Chapter 51: My Life Would Suck Without You

"Grissom told me what happened."

Sighing into the phone, Catherine pulled herself into a sitting position. She was still in bed, after about a full day's worth of tossing and turning. Lindsey had decided to call again.

"He did?"

"He explained that…you had decided you couldn't do it. He just dropped me off at the airport."

"Lindsey, I never made a decision."

The only thing she heard was a sigh from the other end.

"I…I just don't know how to say when I've decided one way or another. Everything's just confusing for me…I …"

"How do you feel now that he thinks he's understood what you feel?"

Catherine closed her eyes as the critical words hit her again. Lindsey had seen right through her and she didn't know how someone else could read her so easily when she found that she couldn't even read herself. Read the signs that her heart was sending her brain. How was she to recognize some sign that a divine being was sending her if she couldn't even understand herself?

"I'm just…My mind keeps drawing a blank. I…" Her heart was speeding up again. "My heart speeds up, and some part of me tells me that I should go look for the very thing that I believe I've lost."

"Then what's stopping you?!"

"I'm too afraid to make the decision, Lindsey! It's not easy to just stop and say 'Hey, I think I'm ready to spend the rest of my life with someone.'"

Lindsey fell silent.

"I have to go, Lindsey."

Catherine hung up and felt tears come to her eyes again.

She didn't know when the last time was that she had cried over someone, let alone someone that professed to love her so. She just let the sobs wrack her form, as she gave in to the waves of helplessness that were emanating from the very core of her being. She felt her hands inadvertently grip the covers of her bed but didn't realize that her knuckles were going white.

She didn't realize how long she had stayed that way but she had to unclench her hands because the lack of blood flow was starting to immobilize her fingers. When she had finished with the stream of tears that now adorned her blankets with a dark stain, she didn't know why she was crying. Why she felt so forsaken, alone and helpless. With a simple phone call she could change her situation. She could be with the man that she thought she was in love with. What was stopping her? Her pride? Doubts?

She realized that it was probably her previous scars, the past memories of her failure. What if she made Gil into another one of her colossal failures of relationships? She cherished his friendship far too much to let something like a faulty decision ruin what they had, what they had shared over the years. She thought that if she had jumped into a life with him, only to end up falling out, she didn't know if she could live with herself.

Live without him.

She found some strength in her to move herself to the bathroom where she took a very hot shower. After freshening up, she headed into her closet, turning on the lights that threatened the survival of her eyes. From the corner of her eyes, she saw the navy blue blob that was his sweatpants. She had forgot to wash it after he had used it but she picked it up now, almost as if she was picking up a piece of evidence. She desperately needed clues; clues to the mystery that would change her life forever.

She remembered how his mere presence had lightened her up, how even after a year of hostility and no communication, they had fallen right back into each other's arms and comfortably enough. They had continued on with their lives as if nothing had happened, with their conversations as if they had never stopped talking to each other.

Before she knew it, she had resorted to sitting on the floor, holding the sweatpants to her form as if they were some family heirloom, awfully dear to her heart. As she became aware of the surroundings around her, she realized how lonely she felt and how everything she was doing seemed so foolish. How it all appeared so fruitless.

How she missed him so much that it strained her heart just to smell a trace of his scent on the navy blue fabric.

That moment, she knew.

She couldn't imagine being with anyone else for the rest of her days. She knew that she would be able to be at his side until she no longer could. Somewhere in her heart, she knew that he would stay at hers.

She realized that she could never go on living without knowing what her life could be with him as her partner for life.

She knew he completed her, that he was the better parts to her worse and that he would always accept her for all her shortcomings and successes. That he would embrace her for who she was rather than who she tried to be sometimes. That though she always had her issues, he covered them up with faults of his own. He had always been the one to see her, rather than the façade that she often created for the rest of the world to see. Although she knew he had always judged her, she knew that it was because he was concerned. The truth was, he never wanted her to look bad in anyone's eyes.

Because he couldn't understand how anyone could think badly of her. Because he wanted to make sure that everyone could see the woman that he claimed to see. That he claimed to love with all his being.

Although her head always told her head to doubt what he claimed, her eyes could always see that he meant what he said and that he said what he felt: she completed him too.

In too many ways for them to be apart.

Softly laughing to herself in tears, Catherine buried her face into the sweatpants and let out a couple of heaving sighs.

And now that man was about to walk away. Perhaps already had.

She didn't even understand what was happening when she ran out into the living room, the empty space echoing with the sound of the rain hitting the roof. Even the weather wasn't helping the lively chaos that now filled her mind. Frantically looking for her purse, she refused to think. Think about the possible consequences that this trip of hers would have. She'd have to explain to Lindsey later but all of her concerns were now thrown on the backburner. Her entire body was being fueled with adrenaline. Her mind reeling from the excitement that her body was claiming to experience. After grabbing her phone, she headed out the front door.

Squinting from the fact that her clothes were now being attacked by the onslaught of water from the skies, she reached her car. After safely getting into the driver's seat, she decided to check her purse. She cursed herself as she realized that she had forgotten her wallet in the house. Hating the fact that her forgetfulness was putting a dampener on the rush of it all, she reopened the car door and sprinted towards the house.

She rummaged her jacket pocket for keys and fumbled with it as she tried to get the door open again, the keys slippery from the rain.

"Catherine?"

The keys dropped to the ground. They left her numb hands that were now debilitated as the thought process for its purpose was otherwise preoccupied. She couldn't believe what was happening as she turned around slowly towards the voice that had shouted her name through the deluge.

He stood there, perfectly upright and still. Although the rain blurred her vision, she could make out that he was simply looking at her, his form heaving with calmed, Grissom breaths.

She knew that she had left her house on a trip to find him, but she hadn't planned out what she was going to say when she showed up at his doorstep once more. What she would tell him. How she would tell him about the thoughts that had led to her coming back to him. But she wasn't prepared for how dumbstruck she felt at this moment. She realized that Gil felt much the same when he just stood there, looking like he was at a loss for words for the first time in his life.

Maybe it was the familiar sound of the rain hitting the pavement, the soft hum of the running engine or the sudden halt of her heartbeat threatening to tear her eardrums.

Maybe they had both understood what it was that the other had set out to do. That they had both left their houses, hoping that the other would confess their hearts out at the doorstep.

Or maybe they both realized that after the twenty-odd years that they had grown older together always knowing that someone had their backs, the two decades that they had faced had gotten them so far that words would no longer carry them.

For whatever god-forsaken reason, they met each other halfway as they sprinted towards one another. To meet in a furious embrace. The most passionate that either one of them had ever known.

It was reminiscent of their first encounter at the hospital but this time even a hint of hesitation was nowhere to be found. They stayed that way under the rain, touching and tasting each other and the raindrops that were soaking every inch of both of them. Even the miniscule gap between their heated bodies.

In the midst of the flurry of hands and contented sighs, Catherine found what she wanted to say.

"I think I love you."

Gil stopped mid-action to stare at her. She didn't think she had ever seen him look better, beads of rain dropping from his shortly-cut hair and condensing in his trimmed beard. He looked overwhelmed.

"You think?"

She could only throw out a couple of laughs in response.

"Yeah. I think so." She breathed out. "I think…I think I may just want to spend the rest of my life with you."

"I guess that's good enough for me." He said and he closed the gap once again, and without any word of complaint from Catherine.

It seemed that Gil couldn't get enough of her and she couldn't get close enough. Gripping and fastening the other to themselves, they reveled in the rare sensation of utter completion.

The impossible feeling that maybe life was better than fantasy could ever be.