"You are so screwed

Disclaimer: Chapter 1

A/N: This is a short chapter but it is a natural ending place. You will see why in the next chapter. Sorry I have taken so long with this. I am insanely busy. And while I have been caught up in so many other things, this story is still floating around in my head trying to kick its way out. This is unbeta'd forgive me. And I am notoriously bad at re reading it all because I am in a hurry to get it out so don't hate me because I may end up coming back to tweak it. Any and all feedback is much appreciated and definitely lights a fire under me. Thanks so much to those of you who have reviewed you make me want to finish this all the more faster.

Chapter 26

"You are so screwed." Warrick Brown shook head in his friend's direction and hung up a clean towel in his locker.

Nick simply grimaced.

"I gotta ask… What were you thinking, man?"

"The hell if I know." The Texan tossed his jacket into the locker and holstered up. "It seemed like the right thing to do at the time."

"Not that I wouldn't help Sara out, I mean anytime, man. But you have Gris and Sara living with you?" He shook his head and guffawed slightly. "Do you like pain? It's bad enough you got her pregnant, and were…" he corrected himself. "…are involved with her. Did you have to move in anther man who has the hots for her in as well?"

Nick slammed his head against the locker door next to him several times hoping it would knock the image of Grissom perched dotingly on the edge of Sara's bed, out of his head. It didn't work. It simply made the headache he'd been sporting for the better half of the day, grow a lot worse. "It's complicated." Fortunately by the time they'd gotten Sara released and back to the condo it was just shy of 10 pm. After a quick and somewhat uncomfortable dinner, he managed to scoot out of the apartment tossing out excuses about needing to go to the drugstore. Something he'd actually done as well. His hand grabbed a small pink bottle from the Walgreens bag he'd brought with him, and he cracked the top and swigged it. "Really complicated." He scowled at the bottle of chalk-like substance he'd just ingested.

"You think?" The dark skinned man stared at his friend perplexed. "But I don't get it… why Grissom? Why does he have to be there? Shouldn't he be here? And you there? You lost your kid today. You can't tell me he wouldn't give you the night off. If that's the case there's a whole lot of twisted happening there, man. I mean was engaged…"

Nick dropped onto the bench behind him and tugged off his dress shoes. "Yeah to a psycho-bitch from hell. And I want a piece of that." Gathering the shoes he dropped them into the bottom of his locker and pulled out his work boots. "Cath's off. Apparently, Sam grabbed Lily and Lindsay and took them out of town somewhere for a few days. Said it wouldn't be safe here especially with all the people coming and going at his hotels. I think she said something about the Bahamas, so she's going to go over and keep Sara company for the evening, and Gris should be here soon."

Warrick nodded silently and jammed his gun into his holster. "So what aren't you telling me, bro?" He leaned against the locker and crossed his arms. He knew Nick better than anyone, there was something going on behind the scenes and it was killing his friend. "How come I didn't know anything about this relationship?"

"Sara wanted to keep it a secret." Nick didn't like lying to a man he thought of as a brother, but he didn't feel he had any choice.

"Really?" Warrick studied his friend. "You're full of shit. I asked a whole lotta questions there just now and you danced over everyone of 'em." He studied the Texan, concern resting in his green eyes. "You get Sara pregnant during a relationship I know squat about. You two lose the baby, and you're coming into work early and leaving our boss at the condo with her?"

Nick sighed and rubbed his fingers through the short bristles of his closely cropped hair. "I needed to stop by the drugstore on the way in." He indicated the open bottle beside him.

Warrick tried a different tactic. "Let's see. Sara was what? A month or so along?"

Nick chugged another mouthful of the Pepto and ground out a mucky. "Yeah."

"So you screwed some other chick after sleeping with her? You were in a relationship and you cheated on her?" Warrick hid the smirk trying to creep onto his face.

"What? NO…" The dark eyed Texan looked almost horrified. "I would never do that to her."

Warrick had him at this and he knew it. Plopping onto the bench beside his friend he nudged him. "Me, you, Tara and Yvonne. The two stewardesses… Three weeks ago – third floor suite 316 at the Bellagio."

All the color drained from Nick's face.

"Out with it, man…Sara's kid was no more yours than it was mine. What I don't get is how you got tied up in this mess."

"Clothes..." Catherine waved a shopping bag at her friend and then dropped it onto the couch. "I grabbed her some fresh underwear and track clothes, and I picked up the spare set she has at work. They'll do for now."

"Thanks. I'm sure she'll appreciate it."

"So how's she doing?" The blonde woman wandered the large room, her eyes taking in the modern loft and its exceptional view of the lights of the city. The man who owned it clearly had money and taste. It wasn't an overly dressed apartment; in fact it was quite sparse in terms of furniture. But the soft plush couches, dark chocolate walls, and rich wood bookshelves made the entire place feel cozy.

"She's emotionally rung out and sleeping."

Grissom looked the same to Catherine's own weary eyes and she said as much. "Why don't you go home and get some sleep tonight? I took a look at the stuff that was on the board before I came over here, and there's nothing there that can't be flipped to days."

The night supervisor shook his head. "I need to go in. We need to catch Alicia…" He corrected himself and shook his head at his mistake. "Marla."

"We will. Jim's got the state patrol out looking for her, and the local police are on high alert. If she's still in Nevada we'll catch her." The blond woman pried her eyes away from the inky view outside the window and studied her friend a moment.

"I need to be there when and if they do." Grissom said darkly.

"I'm sure he'll call."

"Nick's been up the same amount of time, and he went in." There was coffee he'd brewed earlier still sitting in the pot so he shuffled into the kitchen, poured himself a cup and chugged it. "I caused this mess. I need to be there to help clean it up."

"Nick and Sara aren't like that, you know. They don't blame you." She crossed her arms over her chest and bent in to sniff the remaining coffee still sitting in the pot. It practically made her arm hair stand on end so she dumped it out and set about making a fresh pot. "Nick and Sara both know that things like this happen. A criminal mind is like a roll of the dice, Gil. You never know what you're going to get, or what they're capable of. It's that uncontrollable and unpredictable factor that keeps us and Doc Robbins in business. There was no way you could have prevented this."

"Right..." Doing his best to hide the tears gathering in his eyes, he chugged another mouthful of roof tar and slammed the cup back down on the thick granite counter top. "My fiancé…" He practically choked on the word. "…took the life of an innocent…" He stopped. For years, when faced with questions about the morality of abortion, or the unfortunate circumstances behind miscarriage, he'd always sought comfort in science. It was hard to feel loss, if it really wasn't considered a life form, but all of the scientific posturing in the world wouldn't change the pain he was feeling. Something special was gone; something that contained a mixture of his and Sara's DNA, and that would have combined to make their little boy or girl. He swallowed the lump in his throat. Something that had been very much alive… "…an innocent child." He turned his sorry eyes to Catherine and squeezed off the pain in his chest. "Well I blame myself for this."

"Yeah… "A search for coffee turned up a relatively cheap brand, but Catherine loaded a filter into the machine and poured in a liberal amount, anyway. "Me too..." She intoned softly, as she flipped the switch to brew.

"You didn't do anything wrong." Blue eyes met blue as he grabbed a left over dinner roll from supper, and broke off a small piece. He'd tried the pizza they'd ordered, but it hadn't sat well from the outset so he'd stopped after one small piece.

"Well I certainly have more reason to feel guilty than you do. I suspected she was behind this stuff from the outset, but I was too stubborn to tell you."

Grissom nodded. "I understand why you did it, though." He grimaced.

"Can I ask you something?" Catherine moved around in front of the breakfast bar and climbed up on a stool.

Cringing inwardly the entomologist chugged another mouthful and nodded once again in her direction. He probably owed her at least that much after everything Alicia had done to her.

"Are you okay with this?"

"With what?" Both exhausted and afraid of what his friend was asking he danced around the question in an attempt to put off the inevitable as long as possible.

It was short lived.

"I've known for a long time that there was something between you and Sara. I didn't know if it was lust or infatuation or what, but I would see it poke its head out occasionally." She shrugged. "Now she's with Nick. He's young, attractive, stable…They were having a baby together..."

"Unlike me." He cut her off.

"No. That's not what I'm saying at all." She rolled her eyes. "Gil, you're a very attractive man, and I don't think I've ever me anyone more stable than you. As for age…" She thought a moment. "You're older but I've always considered age as a state of mind. So I wasn't saying that either. It's just that I figure it's got to be a little hard to see them together. I mean there has to be some regret over what might have been - at the very least."

Grissom chugged the last mouthful of coffee in his cup and swallowed the truth he was about to impart on Catherine. Instead, he tossed a dark look in her direction. "I have regrets, and the biggest one right now is the fact that Sara lost her baby and that she's been hurt by me and my actions. At this point nothing else matters." He turned and headed for the bedroom. "I'm going to see if she's awake, so I can say goodbye."

With that he was gone, leaving the blonde woman to contemplate his words.

She smelled him first. He had a way of filling the room, and his own particular brand of Grissom scent was a dead give away that he was standing somewhere near the side of the bed.

She felt the mattress dip behind her, and turned slightly towards him her body moving instinctively before she even had a chance to think.

"You're awake." His smile was soft almost fearful and it reminded her of those first few tenuous days after they'd taken the initial steps towards a relationship. He would look at her that way at times, a smile perched on his lips, yet almost uncertain. She'd initially thought that it was because was still unsure of pursuing a relationship with her, but after an evening of painful discussion, they'd both realized that their fears were the same. The ambivalence had nothing to do with their own commitment, but everything to do with fear that the other would walk away after they'd fully bared their hearts.

"I slept a little."

He reached for her hand, noting how for the first time in months things felt right in his world. The loss of their child was going to take some major getting over and in some way he knew it would stay with them both forever, but they still had each other which was far more than the bleakness they'd both been facing a mere 48 hours before. "I'm going to go in." He paused, his fingers moving gently and rhythmically over the back of her hand. "I don't want to leave you, but we need to catch her and see that she's locked for good this time."

Sara nodded silently. She'd had her moments of anger but had never thought herself capable of truly hating someone enough to want to kill them. That had changed. If she had a gun and was allowed to be a part of the pursuit she wasn't sure what she would have done. Her own home life aside, she realized that Catherine had been right; a mother protects her young with a fierceness she had never believed possible.

"Cath's here." He pulled her hand to his lips and kissed the bruise marring it. The ER nurse had inserted the catheter so quickly it had caused a deep purple reminder of the most recent trauma she'd endured.

"Okay." She sat up, resting carefully against the soft fabric of the headboard.

"Are you going to be alright while I'm gone?" Blue eyes searched Sara's red rimmed ones but all Grissom could see in them was the same sadness he was feeling.

"Yeah…" She attempted a small smile but it came out looking pained.

"We'll get through this." He assured her his free hand chasing an errant tear down her cheek.

"I'm not sure if we're meant to." She looked lost for a moment, he eyes falling to their entwined fingers.

"We're never meant to forget, that's why God gave us memory. But we are meant to heal, that's why God gave us love." He drew her into a light embrace. "We'll do it together, okay?"

"Don't make promises you can't keep, Gil."

He backed away and stared at her darkly. "This is one promise I very much intend to keep."

"What about Alicia… uh… Marla's child? Your child?" On the way to the condo Nick and Grissom had updated her on the latest information. It wasn't a surprise to discover that the two women were one and the same, it was just news that had come too late to be helpful. She swallowed down the bile sitting in her throat. It hurt even to think that the woman was carrying Grissom's baby, and despite the fact that Sara was never the overly jealous type; this particular circumstance made her positively green. And she hated herself for it.

Grissom laughed, it sounded almost sarcastic. "Nick asked me the same thing." He shook his head. "I honestly don't know if she was pregnant, or is pregnant. I still don't remember that night. I've never seen any tangible proof that we had sex, that she's even carrying a baby…my baby." His voice jumped almost angrily. "Amnio was out of the question. I didn't get to go to the ultrasound appointment. The picture from it could have come from anywhere. She threatened to abort it so many times I wouldn't be surprised if she already had." He shrugged at the absurdity of it all, his fingers furiously scratching across his beard.

"That still doesn't answer my question."

He closed his eyes. "If she is pregnant and if it is my child…" He stopped unable to follow bring the train of thought to its conclusion - let alone vocalize it.

The silence hung between them like a festering dead body. "I know you would never turn your back on your own flesh and blood and as I said before this whole mess started, I would never ask you to do that. I simply couldn't in good conscience..." She steeled herself for what she was about to say next. "Gil, when we catch her, she'll go back to the institute, have the baby and you will take it. And as much as I would want to be that extraordinary type of person who has the insight to look beyond the circumstance and be accepting. I don't know if I could help you raise her child. I might be able to love the child because it was part of you but I'm afraid that some part of me would always blame or resent it because of what his or her mother took from us. And that's no life for a child. That would be so damaging. I…" She swiped crossly at the tears gathering in her eyes. "I know it's not right. I know I should be bigger than that, but it's the way I feel, and I don't think it will change." She sunk back into the pillows and turned away from him. "So please don't make promises you can't keep."

He reached out and placed a tentative hand on her shoulder. He fully understood what she was going through and the ache residing in his chest was a testament to the loss he was too was feeling. He hated Marla for what she had done. But also knew that it was Sara's pain that was talking at the moment, and that when push came to shove she really was the extraordinarily special person she didn't think she could be. "I love you. I won't ask anything from you that you can't give, but do me a favor and give me, us… some time." He leaned in and kissed her then. A moment later he'd exited the room and the condo, leaving a softly sobbing woman behind.

TBC