It took Nick a while to answer the door after Carrie rang the bell, and Warrick waited in the drive with the engine running, not wanting to pull away and leave her standing there at one in the morning until he was sure Nick was going to open the door. When Carrie had asked him how to get to Nick's, it seemed easiest to just take her to him than to try and explain to her how to navigate her way here from the lab or have her try to follow in her rental. He knew she was worried about Nick and he knew, even if Nick was too thickheaded to acknowledge it, that the two of them had some talking to do that couldn't be put off any longer. But he felt a little guilty about springing her on him when he knew Nick was in retreat mode. So when Nick finally came to the door, Warrick backed out quickly and took off. He figured Nick would have to let Carrie in if she had nowhere else to go.

Nick stood in the doorway and frowned as he watched Warrick's truck pull away so fast the tires squealed. He looked at Carrie but offered no greeting. He stated the obvious. "Warrick brought you here."

Carrie nodded. "I asked him to. He couldn't stay, though. Had to get back to the lab."

"At least someone had to."

Carrie refused to offer him sympathy. "Quit feeling sorry for yourself. You'll be back soon enough."

He glared at her, not feeling friendly. "I'd be back now if you hadn't…"

Her eyes were every bit as hard as his. "No way. No way you're pinning this on me. You'd be back there if you had acted professionally instead of…"

She stopped herself. This wasn't starting off well. "Look, are you going to let me in, or are we going to stand out here in the cold and argue about it?"

He stepped aside and let her in. It was a chilly night, and he had just gotten out of the shower. He had barely had time to towel off and throw on a pair of sweats when the doorbell rang. His hair was still damp and tousled, and he was barefooted and bare-chested. Carrie looked at him appraisingly, although she hadn't meant to be so bold about it. He had filled out these past years. His neck was thicker, as were his biceps and deltoids. His chest was broader, and although he still had a six-pack, his ab muscles weren't as clearly defined as she had remembered them being. But they were defined enough. A single bead of water that his towel had missed rolled slowly down the smoothness of his chest and she wanted, suddenly, to catch it on her tongue, to balance it there while her lips hovered, so close, so close, against his warm skin.

The desire was strong and urgent. And unbidden. Carrie looked away quickly and felt a blush flushing her cheeks. But Nick saw her color rise, and he, too, reddened. He motioned to the couch.

"Sit or...something. There's beer in the fridge. I'll be back."

Nick left the living room and Carrie took advantage of his absence to look around. His house was small, but tidy. She had expected that. He had always been an organized housekeeper. The last two years they were together, when he was on the force and she was still taking classes, he was the one who did most of the household chores. Probably better than she would have done them, although she never would have told him that. It was one of his personality quirks that he hated not doing his best on any job he began, even if it was just vacuuming a room or tidying up a kitchen.

He had a few personal touches scattered about, some sports trophies from both his high school and college days, some pictures of his family. There were no pictures of the two of them, but then she hadn't expected any. She didn't have any at her house, either, at least not in plain view. When she had first left him, she missed him so much that she tried to draw comfort from surrounding herself with the things that reminded her of him. She busied herself making scrapbooks of the photos she had taken of him during their three years together, and she separated them by sections: Nick at his baseball games, Nick on his horse at the ranch, Nick with his family and with hers at the various gatherings they had attended together, Nick on his graduation days from A&M and from the academy, and so many that she had taken just because it had been a happy day together and she had wanted to capture it. She had several books when she was finished, and she would lie on her bed and look through them, crying, as she hugged the goofy purple bear he had won for her at a ball toss at the fair.

Finally her roommate convinced her that she was going to make herself sick if she kept doing that every night, so she put the books away in a drawer and tried to figure out how to make herself content without him, without his laughter, without his companionship, without his touch. It was easier after she started grad school because she was so busy, and then she decided she liked being busy and even liked moving at an almost frenetic pace, and she kept on going after grad school and got her Ph.D. It was what she wanted, and what she had left Nick to do, and she had no regrets. But that first year without him had been nothing but heartache and misery, and there had been times she didn't think she was going to get through it.

Carrie shook her head and went into the kitchen. She was having to navigate more of her own emotions than she had counted on, considering that her purpose in coming was to clear the air with Nick and make sure that there would be no repeat of the scene in the layout room. It should have been straightforward enough. This reverie into the past felt self-indulgent and certainly purposeless. And her earlier reaction to Nick without his shirt on was, truth be told, both disturbing and ridiculous.

She stood in front of the refrigerator, trying to decide if she wanted to open it and look for a beer. A child's crayoned scrawl on a paper card caught her eye. She took off the take-out pizza magnet that attached it to the refrigerator door and looked at the card. She was holding on to it when Nick came into the room. His hair was combed and he was newly shaven. He was wearing black jeans and a black tee shirt, the tee tucked into the firmly belted jeans. He had on shoes and socks, the shoes tightly laced. He might as well have been in full armor.

Carrie looked down at the card to hide a smile. There was a brown crayon house behind a pond of blue on the front, and printed across the clouded sky were the words "Thanks for finding me."

She opened the card and read the message on the inside, then smiled openly and handed the card to Nick. "You found a job you're passionate about," she told him. "And good at."

"Yeah," he agreed. "Most days." He carefully put the card back onto the refrigerator and eyed her critically. "Why are you here?" he asked her bluntly.

To tell you to act like a professional around me, she was going to say. But instead, she both found and voiced the truth. "I'm worried about you," she said honestly.

He shook his head and she could hear the exasperation in his voice. "I have enough people around me to do that. I don't need you to do it."

Carrie decided she might as well be completely honest with him if she was going to try to bridge the awkwardness between them.

"I went to see you last May, when you went back home."

It didn't surprise him that she knew he had gone home, that she knew what had happened to him that May. He had always kept track of her through the mutual friends they still had, and he assumed Carrie had done the same. But he was never aware that Carrie had come to see him.

"You did? I never knew that."

"No, I don't suppose you did. Your brother was like a pit bull I couldn't get past. He wouldn't let me see you. Finally I just went back to Atlanta."

Nick sighed. "Don't blame him, Carrie. He was being protective, I guess. Will was pretty much the one who had to pick up the pieces after…"

"After I left you," she finished.

"Yeah." He had decided that he wasn't going to dodge it any more.

Nick thought of his visit back home. He had spent two weeks there after he got out of the hospital. He had started out at the ranch, but it was anything but restful there. Sisters and their husbands, nieces and nephews, friends and neighbors, all coming in a seemingly unending stream to visit him, to check on him. To assure themselves that he was going to be okay. But he was exhausted, not sleeping at night, and self-conscious about the still-visible lumps on his face and arms. Three days of that, and Will announced that he was taking him home with him.

Just like before, Nick thought now, although he hadn't made the connection then. Then he just knew that he was grateful. Will and Janet were empty nesters now. Becky was in her last year of law school at Baylor. Her younger sister, Susan, was a sophomore at Rice in Houston. Adults now, both of them. For Nick, it sometimes seemed that the years had such a sameness to them that it felt like time wasn't passing, but when he went home and saw the changes in his nieces and nephews, he knew that it was not only passing, but passing quickly.

It was quiet at Will's, and he found the peace he sought. Will was good at keeping people away when he sensed that Nick needed to be alone, and he was just as good at calling his mother and asking her to drop by when he sensed that Nick needed that, too. It didn't surprise him that Will kept Carrie away. Will, more than anyone, had seen Nick desperately trying not to slip off the edge of the world after Carrie left, and Will had a keen understanding of what losing Carrie had cost his little brother.

Nick thought of that last groveling phone conversation he had with Carrie, in Will's living room. Janet and the girls had cleared out, but Will hung back. Waiting to catch him if he fell, maybe? He remembered when it was over he literally did need catching. He was so unsteady on his feet and his vision so blurred by those goddamn tears that he had stumbled when he rose from the chair to put the phone back. And Will was there, a strong arm to hold him upright. But Nick had pushed him off and told him viciously to go to hell, irrationally blaming Will for making him take the call in the first place. Carrie had been right; it did feel better to be pissed than to be hurting. Will took it in stride, not fooled. But if Will had failed to spare Nick that conversation, Nick figured, he was ready for the next, even if it took ten years in coming. Like before, he had been watching Nick, watching him struggle to regain footing, and knew Nick didn't have the energy reserves he needed to see Carrie again after all this time. He had been right, too, Nick knew. Right to not even tell him she was there.

"I couldn't have seen you then," Nick told her honestly.

"It's all right. I just needed…just needed to know that you were, that you are okay, after…after what happened to you." She searched his eyes. "Are you?"

He shrugged. "Shit happens. It happens and you deal and move on."

She looked at him doubtfully. "Just like that?"

His voice was harsher than he meant it to be. "No, Carrie. Not 'just like that.' You fall, and you get back up. And you fall again, and maybe again. And sometimes you fall even when you've convinced yourself that you've gained perfect balance. But you never stop getting back up. You never stop moving forward."

He looked at her sternly. "Shit happens," he repeated. "But you don't seek it out, Carrie. And that's what you're doing right now, with this case. Trying to deliberately put yourself in the path of that bastard."

She returned his gaze, her own eyes bright with anger. "I'm not stupid, Nick. I don't want to get hurt and God knows I'm not trying to get hurt. I'm just trying to do my job."

He shook his head. "This is not part of your job."

"Yes, it is. I'm here to help get this monster, aren't I? Isn't that why you guys called me?"

Nick didn't answer her, and she continued. "What I do is different than what you do, Nick. You look for evidence, for what a killer leaves behind. But I get inside his head, I learn him, figure out what makes him tick, what might throw him off. I've been studying this guy for a long time now. I know him, know he's revisiting scenes looking for me, know that's the way we're going to get him. You want me to ignore that? Would you ignore that?"

He shrugged noncommittally. "I just don't want you to…"

Carrie cut him off. "It's not about what you want. It's about us doing our jobs, about us going in there tomorrow and acting like the professionals we are, and working together to get that son of a bitch off the streets. And you know what, Nick, I think it's time to be honest about this whole thing. If there's something you want to say to me, then say it. And I don't mean about the case."

He considered. When she had first gotten here, there was a lot he could have said to her, a lot about how hard it was to have her here, a lot about how much he was afraid to face the memories having her here was going to stir up. But after he had let the memories come, he honestly could tell her that his anger with her was about the case, about his fear for her safety and nothing else.

Nick moved into the living room and sat on the couch. Carrie followed and sat next to him instead of in the chair opposite, determined to close the gap between them.

"When you left," Nick said carefully, "I sort of fell apart for a while, and it took me a long time to really get back on my feet. But through it all, I was never mad at you. I knew why you left, and maybe I even knew it was the right thing. I wasn't mad at you then for that, and I'm not mad now. It just…hurt a lot. Having you here made me go back there, and it was…painful."

Her face softened and he could see her eyes begin to glow with tears. She had been on a pretty good rant a minute ago and he hadn't expected her to change gears so fast. "It's okay, Carrie. It is. I'm sorry I'm being a jackass about the case. I just hate the thought of that creep out there, maybe watching you. Look, tomorrow when we go in, I'll…"

"It's not okay. It's never been okay." She was crying now, and Nick was sorry he had been so truthful. He hadn't intended his words to have that effect on her.

"Carrie…"

"I asked you if you had anything to say to me, but I have something to say to you. Something I never got a chance to say, and it's never going to be okay until I say it."

She took his hand and held it, and he was a little surprised that he had no impulse to draw his hand away. Instead, he found himself lacing his fingers through hers.

"I never told you how sorry I am. I never asked you to forgive me." Carrie wiped her tears away with her free hand. "I know what I did to you, Nick. I know how sudden it was and how much it hurt. I know what we had together and what I walked away from. I know what we meant to each other. And I never asked you to forgive me for hurting you the way I did. Please, Nick, I'm asking you now. God, I'm sorry. I'm so sorry."

She was crying hard and Nick reached up and touched her face, wiped tears away with the side of his thumb. "Carrie. Listen to me. If you need my forgiveness, you've got it. But there's nothing to forgive. What happened hurt like hell, and I won't tell you it didn't. But I never blamed you for it. It was just how it was. I know you did what you needed to do, and I think what got me through it was knowing that you didn't want me hurt, knowing that you still loved me even when you left. I knew it was hard on you, too."

"I missed you so much," Carrie said softly. "I cried almost every night that first year. I wasn't sure I had done the right thing."

Nick put his hand under her chin and gently tilted her head up, forcing her eyes to meet his. "Are you sure now?"

She answered without hesitation. "Yes. I like who I am, what I do. I'd be someone different if I had stayed."

Nick smiled gently. "I like who you are, too. Don't go back there anymore, Carrie. It was a long time ago and it helped make us who we are, but going back doesn't help anything."

She tried to return his smile. "You never stop moving forward."

"Right." And then he kissed her. He hadn't intended it to happen, but one of his hands was holding hers, and his other was cupping her face, and her eyes were soft with tears, and…and he kissed her.

It started out gently, but it didn't stay that way. Carrie returned the kiss with a passion and force that surprised him, but not her. The desire she had felt for him earlier in the evening was unleashed, and she made no attempt to rein it back in. Nick didn't try to slow things down, either. Lips parted and tongues darted, and mouths devoured. Carrie wrapped her arms around him and clutched at the cloth of his shirt, pulling it out of his waistband and then sliding her hands underneath the fabric. She wanted his back, wanted to feel the muscles of his back ripple beneath her touch. He lifted his arms over his head and she pulled the shirt off, then found his back again, her hands moving, stroking, as if of their own volition. She remembered the droplet of water that had beaded on his chest, and she could have it now. It was gone, of course, but she flicked her tongue against his hard stomach and let her lips hover for a moment before she pressed them against his warm skin, and he tasted glorious.

She wasn't sure when he had done it, but Nick had somehow gotten half of the buttons undone on her blouse and had slid it off her shoulders, below her bra. His mouth feasted on her neck and shoulders, his breath hot against her tingling skin. His hands found the front clasp of her bra and he undid it, then fumbled impatiently with the rest of the buttons of her shirt and pulled the bra and blouse together off her arms. He cupped his hands under her breasts and then brought down his mouth, craving her, satisfying his hunger for her, lost in the scent of her, the taste of her, the feel of her.

Her busy hands worked the buckle of his belt, undoing it and then unzipping the fly of his jeans. She slid his jeans and boxers down from his hips and he let her, his erection becoming uncomfortable against the confines of fabric. A warm hand fisted around him and he groaned, mouth pressed against the yielding flesh of her breast. He dimly knew he had to get control of the situation, and now. The box of condoms in his bedside table seemed miles away. It took everything he had to grab her wrist and still her hand.

"Sweet Jesus. Bedroom. Now."

When they reached the room they struggled out of the rest of their clothes, and he got a condom. Without conscious thought he handed it to her, an awakened habit finding its way to him even now. She took it without hesitation and with quick and familiar skill put it on him. Their hands and mouths found each other again, the barrier of clothing gone, flesh on flesh, all pretense of control now way beyond their grasp.

There was no tenderness to it, no gentleness. There was no consideration, no giving. There was not even exultation or joy. There was only taking. Taking and taking, with hunger and greed and heat. There was no gradual, sensual climb to peak. The climax was a sudden, almost brutal sort of collision that left both of them stunned and gasping.

They pulled away from each other quickly, each retreating to an opposite side of the bed, as if recoiling from further contact. They didn't speak, the only sound that of their harsh breathing as they both sat on the edges of the mattress, backs to each other, fighting to regain normalcy. When their breathing slowed, the silence between them became awkward. Carrie was the first to break it, although she wouldn't turn to him. She felt self-conscious, betrayed by her body's animalistic, consuming need to take from him and be taken by him. She tried to make light of it.

"Okay, then. I guess we got that out of the way."

"Yeah. I guess we did." His voice was husky. He rose from the bed, not looking at her. "I'll…uh…go fix us something to eat."

Carrie waited for him to dress and leave the room, and then she put on her clothes and came out to the small kitchen to help him. He was taking a carton of eggs out of the refrigerator, followed by a block of cheese and some green and red peppers. She watched him quietly, then began opening cupboards in search of plates. What began as strained silence progressed to stilted small talk and then gradually to amiable companionship as he put together an omelet and she made toast and set the table. They talked about their careers, sharing stories of interesting or unusual cases. They both had professions that forced them to confront despicable aspects of human nature, both had at times been too invested in and too drained by certain cases. But they avoided those, and Nick found himself chuckling when he told her about the "missing" wife he finally found bound, by her own consent, to a cheap hotel bed.

They talked about the people they worked with. Nick spoke easily of his friendship with Warrick, of Greg's humor, of Sara's intensity, of Catherine's devotion to Lindsey and her difficult challenge of melding motherhood and graveyard shift. He shared with her the frustration he sometimes felt when Grissom's tunnel-visioned focus on the evidence clashed with his own inclination to empathize with the victims and their relatives.

They talked about their mutual friends and their families. Part of the fallout of ending a long-term relationship had been the sudden disconnect from each other's families, especially for Nick. Nick had missed her parents, warm and easy-going. Her mom had treated him like a favored son, called him "sweetie" and always fixed his favorite things to eat. He had missed playing big brother to Carrie's only sibling, 16-year-old Scott, whom Nick knew sort of idolized him the way he had Will when he was Scott's age. He hadn't realized how much he enjoyed the role he played in the teen's life until, with abrupt finality, his place in Carrie's family was gone.

They didn't talk about their lives outside of the workplace much, although Nick learned that Carrie had some acreage and kept a few horses, which a neighbor was boarding while she was in Vegas. But that's as far as it went. They had each been leading a life this past decade, assumed each had been involved with other people. The box of condoms Nick kept next to his bed was testament to that. But they didn't need to know, didn't want to know. It felt good just to talk, not about the case they were on and not about memories of their past, just comfortable talk with someone who was easy to be with.

By the time they were cleaning up the dishes, any hint of the hesitation and awkwardness that had plagued them since Carrie had arrived in Vegas had vanished. Their hands touched in the soapy water when they both reached for the same plate, and neither drew away. In fact, Nick actually grinned at her as he grasped her hand and pulled her toward him.

"Leave it," he said, not caring just then if he left a dish in the sink or not, and Carrie smiled back at him.

"The only time you ever left the dishes undone was when you had something more…physical on your mind."

"Some things stay the same. Come on."

He led her back to the bedroom and this time they joined together in the artful, synchronized dance of practiced and familiar lovers. Bodies remembered where to touch, how to excite. When to yield, when to command. When to hold back, and finally, when to release.

They lay together afterwards sated and drowsy. Carrie snuggled against him, her head on his shoulder, a finger lazily tracing a path along a defined pectoral muscle of his chest.

Nick caught her hand and looked at her searchingly. He was the one who had initiated this, but now that he could think with his head and not other parts of his anatomy, he was sure that they weren't being at all sensible. "What are we doing, Carrie?"

"Enjoying each other," she said simply.

"We have to be careful." It was both caution and command.

Carrie thought of their last night together, that cold January so many years ago. They had had sex with uninhibited, joyful abandon. And then they had made love with fragile tenderness, hearts and bodies one. They could do neither of those things now, and they both knew it. Slow this time, Carrie, he had said to her, and gentle. His love for her had caused him to falter, she remembered, and her heart had ached for him. She didn't know how to help him except return his love, and she had, so willingly. Careful, she told herself now; be careful.

"We will be." She said it as a promise.

Nick hoped she meant it. For his part, it had taken him way too long to figure out how to live his life without her, to enjoy his life without her. There was no way he was going to screw that up now. If he allowed himself the pleasures of taking her to his bed, would it change anything when she went back to Atlanta? Probably not. He was pretty good at handling the inevitable when he saw it coming. It was only when he was blindsided that he lost his balance. Greg had asked him once if he ever just got "lost in life." He was a different person now than the one who had answered that question years ago. Now, he realized, there were times when it was right to live in the moment. Sometimes that moment was all you had.

"We should get some sleep," he told Carrie, "and then I'll take you back to your hotel. I think you should pack your suitcase."

Carrie began to protest. "Damnit, Nick. I told you I'm not…"

"Pack your suitcase," he continued, "and bring it back here. If that bastard is watching you, then I'd feel better if you were here."

"If I stay here, it might put you in danger," Carrie said. "Just like Maggie," she added softly.

Nick shook his head. "No. Not just like Maggie. We know about him, she didn't. I know what to watch out for, Carrie. He's not going to do anything to me. And he's not going to do anything to you. You'll be safe here." He brushed his lips against hers. "Besides, it will make it a lot more convenient for us to…enjoy each other."

She returned his kiss. "I'm all for convenience."

He adjusted his arm around her and settled his head onto the pillow. "You always were a sensible girl."

She smiled at him and closed her eyes, falling asleep in his arms.