Late that night
Sara's voice
When we got home I leaned heavily on Greg's arm as I wobbled from the car to the house. Thankfully he had called Grissom from the hospital and told him what was going on. We both had the rest of the week off, with my return date left open.
"Nick wants to stop by tomorrow, " Greg said later as we sat curled together on the couch. "I told him we'd give him a call later after I talked to you. I didn't know if you were up to company." He stroked my hair, his expression unreadable. "Are we going to try again?" His voice was anxious.
"I'd like to," I whispered. "What... what are your thoughts?"
"I want us to have a baby, but I want you to be ready first, mentally and physically. I'll wait for however long it takes for you to feel up to it. You're my first priority, Sara. You should know that."
"I've never been anyone's first priority," I whispered, fighting tears. "Never. For most of my life I haven't even made anyone's list, let alone been at the top of it."
He pulled me to his chest. "You've been at the top of mine for a very long time," he said softly. "You can't have not known."
I pulled my face from his shirt and looked into his eyes. "How could I know?" He was silent. "Why?"
He sighed, then raised his hand to cup my cheek. "Because I love you," he said quietly. "Very much. More than anything."
"I love you too," I said quietly, then pulled him into a kiss.
Greg's voice
Later that night she slept with her head pillowed on my shoulder. I thought of how we now had something we hadn't had before, how we'd opened our hearts in our pain and found that each of us really had what the other needed. I thought of the first tender flowers that bloomed in the ashes below Mount St. Helen's, cropping up between the twisted remains of cars, springing from the soil where the unlucky drivers had been standing right before they got vaporized. I thought of the child we would never get to hold, at least on this side of eternity. No matter how many children we had, I had a feeling that this sense of loss would remain, like the vague nagging ache in my shoulder where the scar tissue was just a little too tight and thick. We would heal, the pain would fade, but the scars would always be tender.
I pressed my face into Sara's hair and hugged her to me. 'She loves me,' I thought with wonder, 'ME, not some steroidally-enhanced generically-handsome jock in a Ferrari, but ME - weird, skinny Greg Sanders, butt of all jokes, generally considered unworthy of being taken seriously.'
Now I have my more impressive qualities - hip, smart as hell, entertaining, fairly nice-looking, very up on music, and a damn fine dresser - but most of my romantic forays have ended at the starting line, with me asking the lady out and her telling me she'd rather just be friends. Yeah,there have been some one-night stands and short affairs, even a couple of relationships, but I was never one of those guys the girls can't keep their hands off. Not like Nick, who has women slipping phone numbers into his pockets and deliberately seducing him. I'm a different kind of guy. Despite all that, I somehow managed to win the heart of the most amazing woman in Nevada. I sighed. We had a lot to work through, but we had each other. With time, that would be enough.