"You are a sight for sore eyes." Despite his bruised face it still lit up like Christmas when she walked slowly into his room.

It had been two days since Adam had collapsed and he still had his chest tube but they were hopefully taking it out today. He hadn't seen Kim since it all happened, well not since he'd been coherent anyway. She had sat with him on the first day but he was so gacked out on meds that he just rambled shit and slept. He had no idea what he said but she was back so it couldn't have been all bad. Well that was his hope anyway.

"You look good."

"Really?" He laughed which made him cough and then he winced. He looked anything but good, he'd seen himself in the mirror, he looked like he'd been in a meat grinder and that's pretty much how he felt too.

"Sorry." Kim hustled to his side and quickly as she could. "Don't move."

"I'm so over this. I feel like I've been doing fuck all for days."

"Not quite, you are here because you did plenty."

"Yeah." He grimaced as he tried to shift his weight. His ass was getting sore. "How are you?"

"Getting there. Keen to go home."

"When do they think that will be?"

"Tomorrow hopefully. I tried to get them to let me stay until…."

"Until?"

"I need to keep an eye on you." Kim reached for his hand. "Left to your own devices you get up to all sorts of trouble."

"Go home Kim, I'll be fine. No need for both of us to the trapped in this hell hole with flouro lighting." Adam closed his eyes. He was still tired more often than not and the chest tube was uncomfortable at the best of times.

While they spent the day together they only really talked about what happened in the Bank. Kim asked him what he did, what he was thinking and if he would have done anything differently. She literally picked his brains and he eventually had to stop as he had a headache.

The one remaining Perp had given up very little information as to why it happened and even he didn't really now that the planned outcome was, it seemed he was just a little too stupid to realise what his buddy's had got him into.

Kim was discharged the next day, much to her annoyance. They laughed that they had never seen someone who seemed to hate being in her room so keen to actually stay another night. "You are free. Most people skip out of here."

"Yeah, but you know Adam..."

"He's in good hands. Go home and rest. We'll look after him."

"I know, it's not that. I let him go once and I don't want to do it again."

The nurse just smiled and patted her arm. "I have a feeling you'll be fine." It was the same nurse who had been looking after Adam the night he absconded. These two had kept the whole place entertained with their star crossed love story.

Adam only stayed another two days and when he finally got home and after his Dad fussed over him for a good half hour he was ready to settle down on his couch with the remote and a couple games cued up to watch and enjoy the peace and quiet for as long as he could. He groaned when he heard a knock on the door barely ten minutes into the first game, not that he was surprised, someone was always going to check up on him, they were annoying like that. It took him a while to get up and open the door, he wasn't walking all that quickly yet and he opened it and didn't say a word. Stepping back he let her in. "What are you doing here? How'd you get here? You can't drive yet."

"I caught on Uber." He took the bag of groceries from her hand. "Just some of your favourites."

Adam set them on the bench and watched as Kim started to unpack them. "What are you doing?"

"Unpacking your groceries."

"No, what are you really doing?" Adam exhaled. "Here? Why are you here?" Without a doubt he wanted this, he'd always wanted this but he needed to make sure it was right for him. He didn't want this to be a couple of weeks of back and forth for her then to turn around and say that now he was better she wasn't ready for anything more. He couldn't do that again. He had to put himself first right now.

He'd spent a lot of time last night thinking and time and distance gave him a bit of perspective and then he started to worry. It always happened when he was left on his own too long his mind wandered and catastrophised everything. Why wouldn't it? Nothing ever went right for him.

"Adam, I'm sorry."

"For what?"

"For everything, I should have talked to you." Kim jumped straight in, they'd danced around this for long enough and never talked about it and instinctively she knew that this is what Adam wanted to talk about.

Adam just nodded slowly. "Yep and I shouldn't have let you go in the first place and by the time I worked that out it was too late." Kim knew that the biggest sticking point was Roman, she'd moved on so quickly but he didn't see that she didn't move on she was just trying to stop herself from hurting.

"They why did you wait."

"My ego was bruised. You've got no idea what that felt like. In front of everyone you dumped me, stopped talking to me, hooked up with Roman and let me find out in front of all of them. I hated you and then I couldn't go back because…."

"Because why?"

"Because I needed to work out if I trusted you or even wanted too."

"What does that mean?"

"What you think it means?" Adam sighed. "You never talked to me, I still don't really know what I did wrong? Was it the dinner with our folks?"

"Not just that, that pushed me over the edge."

Why didn't talk to me? And then in the blink of an eye you had moved on with that dickhead." Kim didn't really like the way Adam talked about Roman and he'd made it perfectly clear he wouldn't piss on him if he was on fire and she couldn't really blame him. It looked awful, what they did and Roman never gave Adam the time of day either and would remind her constantly that he didn't even bother to fight for her and because she was so crushed by that she ate it up. "What was I supposed to think? Did you sleep with him when we were together? Did you break up with me because you wanted to sleep with him?"

"I would never do that."

"How would I know? You didn't talk to me.." he repeated, his voice had taken on a little edge that neither of them liked. That had always bugged him. "… and I thought why should I beg and grovel to get you back when you walked away without one single fucking word or reason why." Adam couldn't keep the anger out of his voice. "I needed to reconcile all that and more."

"And have you?"

"Perhaps, what I do know is that I never stopped loving you. So I needed to decide what that means for me and if I could forgive you. If you'd slept with him when we were together, then I can tell you I can't go back." That was a non-negiotable for him. It was a line he would never cross. His Dad did it to his Mom and it ruined his childhood. Of all the things people could accuse him of being a cheater was not one of them. It chewed him up inside even that kiss they had, which Kim had instigated when he was still engaged to Wendy. He hated himself for letting that happen. He didn't want to become his Dad, not that part of his Dad anyway.

"I swear to you Adam, I never, it never crossed my mind. I loved you. I thought you didn't want to marry me."

"Well you were wrong."

"Was I?"

"Yes, and if you'd bothered to ask you would have known. Why did you keep asking me to put off the wedding? You did it twice?"

"I don't know."

"Yes you do, you do and if you don't you need to figure out why. Because what's the point of this if you don't know why you did it."

"I don't think you are going to like the reason why."

"Tell me." He growled.

"Roman kept telling me…."

He held up his hand. "Stop….just stop. You do realise why he did it don't you? He wanted to get you into bed and you fell for it hook, line and sinker. It's bullshit."

"I know." Kim squeezed her hands together tightly and shoved them between her thighs so he didn't see them shaking. "I was scared."

"Yep. Me too."

"Adam, I know I made mistakes."

Adam didn't appear to hear her or just chose to ignore it. "So, is that going to be an issue for you moving forward?"

"Is what?"

"The fact you and I are not anywhere close to being ready for marriage or even thinking about it again. We are a long way from there."

Kim was a little blindsided by his sharp turn. At this stage she hadn't thought about where they headed, she just wanted them to start again. "I don't know."

"Then you need to figure it out too."

"And what if it is? What if you not wanting to marry me is an issue?" Kim stared hard at him. If he was going to put demands on him then she was going to ask things of him too.

"Then you and I need to walk away now."

"No."

"No?"

"I am not walking away without I fight, I did that once and I regretted it ever since. I was hurt too you know, I was hurt that you didn't seem to care or want to fight for me. The only time I saw any fight from you was when you thought Roman was chasing me…"

"He was." Adam groaned. "Why can't you see that?"

"He wasn't…"

"God Kim, you are still doing it. You are still giving him a pass, why don't I get that same courtesy huh?" She really didn't know what to say. "He got in your head…" he tapped his temple. "…and he's still there."

Was he right? She had been so quick to blame Adam for everything.

Kim couldn't stop herself, she still wasn't ready to apportion the blame to all the right places. There were three people who wrecked their relationship and to date she only blamed one. "I chased him because you didn't seem to want to fight for me and that hurt, I was hurting…" Kim held up her hand when he was about to speak. "…let me finish. And then I saw your face, you supported me through that court case and I saw your face in that room and I knew then that I'd made the mistake. I broke you."

"Yeah, you did."

"You broke me too."

"I know."

"So? No, I am not walking away from you again but I think we need to take things slow."

"How slow?" Adam wanted to know. Yes, he knew it was going to take time but he wasn't going to crawl along at snail's pace and he also wasn't letting her set all the rules. Non-communication had killed them once so if this was going to work they both needed to say what they wanted.

"Let's just get through these next few weeks, you need to recover and I need to take it easy for a while, so let's use this time to set the foundation again."

"Okay."

"Okay?" Kim asked him again. "And Adam, I've always loved you." He just stared at her blankly. "Going back a couple of steps. You said 'what's the point of all this' what did you mean?"

"I mean what's the point of even talking about this if you and I aren't trying to get the same destination."

"And what's that destination."

"Us. I still want that." He wanted to be honest, he had to be. He'd hated where he'd been and how low he crashed. Life had been a struggle for him and he always battled the stigma of rejection. His mother rejected him for the longest time because he chose to live with his Dad. Wendy eventually rejected him and while he was relieved in the end it was still reinforcing his deep seeded fear and then Kim rejected him brutally and it just built up inside him until he felt like he was drowning. It took him a long time and a lot of soul searching to convince himself that he needed to trust her again because nothing else worked for him.

"Me too."

"That's not just some movement is it?" He smiled a little, that cheeky, half cocked grin that she loved.

"Only if you want it to be. I'd like to move around with you again."

Adam held out his hand and curled his fingers tightly around hers. "Hey, Kim, you wanna go on a date with me?"

"Yes."

I apologise, this didn't quite work out the way I hoped, but I didn't want to leave it unfinished. I hope it's semi decent, but this story kinda got away from me and I lost groove. Anyway I hope you 'enjoy' it.