Thank you everyone for your comments. They are greatly appreciated and I will do my best to watch for grammatical errors this time around. I'm glad to know that I'm not the only person left on this planet with interest in the Kim character. Again, please let me know what you think.

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Resting her head on the door that she had grasped for balance, Kim let a face of bitter disinterest come over her.

"Which part did you hear? The one where my dad was still alive or the one where he left again?" As she spoke of her situation, Kim lost the battle to withhold her emotion. Her voice cracked at "left again" and she broke eye contact.

Chase studied her expression for a moment and, with slight hesitation, tilted his head to meet with her eyes. She refused to look up at him. He responded with quiet sympathy, hoping to somehow connect with her.

"Both."

She was engaged now, but still just as bitter. "And now you're going to pretend to care."

Her words weren't fair and they both new it. Their relationship ended for many reasons, but his lack of care was not one of them. Regardless of what Kim might have told herself and everyone else, Chase had not simply left. He did care for her and he knew that she would need someone tonight. Whether her words were fair or not, Chase had not come to get into another argument. He brushed past the harsh statement to once again express his sympathy.

"I'm here to help… Take it or leave it."

He acted like he had nothing to lose either way. The truth was that he had already lost everything when he lost her. Sure, he had handled the split much better than she did. He moved his private security company to a bigger office closer to LA and prospered greatly from its success. He had a daughter to come home to every night and decent hours to spend with her. He never wanted to leave Kim, but where he left physically, she had already left emotionally. In an effort to lessen the impact of her loss when he left, he had given her everything but his business, his car, and Angela. The house, the furniture, even the joint savings account was hers. He left with 100,000 dollars and a broken heart. To Kim it translated that he couldn't hold on to anything, but he had held on long enough. She was so miserable with him that he thought leaving would be freeing for her; that maybe he was too much like her dad for Kim to be able to move on. As she looked up with her glazed eyes staring into his, it was obvious that his leaving had not helped in the least.

"God, Chase. Why are you even here?" She let go of the door and stood upright as if to prove that she could hold her ground.

"I mean, do you really think that there is anything that you can do to help? That maybe I didn't have enough going on without you barging back into my life; like you have any right?"

The pressure of her stare caused Chase to look down and sigh. He wasn't ready for this reaction. He really hadn't expected her to be at the house; he was sure that Barry would be having a field day with Kim's emotions at this point. He really didn't know why he had shown up. He just wanted to be there for her- not as an ex-husband but as a confidant. He was shaken up at the news of Jack's sudden return and departure and the person that he wanted to share those feelings with was Kim. Maybe it was selfish of him to believe he had the right. He struggled to answer her.

"Look, Kim, I just wanted to see how you…"

She cut him off. "Chase, what do you want from me? Do you want the truth, no holding back?" He didn't look up and she didn't give him time to respond. "I'm drunk, I'm sad, I'm lonely, and I'm depressed. I could probably use better adjectives if I weren't drunk as previously mentioned and most of all I have been miserable since the day you left." She paused for a moment as he looked up at her, surprised at her admission. She corrected herself as her eyes met his once more. "Well, I was already miserable but I have been unbearably miserable since. There it is- that's how I'm doing. Are you happy? Is that what you wanted to hear?"

The tension built as she held his gaze.

"Now can you just go?" She begged his pardon as tears came freely; she felt more vulnerable now than ever.

The suggestion that this heartache she admitted to made him happy was a slap in the face. As if he wanted to see her miserable. And then it dawned on him: he really had come to see if she had been as miserable as he had been without her. And it did relieve him that he wasn't the only miserable one.

Perhaps in an attempt to lessen her pain in that moment, paired with the mounted tension from their stare, Chase took her head in his hands and kissed her passionately- longingly.

Water dripped down his face as tears fell down hers. Just as they had gotten inside and shut the door, still kissing, Chase broke away.

"Kim." he let out a heavy breath and began a whispered explanation for his hesitation. "I'm sorry. I just… I didn't come to… I don't want to hurt you again. I'm really just here to be here for you."

The kiss had knocked the wind out of her and she looked up at him with a crossed look that made him regret coming in the first place. She immediately turned away and, to Chase's surprise, began to run. He chased her to the half bathroom located right off of the hallway where she began to throw up the drinks that she had spent the entire night consuming. Chase stood over her and tenderly held her hair (which he noticed had grown unusually long for her taste). She looked up once and muttered softly, "I'm sorry," only to have to turn right back to the toilet.

Chase stroked her hair and gently whispered into her ear.

"I'm here."