truck back to his house without wrecking it, they managed to stumble into his house while tearing each other's clothes off and hadn't left until this morning. They'd made love against the front door, on the stairs, in the upstairs hallway, three times in the bathtub before they managed to collapse in a tangled mess on his bed where he proceeded to make love to her until he swore that he'd never be able to move again. Sex with Rory was incredible, but surprisingly it wasn't the reason why he couldn't stop smiling.

Rory was.

He loved spending a lazy Sunday with her. It didn't matter if they were making love, holding each other, fighting over the remote or trying to annoy the hell out of each other, just being with her felt good. She turned him on, made him laugh and drove him out of his goddamn mind and he loved every single minute of it. She was definitely worth the bullshit that he was going to have to go through to get back on her family's good side after yesterday.

"Oh, f**k," Andrew groaned, dragging Connor's attention away from the most incredible weekend of his life in time to see his oldest friend stumble away from the truck and make his way towards the overgrown brush surrounding the woods where Andrew proceeded to lose his lunch near a patch of poison ivy.

"Stop," Andrew said on a gasp when Connor moved to help him.

He wasn't sure what he hated more, watching his best friend slowly lose this battle or feeling helpless. It wouldn't be so bad if Andrew wasn't being so damn pigheaded, but he was. Andrew refused to ask for help and Connor feared that the man's pride was going to get him killed. He knew that it was Andrew's choice, but he wished the man would ask for help, scream for it, but he wouldn't. Andrew was leaving his fate in God's hands and Connor didn't think that was enough, not for this.

"You need to go home," Connor snapped, sick of this bullshit. The man didn't belong here, especially if he wasn't going to put up a fight. If this was it, he'd rather see his oldest friend go out with a bang, but Andrew refused to act like anything was wrong.

"Are you still going to pay me?" Andrew asked, sitting back on his haunches as he dropped his face in his hands, no doubt fighting another wave of nausea from the expensive medicine that was supposed to help him.

"Yes," Connor gritted out, already knowing where the stubborn man was going with this.

Sure enough, Andrew shook his head as he slowly got to his feet. "Then I'm staying, Connor. I'm not a charity case," he said, pressing a shaky hand to his stomach as he walked back to his truck.

"No, you're a f**king idiot!" Connor snapped as the fear that he'd been fighting for the last year crept up his spine. He couldn't lose his best friend. They'd been friends since they were little kids and had always been there for each other. Andrew was one of the best people he knew. The man was kind, considerate and put up with his bullshit and helped keep him in line. Without him......

Hell, he didn't want to think about that because it wasn't going to happen. Andrew was going to beat this damn thing and that's all that mattered.

"Love you too, man," Andrew said with a forced smile as he placed the used syringes in a canister and placed it beneath his seat. Andrew carefully stored the cooler on the floor, grabbed his hardhat and clipboard while Connor wracked his brain, trying to figure out a way to fix this. He refused to believe that there was nothing that he could do.

"Let it go, Connor," Andrew said softly.

"I can't."

"You're going to have to, Connor," Andrew said, sounding tired as he walked away.

Connor cursed up a storm as Andrew stumbled on his way back to the site. He wasn't too surprised when Andrew couldn't make it past the flatbeds before he needed to take a break. He was supposed to rest for three hours after taking his medication, but he never did. Andrew didn't want to be sick and didn't want to face what lay ahead of him and Connor couldn't blame him, but sometimes like now, it was too much to bear.

He wanted to yell at Andrew, scream at him until his voice was hoarse and then do it some more. He needed to shake some sense into his friend, tell him how unfair he was being by making him feel this f**king helpless, but he couldn't. Andrew didn't need to hear how scared he was. It wouldn't be fair, but then again nothing about this situation was.