Disclaimer: I don't own.

A/N: Okay, so this chapter will make most of you pretty angry. Just be aware that it's setting us up for the final events in the story, where Grissom comes back to his family for good. I promise a happy ending. :) Think of the stress both parties are under--Grissom is across the country without the woman he loves or the infant he views as his own and they're both living with another man, whom he hates. Sara is working full time, taking care of Ayla, living in what is more or less a prison, away from the man she loves, and she's crazy with hormones and exhaustion. Under those conditions, any couple has problems, right?

...Oh yeah, and if you guys thought you hated Jace before... :P

To Edge--fair warning, if you wanted to wait to read until the happy stuff comes, this isn't it. :)

Enjoy! (Or, you know, don't.)

Chapter Sixty Two:

It had been a horrible day. Before I came into the office the night before, I'd called Sara at seven. If I knew Jace, and I was certain that I knew his manipulative side better than Sara, he had discovered that seven was our regular time to talk, assuming nothing came up, because several times he would interrupt to talk to her—it was minute, in truth, but it got under my skin like nothing else.

He had everything else—couldn't I just have this time, uninterrupted?

"Hello?"

"Hi." I greeted her, hearing Ayla cry in the background. "…Trouble?"

"I think she's gassy… I bet her tummy hurts." Her voice changed slightly, turning softer, as she addressed Ayla. "Oh sweetheart, Momma's trying… let's get you some gas drops and pat your back some more, okay?"

I beamed. "You're so sweet when you talk to her."

She gave me a shy laugh. "I can't help it, I guess—Oh no!"

"What's wrong?"

"She's all out of drops… Okay, honey, come here, we'll have to do this the old-fashioned way…" I could hear a soft, gentle thumping and pictured her in her room, leaning against her headboard, her head tilted to hold the phone on her right ear, Ayla resting on her left while she patted her back."

"…You're sure that's all it is? Maybe she's hungry…"

"She just ate but… I guess it couldn't hurt to tr—" I recognized the sound that followed her abrupt stop. She had pushed the phone under the covers, probably because Jace had tapped on the door and opened it without waiting for the customary 'Come in!' I wanted to be bitter that Sara allowed this, but I had been privy to her yelling at him about it in the past. He still did it, but it wasn't for lack of trying on Sara's part.

"Hey… I just heard Ayla being fussy. I thought maybe you'd laid her down for a nap and fallen asleep…"

"No… I'm up and fine. I think she just needs some gas drops."

"I'll get them for you… are they in here?"

"We're all out."

"Oh. …Well I'll run to the store for some. We don't want our little girl uncomfortable, do we?"

"…Really?" I hated how happily surprised she sounded. Was it really doing that much, offering to go to the store? If I had declared that I was going to fly from Vegas, pick some up at the store, and then climb a rope or a trellis or something, up to her window to give it to her… now that would be impressive. That would be worth a happy and surprised 'really'. Ugh.

"Of course, Sara. …Anything for my girls!" I heard the sound of his lips smacking, and in my mind's eye, Sara had Ayla cradled… which meant that Jace kissing Ayla anywhere but the hand would probably be like pressing his face up to her amazingly sweet and supple breasts. I cringed. "I'm going right now."

"Thanks—make sure you get the right brand…"

The domesticity of the moment was not lost on me—whether they were intimate or not, they were clearly back to functioning as a married couple again, in a few respects.

"Sorry, honey, he came in really fast… He's gonna run out and grab Ayla some gas drops."

"I heard." I said, in irritation. Her response came somewhat surprised.

"…Oh. Okay. …Tell me about work. What case are you working on?"

We were working a case where a man killed his pregnant wife when he discovered she was cheating on him—it had been part of the reason for my bad mood, because it made me fearful of all those months Sara and I hadn't talked nearly as often as now. …It made me fearful of how she was living right now, because now that Jace knew Ayla, he knew how much he stood to lose in letting Sara go.

"It's not important."

I could see her slight frown through the phone. "…Oh. …Is something wrong, Gil?"

I opened my mouth, meaning to say 'No, I'm just under a lot of stress, thanks for worrying, my love.' What came out was something else entirely.

"You know what? Yes. Yes, something is wrong. Why is he constantly in and out of your room?"

The long pause told me I'd once again surprised her with the vehemence of my words. I felt guilty, but I also felt justified. Jace had everything, and I sat across the country, alone, letting him enjoy the life that was supposed to be mine, and I was just supposed to be okay with it. "…Ayla's always with me. He… he comes in to see her or… to help."

"Tell him he can't."

"…You want me to tell him he can't see her? Or you want me to work full time and be the one to get up with her all night?"

Yes, I wanted her to tell him he couldn't see her. "No. I just… she's getting older, Sara. Maybe she could sleep in her own room."

She scoffed. "You know what—I'm not doing this with you. I'm not going to scream at you in front of Ayla, and I know that if I exert control over my volume and tone of voice, I will have nothing left to censor myself… I'll say something I'll regret. So I'm hanging up now. I love you."

And she did hang up. I slammed my phone to the table, cursing loudly, and kicked the table, which did nothing to the table, but sent throbbing pain through my foot. I swore again, pissed as all fucking hell, and grabbed my things, thinking that if I could bury myself in a case, I could forget about this anger for a while.

The problem was the specific case I was working… No, actually, the problem was the whole fucking night. Greg, in an attempt to prevent me drinking his pot of coffee, crashed into me and spilled the entire pot all over the two of us. Lucky for us, the burner had been turned off, and the burns were minor—my hand hands and chest were red and blotchy, in the locker room, where I angrily disrobed and changed into fresh clothes, slamming my locker door with too much force.

Nick and Warrick were playing that god damned football game when I came into the break room, so I sent them on a decomp, earning me dirty looks from my young protégés. When Catherine walked in late, hastily explaining that Eddie had been late to pick up Lindsey and she was really sorry, I went off on her too—but she didn't take it like Nick and Warrick. She tossed her hair, squared her shoulders, planted her hands on her hips, and informed me that just because I wasn't getting any from the woman who was someone else's baby-momma (what does that mean, exactly?) didn't mean I got to throw my weight around.

I apologized, abashed, and gave her the easy smash and grab I had intended to take myself, thinking it would give me time to call Sara in a few hours when I'd calmed down and apologize, as was our custom. She snatched the sheet from me without another word, flouncing out of the room, leaving me with a 419. This didn't help my mood—feeling ashamed and admitting I was wrong always hurt my pride… so it also made my anger worse. My only hopeful thought was that it was at least a single, and if it were simple, there was every reason to believe I'd have a chance to call Sara when I was driving evidence back to the lab. Or in the morning, before she headed out for the day…

No such luck. The vic had a meth lab in his basement along with explosives… we had to call in so many other teams to clear the scene and deal with the drugs that I couldn't get back into the house until nearly 6 am. I couldn't call Sara, because the man lived on a property out in the country—we probably wouldn't have found him for months if it hadn't been for his 911 call—and there was no cell service. I could hardly use the man's land line to call Boston, and I couldn't leave the body… or transport it, because David hadn't been in to release it to me, because we weren't allowed in the house.

By the time I left the scene, there was time to heat up someone else's leftover Chinese takeout from the fridge in the staff room, pop a migraine pill—oh, yeah, it was one of those days—and catch twenty minutes on the couch in Brass' office. I checked my phone for messages, knowing that I wouldn't see if I'd missed a call because I'd been out of range of any cell towers, but there were none. This didn't necessarily mean anything—she might have simply been exhausted. She had been right when she pointed out that she was now working again and attempting to do as much of it from home as possible, because she didn't want to leave Ayla in daycare all day. She never got enough sleep… so even though I was disappointed that she hadn't called, I was glad to think she might have gotten some much needed rest.

I was still waiting on evidence from the 419, so I went to work on the case from the night before last—the pregnant woman who'd been murdered by her husband when he caught her cheating. This one was open and close, thankfully, and thinking that all I had to do was go through the motions of processing everything, I figured I could handle it. I was wrong—we'd recovered the young wife's diary from her home after the husband had been arrested. I sat down to read through it, simply to see if anyone else suspicious jumped off the page, thinking I would not be doing my job if I didn't exhaust every avenue…

I learned that even though she and her husband were sleeping in different rooms and she had promised her lover that she wouldn't sleep with him—though the husband didn't know the reason why—she had. Several times. And she had lied to her lover about it, making excuses, saying he was only in her room when the man called and heard his voice because she'd been having Braxton hicks and was worried the baby was coming early… among other things. Jace's words came back to me, making the migraine which had, at this point, been receding come back in full force.

"But I am Ayla's father… Once she has her… her instinct is going to be to keep the family together. Especially since you work such a high risk job… I'm less of a risk."

"She loves me."

"Yeah, she told me that too."

…Was there some other reason Jace was always in her room? …Should I be worried about the hormones making Sara ask for phone sex whenever we had the opportunity? Should I be worried that we hadn't in several weeks now? Wasn't she frustrated, or was she getting it somewhere else? …She had even told me that she loved Jace, when I was first pursuing her in San Francisco. …In fact, shouldn't it worry me that she was so willing to spend time with me while she was engaged to be married? Shouldn't I find it disconcerting that we were fooling around on the cruise ship for days before she told Jace? …And had she told him, or had he simply confronted her with an ultimatum, already knowing what we'd been doing? I wondered what would happen if I called using a number she wouldn't recognize.

And suddenly, I also realized that I had to hear her voice this minute or I was absolutely going to lose my mind. I went into the locker room and pulled a cell phone out of Catherine's locker—I knew it had a Montana number, because her mother had left it here the previous weekend when she'd visited… Catherine was going to mail it back to her after shift.

I dialed Sara's cell number, glancing at the clock—it was 1:15. Not one of Ayla's usual feeding times. Even though we'd missed our seven o'clock phone call, chances were Sara was asleep and she wouldn't ans—"Hello?"

My heart plummeted into my stomach. It was Jace's voice, on Sara's cell phone, and he sounded like he had been asleep. I forced myself to speak, hoping that he was tired enough to not recognize my voice. "…I'm looking for Sara, please?"

He gave a sleepy grunt and inhaled. I strained my ear for clues—a bed creaking, a gentle rustling of him shaking her awake. "Sara…"

"Mmm?" She answered, clearly still mostly asleep.

The rustling came again. "…The phone's for you, honey. …Wake up."

"Oh." She said sleepily, and the bed creaked again, as if she were rolling over. I heard the phone pass hands, but her next words were far away, still directed at him. "…Ayla? Where is she?"

"Right here, Sara. Calm down, we didn't roll over her, everything's fine."

She seemed more awake now as she finally put the phone to her ear. "Hello?"

I opened my mouth to speak… to ask for an explanation… to scream at her, to cry, to lament the betrayal. And then I let it close—I didn't need any of that. I didn't need her. I closed the phone, turned it off, and replaced it in Catherine's locker.