Author's Notes: I've tossed around the idea of this story for awhile, but it only came out tonight. I hope you like it;) Thanks to PhDelicious as always for her 'leet beta skills. Enjoy!
The One Who Got Away
by Kristen Elizabeth
When I'm with you, are you somewhere else?
Am I gettin' through or do you please yourself?
When you wake up, will you walk out?
It can't be love if you throw it about...
- Def Leppard
"Okay. Who's got the Living section?"
Along with his fellow EMT's sitting around the diner table, Hank looked up at his partner, Derrick. By all accounts, he was just one of the guys. Cool in a crisis, tough when he had to be. But then he went and did something like ask for the one section of the paper no man ever got caught reading, and Hank had to wonder about him.
"Don't nobody say a word," Derrick said gruffly. "My little sister's in her high school play this weekend. I'm just looking for her picture."
Hank dug the untouched section of the Las Vegas Review-Journal out from under the well-worn sports section. "Go crazy, man."
With a scowl, his partner buried himself in the paper, and the rest of the group dug back into their food. It had been a very long shift on a scorching hot June day in the desert. No one felt much like talking. But they also didn't feel like going home to wives and girlfriends who would never see the horrors they had in the course of a single day.
Hank pushed his fork tines through the mashed potatoes on his plate. There had been only one woman in his life so far who hadn't needed to be protected from his job. If anything, she'd sometimes had to protect him from hers.
He didn't think of her too often, but every now and then her memory snuck into his head. And once he started thinking about her, he sometimes couldn't stop.
So it didn't help matters that just then Derrick spoke from behind his paper. "Hey, isn't this that chick you used to date?"
Hank glanced up to see his partner folding back a page of the paper and handing it over to him.
"Yeah," his former partner Chip piped in, taking a look. "The CSI with the great legs. Whatever happened to her?"
"She found out about Elaine," Gary, another of his so-called friends, replied.
"I warned him about that." Chip shook his head. "She gets paid to figure shit out, dumb-ass. How long did you think you could keep your other girlfriend a secret?"
Hank ignored all of this and grabbed the paper out of Derrick's hand. Yes, it was Sara in the black and white picture. That wasn't completely unheard of; there were often pictures of her and her fellow CSI's in the papers.
But this wasn't the headlines. This was the Living section. More specifically, the Celebrations pages. And even more specifically, the wedding announcements.
Chip yanked it out of his hand, taking it upon himself to read out loud. "Gilbert Grissom and Sara Sidle exchanged vows on June 15th at the Little Church of the West with close friends in attendance. Both the bride and the groom are employed by the Las Vegas Police Department Crime..."
"You can stop," Hank said, surprised at the dull quality of his voice. He was even more surprised by the way his stomach suddenly churned. "So she got married. Whatever." He shrugged. "I married Elaine."
"Yeah," Gary agreed. He was smart enough not to mention the fact that Hank had been served with divorce papers only four months earlier.
But Chip couldn't, or wouldn't, let it go. "Damn. This is why I'm a leg man." He gestured to the photo. Sara's wedding dress clung to her body all the way down to the floor. "Short women just can't pull that off." He smacked his lips before shooting Hank a dirty look. "You had all of that goodness wrapped around you, and you let it go?"
Hank tore the paper out of Chip's hands and crumpled it into a ball, effectively ending the conversation.
Later that night, surrounded by the empty apartment Elaine had left behind when she'd moved out, he searched through his own copy of the day's Journal until he found the Celebrations section. He finished reading the announcement with eyes blurry from too little sleep and too much beer, before slumping back into the couch cushions.
Sara Sidle. She'd rappelled into his life, only to walk out of it without looking back. She was everything good and real about women. Smart as all hell. A firecracker in bed and just as interesting afterwards. Pretty. Really fucking pretty.
And now she belonged to an old man who probably needed to pop a pill just to get it up.
He lifted his bottle high into the air, toasting the first one who got away.
"Is there anything else I can get for you, my mistress?"
A slight wave of her manicured hand was all it took for the girl to make a graceful exit from the room. She was young, but eager to please. The new ones always were. So quick to assume that puberty and maturity were the same thing. It would be years before the girl would be slapped in the face by the cold hand of reality. For now, a slap to her backside was enough to keep her line.
Heather added a single drop of cream to her tea and sat back in her chair. She lifted the delicate china cup to her lips and gently blew across the steaming surface. Tea in the morning was a pleasure in which she indulged with great delight, especially after four months in a minimum security woman's correctional center. The time she'd spent behind bars for the attempted murder of the bastard who'd killed her daughter had been minimal thanks to a sharp lawyer, and a judge who liked the cleavage she displayed in court.
She was a free woman now, and would never take the simple joys of life for granted ever again.
As her tea cooled, Heather picked up the newspaper from its usual spot on the chair next to hers. She slipped the protective plastic off and opened up to the headlines. She enjoyed keeping up with current events. It was always satisfying to surprise the people who considered her nothing more than an uneducated whore by quoting a politician or commenting on the state of the stock market.
She read systematically, her sharp eyes taking in every word, her even sharper mind processing each one, memorizing what she cared to recall later. She made her way through the Las Vegas Review-Journal with all the precision of a scientist.
Heather lowered the paper ever so slightly. She could harden her heart to any of her critics, the holy-rollers or the degenerates of the world. But for some reason, she couldn't get rid of him. He came to her in these rare moments when she let her guard down. She would see his face, not the bearded man who'd yanked the whip out of her hands, but the clean shaven gentleman to whom she hadn't wanted to say "stop."
She shook her hair back, steeling herself against the memories of their night together. They were both precious and unwanted.
When she turned the page a second later, Heather nearly dropped her cup.
There he was, in black and white, a wide smile on the face that haunted her. It might not have been such a shock to her system had the picture not appeared in the wedding announcements.
She read out loud to herself, as if it might make the words that accompanied the photo easier to believe.
"Both the bride and the groom are employed by the Las Vegas Police Department Crime Lab. The reception was held at the home of a mutual friend. Among the guests were members of the LVPD and the Clark County District Attorney's office. The couple will be taking a cruise of the Greek Isles for their honeymoon, before settling into their new home in Henderson," she finished.
Heather folded the paper and slid it away from her across the linen tablecloth. She knew the bride's name all too well. When she invited a man into her bed as more than just her play toy, she expected to be the only thing on his mind. While he'd had the self-control not to shout his new bride's name in the heat of passion, he had murmured it in his sleep.
It had made the events of the next morning even more humiliating.
When the girl returned to pour her more tea, Heather ordered her to burn the newspaper, and any other copies that might be lying around. Even as the girl rushed to do her biding, her stomach refused to settle down.
Gil Grissom. He'd entered her life with a genuine fascination for its unconventionality, and left it with a parting look that spoke of confusion, betrayal and, worst of all, pity. He was the last of the truly good men in the world. Effortlessly intelligent. Surprisingly agile in bed, and even more adept at the art of conversation. Attractive. Dangerously attractive.
And now tied down by a skinny woman who was too young to understand and appreciate his ageless soul.
Heather refused to raise her cup in toast to the man she never should have let get away.
Fin