A/N: If anyone is still reading this, allow me to offer my profound apologies for the delay in getting this chapter up. I found this chapter incredibly difficult to write. I don't know if it was the subject material (angst has never been my strong point) or if my muse was just feeling uncooperative, but either way, writing this was a bitch. And on top of that, my life has been extremely stressful and busy lately, both personally and professionally, so writing fanfic was sort of put on the backburner out of necessity. If you're still reading, thanks for hanging in there! I only have a week left of school, and after that, I should be churning out fanfic on a fairly regular basis, as the muse permits!
Surprisingly, after seeing Sara standing in the doorway, it took me only the barest part of an instant to pull myself together and size her up.
She still looked like shit.
On the surface, she looked all right. She had showered, fixed her hair, applied makeup, and changed into her work clothes. But beneath her work-ready exterior was something else that perhaps only I could see. Because when it comes to Sara—my Sara—I have this sort of sixth sense that's unlike anything else I've ever known. God knows I don't always have that sixth sense turned on, but it's there when I need it.
And now, as I took her in, my sixth sense was ablaze. She was most definitely not all right. Her eyes looked puffy under her makeup, and her skin was pale. Her shoulders slumped just a bit more than usual, and the overall look she wore was one of subtle dejection. As my eyes traveled down her body and back up to her face, I was surprised to see that the dullness in her eyes had suddenly been replaced by a look of intent concentration. She was staring at my face. Why was—
Her eyes softened as she unexpectedly reached up and cradled the left side of my face in her right hand as she had done once before. This time, however, when her thumb swept across my cheekbone, its path was lubricated by—oh, god. I had been crying. She had seen the tear tracks on my face.
Before I could recover sufficiently to speak, Sara's voice broke the silence. "You've been crying," she said softly. Her voice was like a lullaby. "Why?"
I stared at her for a moment, not trusting myself to speak and not knowing what I would have said if I could have spoken. Finally, in lieu of words, I stepped aside and beckoned her in. If nothing else, I would buy a minute or two in which to compose myself. As she passed me, I turned my back for just an instant—long enough to swipe my hands across my face, ridding myself of any last vestiges of tears. When I turned back around, Sara was sitting on my couch, a stunned look etched into her features. I followed her line of vision until I came to the open shoebox, filled with mementos from that summer in San Francisco. Sara was staring at it intently, her mouth slightly agape.
Perfect. I had just morphed from clueless dickhead boss into psycho stalker boss.
"Sara—" I started.
"Shh," she interrupted as she reached down and delicately plucked the Postrio receipt off of the floor. Licking her lips, she smoothed it out on her lap and gazed at it. After a moment, she gazed up at me, eyes bright with unshed tears. "You kept this?"
Without waiting for an answer, she placed the receipt on the table and gently picked the shoebox up, moving it to her lap. She reached her lithe fingers inside and began picking through the contents, placing them on the table one by one. Some items brought a small smile to her lips; some elicited a tiny laugh. When she reached the last item in the box, a brochure from the San Francisco Botanical Gardens, she paused. A long moment passed as she stared at it. Finally, she took a deep breath and reached for it with shaking fingers. As she continued to stare at it, my nervousness grew. I wasn't sure if she was horrified that I would be obsessive enough to keep such small keepsakes for ten years or touched that I had been thoughtful enough to do so. Either way, I had no idea why this one item was evoking such a strong reaction.
Moving stealthily closer, I decided that sitting down would be a good idea. I quietly sat next to Sara on the couch. She was looking into the distance now, and the brochure had fallen from her lap to the floor. A tiny, sad smile played at the corners of her mouth, and I wondered what put it there.
Inexplicably, I felt the need to pick the brochure up, and I reached down to retrieve it. As I did so, Sara's voice broke the silence once again. Her eyes were still fixed on some distant point as she whispered, "That was the day that I knew it was hopeless."
I opened my mouth to ask her to clarify, but before I could harness the mental acuity needed to actually form words, she spoke again. "That day we went to the Botanical Gardens, I—I knew. For the first time, I knew that I was in love with you and that it would never go away." She turned to me, fixing me with her now crystal-clear and focused eyes. "And I was right."
Despite my best efforts not to get ahead of myself, my heart leapt with joy at her words. Once again, however, my cautious side proved itself right as the next words left Sara's mouth.
"But sometimes love isn't enough."
What? No, I couldn't have heard correctly. Surely love was enough. It had to be. I'd just staked everything on it.
Sara continued. "You see, Grissom, I've loved you for years. And this morning, you told me that you loved me, as well. And now I'm sitting here looking at evidence that proves that you have indeed had feelings for me all these years. You kept all of these little reminders in a box when most people would have trashed them. And that leads me to my point: sometimes love isn't enough. For all these years, I've been loving you, and you've been loving me, but it still wasn't enough. You couldn't do it," she said sadly, eerily echoing my words to Vincent Lurie.
As I looked at my feet, Sara stood up and ran her hands down the front of her pants. Drawing in a shaking breath and blowing it back out loosely, she said, "And now you want to change all that—to take a chance." I looked up at her and was surprised to see tears pooling in her eyes.
Then came the bombshell.
"But I think, Grissom, that sometimes it's really just too late."
I stared at her, unblinking, uncomprehending, as her voice broke and the tears spilled over. With shaking hands, she slowly bent down and cupped my face. As she brought her tear-streaked face to mine, the world began to spin, and I grabbed her wrists to keep from falling over. As she gently brought her lips to rest against mine, I didn't breathe, didn't move, didn't think. Nothing in the universe existed except for the feel of her mouth, the taste of her lips, the wetness of her breath, and the faintly lavender scent of her.
With a small sob, she pulled away and punctuated her actions with another tiny peck on my mouth. Dazed, I looked up at her as she wiped her tears away. In a tiny, strained voice, she whispered, "I'm sorry," and moved quickly toward the door.
And before I could find my voice, she was gone.
