He stared at her blankly for a few seconds after she let go of him. "Huh?"
"I said, 'Well?'" Alex repeated, moving her hand to her ribs, which were beginning to protest the exertions of the past few minutes.
He seized on that movement as an escape route. "Are you ok?"
"I'm fine," she said with a grunt as she returned to the bed and sat down. "Would you please just answer my question for once?"
"You might have hurt yourself, Alex. You're not supposed to lift anything, and in the past few minutes you put enough pressure on my neck that I could have picked you up just by standing up straight. Let me look, ok?" He approached the bed slowly, and when she didn't protest, he knelt in front of her and reached for the hem of her shirt.
Alex put her hand on top of his and pushed it away until it rested on her knee. "You're not seeing anything under my clothes until you answer my question, buster."
"Can we please just set that issue aside for now?"
"No, we cannot, Bobby. We've been setting it aside for way too long now, and it hasn't gotten us anywhere."
He sat back on his haunches and studied her, searching for cracks in her armor but finding none. "Ask me the question again."
"What?"
"Ask me again. I'm not sure if I remember it correctly."
She rolled her eyes. "You are a complete liar, but fine. Here it is again: I asked you to tell me whether, if I kissed you right now, you'd want to pull away."
He sighed and said so quickly that she almost couldn't missed it, "No. Now can I please check your ribs?"
"You know, usually I make men work harder than just saying 'please' to get to second base," she muttered as he reached for her shirt again and started trying to open the bottom button.
"Huh?" he mumbled distractedly. "Can you take this off?"
"You . . . want me to take off my shirt? Here? Now? Getting me to strip requires more than a 'please' too, Goren."
"It'll be easier than having you hold it up."
"You," she said pointedly, pushing his hands away from her again, "are doing everything you can think of to avoid having to talk to me."
"Alex . . ."
"Don't 'Alex' me," she grumbled as she began unbuttoning her shirt. "When you're done poking at my ribs, you're not leaving this room until you explain yourself." She opened the buttons up to just beneath her breasts and pulled the two sides of the front apart. "There. Examine away."
Although the worst of it was covered by medical tape, the skin over her ribs was still a riot of colors that covered the entire spectrum from red to green to purple. He looked up at her. "Is this what they looked like this morning?"
She bent her neck awkwardly to try to see the area. "Uh, I think so. Although," she added, moving her hand to point to a red patch at the top of the mess, "this might be new. It's hard to tell."
"Hmm." He touched the area as gently as he could. "Hurt?"
His hands felt nice and warm. It was comforting, like having a heating pad on a pulled muscle. She sighed. "Not really."
"Give me a yes or no," he said, still focused on her abdomen.
She couldn't hold back the ironic laughter at that statement, but after a few seconds of giggling she stopped abruptly. "Ow. Ok, now it hurts."
"Did you forget you had a hole in your lung not too long ago?" He used her knees to push himself up to a standing position and looked down at her. "I told you you shouldn't insist on doing everything yourself."
"And I told you I wanted an explanation. We can't always get what we want, partner," she shot back, not bothering to re-button her shirt. After all, a stomach that was one big bruise wasn't about to inspire lust in anyone, even someone as quirky as Bobby Goren, and she didn't feel up to the effort buttoning the shirt would require, anyway.
"But you . . ."
"Enough, Bobby," she said with a sigh, laying back on the bed. "I'm fine. If I'd re-punctured my lung, trust me, we'd know it by now."
"Well, but you should really . . . When's your next doctor's appointment?"
"Mmm." She patted the bed next to her. "Lay down. Now that I'm down here, I don't think I can get up again, and I can't talk to you like this with you standing."
"Alex."
"Fine, don't. But then don't try to converse with me. Or investigate my ribs. Or do anything else that requires my cooperation."
Instead of lying down, he walked to the edge of the bed and leaned over to allow her to see his face. "I'm going to get your painkillers, ok? Then I'll come back and you can harass me."
She didn't respond, just closed her eyes and laid a hand over her sore ribs.
A few minutes later, he was back, as promised, with a glass of water and two pills. "Can you take these lying down?"
She muttered, "No," but didn't bother trying to sit up. She wasn't keen to cause herself any more pain than she already had today.
"Ok," he said calmly. She'd expected him to walk away and put down the the glass while he tried to coax her into sitting up to take them, but instead he transferred the Vicodin into the hand that was holding the water and slid his now-free arm under her shoulder, lifting her up to a sitting position. "Tell me if I hurt you."
She gritted her teeth as her ribs protested the movement, not having the heart to tell him that just about everything he'd done today had hurt her. "I'm fine."
"You're a bad liar, is what you are. Here," he said, handing her the pills and then the glass of water. "How long will they take to kick in?"
She shook her head, taking a deep breath as she tried to relax again after lifting the glass and handing it back to him. "Don't know."
If she was hurting so much that it was visible to him, he knew that it must be excruciating. "Is there anything I can do?"
"No," she said quietly. "You should be heading home, anyway. You've been here all day, you must have stuff to do."
He stood up and walked around to her other side, then lay down next to her, taking her chin in his hand and turning her face toward him. "I'm under orders not to do work, my apartment is as clean as it's ever going to get, and my neighbor is keeping an eye on the place for me while I'm here. I'm not leaving, Alex. I even brought an overnight bag with me, so you can't send me home for new clothes."
Alex just sighed and looked at him dully. "Look, I'm not up to doing any more fencing with you, verbal or otherwise. I just want to stop hurting."
"I know," he said, loosing his grip on her chin but not releasing it entirely. "And the Vicodin will help with that. But is there anything I can do in the meantime?"
She paused, debating with herself, before saying, "Could you . . . put your hand on my ribs again? Your hands are really warm, and it felt good."
He blinked. He was almost inclined to think this was another of her tricks to get him to admit he wanted her, but one look at her face told him that she was too distracted by the pain to play with him. "I can do that. Do you want to get back under the covers? It's not too comfortable lying here with our legs dangling off the side of the bed."
"Ok. Yeah." Before he could try to help her, she half-slid, half-wiggled her way up to the pillows and then relaxed completely, letting her head fall onto them as she sucked in a pained breath.
"For god's sake, Alex, I'm sitting right here, I could have helped you," he scolded as he followed her up to the head of the bed. "Now, where do you want . . . uh, how should I . . ." he stammered, laying his head on the other pillow and holding out his hand tentatively.
Eyes closed, she took his hand and laid it on her abdomen, splayed out. "Just like that. Like I said, warm."
He turned on his side and propped his head on his free hand so he could watch her. "Have you tried a heating pad?"
"You're more interactive," she said without opening her eyes.
"I would hope so." His palm covered almost her entire abdomen, he noticed. She looked so fragile under his hand and he was amazed all over again that he hadn't lost her in the attack. "This helps?" he said quietly, stroking his thumb lightly over her skin.
She nodded against the pillow and inched a little closer to him. "Warm," she repeated, not needing to open her eyes to know he was now looking at her suspiciously because of her movement.
"Alex?"
"No."
"No, what?"
"Whatever it was you were about to ask me to do."
"I wasn't going to ask you to do anything," he protested. "I was just going to tell you that you scared the hell out of me."
"With my dreams? I know, you told me," she said, turning her face toward him but keeping her eyes closed.
He started to shake his head before he realized that she couldn't see it. "Not the dreams."
"Then what?" she asked, reluctantly opening her eyes.
He drew in a deep breath, then let it out. "You looked so . . . small when you were lying there on the floor, after he dropped you."
"Bobby, as much as I might dislike it, I am small," she reminded him.
"No, you don't understand. You haven't been 'small' to me since the second week we worked together. You're as big as me unless I stop to think about it."
"I'll take that as a compliment," she sighed, allowing her heavy eyelids to drop closed again.
"It's just . . . the truth. But when you were bleeding, suddenly you looked so tiny . . . and you're never tiny. You're not a tiny person. That's what made me realize that you might die."
She forced her eyes open again so she could catch his. "Look at me, Goren." She thought her speech was starting to slur and she was pretty sure she was going to conk out any second, but she needed to reassure him first. "I'm alive. I'm hurt, but I'm healing. I'm not going to die. You can stop panicking, ok?"
"I'm sorry. I didn't mean to bring it up, but just . . . my hand is as big as your whole waist, and it reminded me."
"Bobby . . ." She reached out to lay her hand on his cheek. "Don't apologize. It's your job to be concerned for me." He didn't look comforted, and before she could have second thoughts, she stretched her neck out an extra inch and kissed him gently before quickly pulling back. "I'm fine," she mumbled into the pillow just before she allowed sleep to pull her away.