"If we're really going to do this, I think we should lay down a few ground rules first."

He mirrored her position on the narrow bed, stretching out on his side and facing her with one elbow bent to prop his fist against his cheek.

"Alright," he agreed easily, his blue eyes open and locked on her brown ones. "Ladies first."

She began by addressing his worst habit of all. "No running away."

He gave her an all-too-innocent look. "We're in the middle of the ocean — where would I go?"

She returned his stare evenly with a slight lift of her eyebrow. "You know what I mean."

Yes, he knew. She meant no running away emotionally. Well, that was only fair — this was his idea, after all.

"Okay."

"I'm serious, Grissom. No retreating, no avoiding, no deflecting...and no topic is off-limits."

"I understand," he answered in acceptance before proposing a stipulation of his own. "No anger. If you don't want the answer, don't ask the question."

"Agreed," Sara nodded. "Complete honesty. No half-truths, no lies of omission. No matter how difficult it is to say it."

"Deal."

She was all for having real, deep communication with this man, yet she couldn't help but question his motives. "Explain to me how a guy who hates to talk, all of a sudden wants to."

Her skepticism almost amused him. "I can't turn over a new leaf?"

At her very knowing look, he explained. "You gave up a well-deserved and high-paying promotion, to live on a boat with a man who doesn't even deserve you. I want you to be happy here with me — the least I can do is attempt to change my deficient ways."

"I didn't come back to try changing you, Griss," Sara objected softly, using a nickname she hadn't called him in a long time. "You are who you are."

"I know," Grissom answered with a little smile. "But I've learned how crucial conversation is in a relationship. I admit we've never really talked enough in the past, and look where it got us. I want things to work this time, not fall apart again."

Sara gave him a half-grin. "For the record, I followed my heart, not my bank account. But I appreciate your willingness to try. Well, then, if you're really committed to this...what was your childhood like?"

He took a moment to think of the most accurate answer. "It was...quiet."

"Quiet?" she echoed with a kinked eyebrow.

"Too quiet. I grew up almost surrounded by silence, and it really impacted my social development irreversibly. When you're an only child in a deaf household, you really don't have a lot of opportunity at home to craft your social interaction skills using the spoken word."

"I guess that makes sense," Sara allowed. "That's why it's always been hard for you to express your feelings in actual words. Because you never had enough experience with it at home during your most formative years."

Grissom nodded, pleased at her comprehension. "Most of the time, the only person I had with whom to speak out loud was myself. And I didn't need to explain any of my thoughts or feelings to myself. I would sign to communicate with my mother, of course, but internal feelings about things were really never a topic of conversation. We each felt however we felt...but things were how they were regardless, and there was nothing to be gained from discussing any of it. But I'm trying to change," he reiterated. "If not for myself, at least for you."

"For us," Sara corrected.

"Yes, for us," he agreed. "Without 'u', there is no 'us'," he made a horribly bad joke, but Sara gave him a pity grin anyway.

"My father wasn't deaf," Grissom continued. "But he died when I was young — you and I have that in common. He passed away in his sleep on the couch one hot afternoon...and it was a long time before anyone would give me the reason why."

"Heatstroke?"

Grissom nodded. "That's what they eventually told me."

"I'm sorry."

"It's partly what steered me toward science, trying to understand the physical aspects of death. To my mother's horror, I would often bring home dead animals I'd found and perform autopsies on them."

Having come to know Betty Grissom herself, Sara could easily picture the overly-opinionated woman's dismay at her young son's gruesome hobby. "Why didn't you become a coroner? They examine death every day."

He shook his head. "Too small and limited of a field. Entomology was far more fascinating."

"I bet that made you popular," Sara teased lightly. "Being the kid who played with bugs."

"Only popular with the bullies," Grissom replied. "Lucky for me, I was a little bigger than many of them, so I was less of a physical target. Mostly it was just verbal mocking, which was more easily ignored."

"You were stronger than most," Sara surmised. "I hated my bullies. I got teased for being tall, for being skinny, for the gap in my teeth, being a science nerd, for being in foster care..." She gave a humorless laugh. "Anything and everything was fair game for torment."

"I did get teased for having a 'baby-face'," Grissom admitted. "But the girls seemed to like it, so there was that."

Sara chuckled. "Somehow I just can't picture you being a ladies' man in school."

"I wasn't," he confirmed. "I was socially awkward and had hobbies and interests that grossed out the girls."

"I would've been your friend," she told him. "If we'd been in the same school at the same time."

"You'd have been the only one," Grissom replied but without rancor.

He breathed a deep breath. "You know...sometimes it surprises me that you ever chose me in the first place."

Sara regarded him with surprise herself, a curious lilt to her voice. "Why?"

"You and I are so different in so many ways, Sara. The age gap, for one." Grissom thought back to that pivotal day that she'd attended one of his seminars in San Francisco. "You were twenty-six when we met, and I was already forty-one. You were young and beautiful and refreshing...and I was nearly an old man by comparison."

"The age gap has never bothered me," she assured him. "When we first met, you had such enthusiasm for everything you did — every part of your work, no matter what it was. That's what initially attracted me. Plus you were terribly cute," she added with a grin. "With your blue eyes and curly brown hair."

Grissom half-grinned almost shyly at that.

"Besides," Sara continued. "You and I are similar in a lot of ways, too. We both despise injustice, we're both prone to workaholic tendencies...and we're both so much better together than we are apart."

He graced her with a whole smile that reached his eyes. "True."

"You know what I see when I look at you, Grissom?" Sara asked.

"An old man?" he quipped wryly.

She pursed her lips, controlling her grin. "No. I see the handsome, quirky, brilliant scientist that I fell in love with. The one who still makes my heart skip a beat at the touch of his hands. The one in whose arms I want to sleep every night, and wake every morning."

That earned her a kiss, which she happily accepted. And then she wickedly turned the tables on him with her next question.

"Have you ever had sex with Heather Kessler?"

Somehow he knew that query was coming, and Grissom was glad for the ability to answer truthfully. "No. I've never even kissed her. We flirted a bit on occasion, but the only intimacy we ever shared was intellectual, not physical."

Sara stared at him long and hard, but he didn't have his poker face on. His expression was honest, open, unmasked.

She didn't press further. "Okay...I believe you."

"But I did sleep at her house once."

Sara's eyes hardened at that admission; she couldn't help it. "Why?" she asked with an edge to her voice.

"You promised no anger," Grissom reminded her gently. "Please hear me out?"

She inhaled a breath, forcing the steely tone from her voice. "I'm listening."

"It was right after you emailed me that video from Costa Rica, effectively breaking up with me." His eyes darkened with emotion, remembering the confusion and devastation he'd felt at the time.

"Everywhere I went, reminded me of you," he continued softly. "Home...the lab...crime scenes...the park...grocery stores. I barely slept anymore...and when I did, you haunted my dreams. I even built a wall of pillows on your half of the bed to pretend you were there. It didn't work."

He paused a moment, putting his words in order. "Heather's house was the only place that didn't remind me of you. I was already there consulting on a case, and she offered me her guest room, strictly as a friend. I couldn't stand the thought of another night spent alone, so I accepted. I even asked Heather to stay with me in the room, and she did — she sat in a chair until I fell asleep, and she was gone when I woke a few hours later."

Sara remained silent, hearing his dialogue, a lump in her throat as her memories revisited her own pains from that time of separation. She couldn't fault Grissom for needing the presence of another human being...even if it had to be her nemesis.

"You wouldn't go away, even at Heather's house. I still dreamed of you, as vividly as if you were there right beside me. So I gave up trying to escape you and I went home again. It wasn't long after that, that I got my head out of my ass and went to find you in Costa Rica."

"You can't imagine the guilt I felt," Sara began softly. "Expecting you to choose between the career you loved, and a woman who couldn't keep it together enough to stay in Vegas for you. That's why I sent you that breakup video — so you wouldn't have to choose anymore."

"I did love my job," Grissom agreed with a slight nod. "But I loved you more. And I realized that I didn't want to do the job anymore, if I had to do it without you. The only place I really wanted to be was wherever you were."

"You know, I thought I was dreaming," she told him with a sweet little smile. "When I turned around and there you were, at my campsite in the middle of the jungle. And wearing that silly straw hat of yours."

"That was a good hat," he defended his choice of headwear. "You know I bought it right when we first began dating."

"Yeah — who knew that gettin' some would expose Gil Grissom's whimsical hat fetish?" she teased lightly.

"It was hardly a fetish," Grissom objected. "I had three hats total, and one was a department-issued baseball cap that we all received."

"You did look pretty sexy in that baseball cap," Sara replied easily. "The straw hat, too. The chauffer's cap, not so much."

"Yeah, that one was a mistake," he admitted with a chuckle.

He quickly sobered, and asked a question that had weighed on his mind for a couple of years. "Did you regret marrying me?"

Her answer was firm. "Never. You?"

He shook his head. "I regret divorcing you."

Keeping her promise to leave anger out of it, she asked quietly, "Then why did you?"

He gave a helpless little shrug. "Self-preservation."

"Meaning?" she prompted.

"We never seemed to be on the same continent at the same time anymore...and it just didn't seem fair to keep you legally tethered to someone you couldn't be with physically."

He inhaled a cleansing breath, continuing, "You were the greatest thing that ever happened to me...and every time you left me again, a part of me withered. I thought that by finally setting you free, I would set myself free. But it was the worst mistake I'd ever made. And by the time I realized it...it was too late."

Sara's eyes stung with the sudden prick of tears. "I never should have left you again," she said in a low voice filled with regret. "I never should have gone back to the lab. When Ecklie called us in Paris asking me to come back, I should have said no."

"Sara, it wasn't only you. I got caught up in my work, too. I buried myself in it, trying to forget how much I missed you whenever you were gone."

But Sara stubbornly shook her head. "Like you just said... 'Every time I left'. I guess I never really thought about it before...but I kept leaving you."

"No, that's not what I meant," Grissom backpedaled.

"But it's true, isn't it?" The knowledge shamed her as she finally gave voice to it. "Every time we were apart, it was because I left. I left you the first time when I went to bury my ghosts. Then I left you the second time shortly after Warrick's funeral. And I left you a third time when I came back to the crime lab after we married and moved to Paris. I kept leaving...and you stopped following. You went your own way instead — to Peru, and God-knows-where-else."

A tear of remorse fell from her eye; his thumb gently brushed it away, his palm lingering on her cheek.

"I never blamed you," he contradicted softly. "I blamed myself. I should have fought for my marriage, and I didn't. I let it slip away. I let you slip away."

"Gil, I wasn't even the reason you returned to Las Vegas."

"I returned to Vegas temporarily because the alternative at the time was going to jail for trespassing on a marine poacher's boat in San Diego," Grissom clarified. "I just hadn't come back for you yet, because I was being stupid and selfish."

His thumb still caressed her cheek as he continued. "You don't know how many times I mapped out in my mind the quickest route to get to you, calculated exactly how many hours would pass before I would see you, and tried to decide whether you would be happy — or not — that I was there."

"You know I would have been happy to see you."

But he shook his head, his eyes ghosting with his own unshed tears as his hand finally left her cheek. "I didn't know that. I thought you were better off without me. In my heart, you had moved on, and it was too late for us anymore."

Sara sniffled back the rest of her tears, always hating it whenever he saw her cry. "I'm not going anywhere this time. Not without you. That's a promise."

"I'll hold you to it," Grissom accepted with quiet sincerity. "And I promise the same to you."

She nodded agreement. Just a little hesitantly she asked, "Was there...anyone after me? For you, after the divorce, I mean."

He gave her such a tender look. "You were the love of my life, Sara. How could there ever be anyone after you?"

His words melted her, but the investigator in her couldn't help pressing the matter just a tiny bit further.

"I was hardly the first — or last — woman to give you a second look, Grissom," she answered neutrally, no malice in her voice.

"I had many offers, actually," he revealed simply. "I turned them down."

"Every one?"

"Every one. The only woman I wanted was the one I couldn't have anymore."

It relieved her to know that he hadn't been with anyone else in all their time apart, but at the same time her heart broke for him being alone for so long with nobody at all to banish the loneliness.

"What about you?" he forced himself to ask, the idea of her with anyone else making him feel a little sick inside.

Sara scoffed humorlessly. "The one and only date I went on, the guy ended up dead and I was the prime suspect."

The look of shock on Grissom's face told her that he hadn't known about that incident at all. "You were suspected of murder? Sara—!" He was at a loss for words, but his expression said it all.

Sara regarded him mildly. "Now who's getting angry?"

"I'm not angry," he refuted. "I'm..." He sighed, closing his eyes briefly to calm himself down as was his habit. Blue eyes met hers again. "Hell, yes — I'm angry. My wife was suspected of murder and she never bothered to tell me?"

"Ex-wife," Sara corrected evenly.

"That would not have mattered, and you know it," Grissom informed her tightly. "I would have done everything possible to help clear you, no matter what."

"You weren't exactly easy to get ahold of," she reminded him stubbornly. "You were barely answering half of my calls by then. Was I supposed to leave a voice mail that you may — or may not — listen to a month later?"

It was a rhetorical question; no response was expected. But despite his insistence on 'no anger' during their discussion, he sure was giving her one hell of a glare just now.

But Sara was a lot stronger now than she used to be, and she merely shrugged it off. "Anyway, we got the actual killer, it's not important now, and I'm sorry I even brought it up. All this time, I kinda thought you already knew."

"That's exactly why we need to do this," Grissom insisted firmly, deeply hurt by her shocking revelation. "So that we have no more secrets from each other."

Feeling properly chastised, Sara offered him a half-smile to ease the tension. "I promise, next time I'm accused of murder, I will tell you."

"There better not ever be a next time."

She gave him a long, sober look, reaching out one hand to affectionately caress his shortly-bearded cheek. "I never stopped loving you," she voiced softly. "Not for one second."

Grissom's anger ebbed away at her touch and her words. He wasn't mad at Sara, he was mad at anyone who could possibly think her capable of murder. And he was mad at himself for not being there for her when she needed him the most.

And maybe he was a little mad at her for going on a date with someone who wasn't him...even though he had long ago forfeited the right to be angry over it.

"I thought you didn't want me anymore," he told her now, unable to keep the sad tinge out of his voice. "When you didn't ask me to stay, after we caught the bomber of Catherine's casino and closed that case."

"I thought you didn't want me anymore," Sara confessed. "Until I saw the end of Heather's interview video. Why couldn't you just tell me how you felt?"

"I wanted to, so many times," Grissom admitted. "In the car...in the lab. I even tried to when we sat outside under that canopy waiting for those painted bees to return. I couldn't get the words out."

"You know what I was thinking as we sat there?" Sara asked him.

"What?"

Her lips quirked. "I was remembering the last time you and I played with bees together. And you brought up marriage, just as casually as if you were ordering lunch."

"Believe me, there was nothing casual about my proposal," he refuted. "It took me three days just to work up the nerve to ask you. And then my heart was threatening to beat right out of my chest at the fear that you might say 'no'."

"And then your bee stung me," she recalled wryly.

"I felt bad about that," he answered. "I also felt bad that I didn't get you a ring."

"But I got one in Costa Rica when you proposed again and we actually got married," Sara reminded him forgivingly.

With a reminiscent smile, she asked, "Do you remember your first night there in my tent?"

Grissom couldn't help his grin. "I remember us trying to make love without making a sound, because your colleagues were all camped so close by."

"Yeah, we didn't fool anyone, judging by the smirks they all wore the next morning."

It had been a little embarrassing for them at the time, but they could both laugh over it now.

"My back can't take this position any longer," Grissom complained mildly, moving to lay flat on his back instead of remaining half-propped-up on his side.

He slid an arm around Sara as she snuggled into his side, and she stretched her own arm comfortably across his midsection. His hand rested warmly on the middle of her back, making her skin tingle with the contact even through the fabric of her clothing.

"Sometimes I can't help but wonder," Sara began quietly. "If Natalie Davis had never gotten to us...if I never left to bury my ghosts...if all the bad things that happened to us didn't happen...where would you and I be right now? Right at this very moment in time?"

"Well, we wouldn't be on this boat, because I likely wouldn't have it. We'd probably still be in my townhouse. And laying in bed, like we are right now."

"With Hank curled up at the foot," Sara added softly.

"Yeah," Grissom agreed. "I hated to give him up when I left for Costa Rica, but he went to a good home with kids that love him."

"He deserved that. He was a good dog." Sara paused a moment before continuing her venturing aloud. "Do you think you and I would be married yet?"

Grissom solemnly considered that. "Maybe engaged by now, I think. I probably would have taken much longer to propose marriage, because it wouldn't occur to me that anyone or anything might actually take you away from me."

"So basically, you would be taking me for granted?"

He pressed a sweet kiss just above her eyebrow. "I would never take you for granted."

"Good to know." She smiled to herself. "I think I like living on your boat the best. It's cozy. Your townhouse was just too big, and my apartments were always too empty without you."

"It's our boat now," Grissom voiced softly. "Yours and mine."

"Oh, does that mean I get to rename it?" Sara quipped with a grin.

"Hah...don't push your luck," he scoffed good-naturedly.

"I'm just teasing. 'Ishmael' is a great name for our boat."

Grissom's chest moved beneath Sara's arm as he chuckled again suddenly. "Do you remember our first date?"

Sara giggled too. "I recall what a total disaster it was."

"That was par for the course. Every first date I'd ever been on, always ended badly. And usually with the woman never wanting to see me again."

He peeked at her face as she lay in his arms. "Why do you think it took me so long to finally ask you out?"

"I just figured you weren't ready for a real relationship yet."

"No...I wasn't ready for you to hate me when the date would inevitably go wrong."

"Oh, that date went so wrong," Sara agreed with a snicker. "Lucky for you I didn't care. I still had a great time with you."

"So did I," Grissom admitted with a smile. "That was when I really knew."

"When you knew what?"

"That I wanted to let you in all the way. Not keep you at arms' length anymore."

"Took you long enough," Sara murmured lightly.

Grissom's smile twitched into a more rueful one. "Sorry."

He breathed another long, pensive inhale. "I'd never been so terrified in my life, as I was when we were searching for you in the desert. A tiny part of me almost hoped we wouldn't find you...because not finding you at all would still have been preferable to finding you dead."

"What would you have done, if you hadn't found me?"

Grissom's fingers traveled a slow trail up and down her arm where it rested across his chest. "I would have spent the rest of my life looking for you."

"Really?"

"Sometimes when hope is all you have, it can be the most powerful thing in the world."

"That's what kept me alive out there," Sara responded gently. "Hope. Hope of rescuing myself, if nobody else did. Hope of finding a road, of flagging down a car...hope of seeing you again one last time."

"When we found you unresponsive, I could barely breathe again until you finally opened your eyes in that chopper."

"That part's still hazy to me," she admitted. "But I do remember the first thing I felt was your hand holding mine, and the first thing I saw was your name stitched on your vest. That's when I knew I was safe; I was okay."

His voice thickened with emotion. "You know, the only reason Natalie Davis even took you was because I loved you. Your life could have ended that night because of me."

"Not because of you, Grissom," Sara denied firmly. "Because of her. She was a deranged serial killer. That's not on you."

Grissom tightened his arm around her, as if his holding her now could erase his nearly losing her permanently back then. "If you had died in that desert...it would've destroyed me."

"From the loss, or from the guilt?" she almost whispered.

"Both."

Sara strengthened her own hold on him too, for herself as much as for him. "Natalie was never going to win; not against us. We beat her at her own game."

She was silent a moment before backtracking. "You said 'were'."

His brow furrowed in confusion. "What?"

"Earlier. You said, 'You were the love of my life'," Sara reminded him softly. "Does that mean I'm not anymore?"

Her question tugged at his heart. Grissom tilted his head enough that he could look her straight in the eyes. "You always have been. You always will be. Never doubt that."

Sara leaned up, rewarding him with a seductive kiss which he returned with equal passion, his hands and body telling her the things his lips were now far too busy to say.