Budding

Chapter Twenty

Warrick awoke to a strange smell. He looked over at the clock. It was three o'clock in the morning. He turned to check up on Catherine, but she wasn't in bed. He rolled his eyes and ran a hand over his face.

"Catherine…" he grumbled as he got out of bed.

He went down stairs and found her in the kitchen, her favorite hangout now that she was carrying, cooking something. Her hair was tousled and she only had on an oversized T-shirt and panties, which had grown bigger in size.

"Cathy, what are you doing?" Warrick asked.

"I'm cooking asparagus," she said turning to him. "Why?"

"Sweetheart do you know what time it is?" Warrick asked. "It's three in the morning."

"Yeah, and?" She asked.

"Are you sure you should be eating at this time of night…day…whichever," Warrick said.

"Honey let me explain something to you," she said, slightly waddling to him. "Right now, there is no sense of time or order to me," she said, putting her hands on the back of her wide hips. "Whatever I want, the baby wants and gets, if I can't sleep so that he can sleep, then that's the way it has to be. Stop worrying so much babe," she said. "Remember I've done this before."

Warrick nodded tentatively, scared of her too calm mood. Sometimes she would be sweet as sugar, and then before he knew it she would not be the best person to hang around.

"If you have any more questions, refer to pages forty five through forty seven in Daddy Dearest," she said. "It should do you good."

***

Sara woke up to a roll of thunder and the sound of pounding rain. She inhaled deeply and turned around to look a the clock. When she did so, her view was blocked by another sleeping figure in her bed.

She smiled and leaned over the figure and kissed him tenderly on the cheek, causing him to stir.

He turned and looked at her and any other look, but love, crossed his face, and she felt her smile slowly fading. He looked confused, surprised, and…regretful. She broke her gaze and laid back down in bed, staring at the ceiling.

"Sara," he started.

"Yeah?"

"What happened last night?" He asked, even though he already knew what had happened; he initiated it. His voice sounded regretful, and he knew it.

She huffed out a frustrated breath. "You fucked me," she said bluntly as she turned away from him.

He had never expected hearing that word escape her mouth. He ruined everything. Mornings after between two people who love each other dearly should not be this tense. Part of him wanted to kiss her madly and make love to her again, but her knew that he'd be taking advantage of her somehow. He was impulsive last night, and it showed in his lovemaking. He knew that he was hurting her, but he was releasing passion that had been held in for way too long. Even through the pain, she enjoyed it, and she pulled him yet closer to her, to feel more of him.

Now, it was morn, and the afterglow was long gone.

"You don't have to stay if you don't want to," she whispered.

Grissom wanted to stay, but his rational mind, that knew everything else except human emotion, made him think better of it. He felt that he had robbed her of her choice to leave. He was making her stay because of his own selfish need to possess her. For some reason, he had claimed her; she wasn't a prize or anything, it was just that from the moment he laid eyes on her, coming into that lecture hall, with longer, thicker, and curlier hair, still adolescent features gracing her twenty one year old face, and cute clothes for her lithe figure, he knew that one day, if not that night when she asked him to a small party, that she would be his.

Now, it only seemed selfish because he was making her stay and making her think that she had to.

"Just go, Grissom," she said. She was glad that the door to her bedroom was behind her because she didn't want Grissom to see her tears.

She shifted in the bed and curled herself deeper into the covers. She felt pain not only in her heart but in a place that Grissom had touched her, been inside her, let go inside. It was a soreness that she would have enjoyed under different circumstances, but right now, the soreness was anything but bearable. It had been so long, that she was aching, and it wasn't a good aching.

She heard him pulling on his clothes, which had been scattered around the room in their desperate, almost pathetically desperate, need to feel the essence of each other. He had tapped into that little place in her soul that she closed off to the rest of the world and he made her a fool for over ten years. She had finally gotten her fill of him, and now, he was pushing her even further away. She was teetering dangerously on the edge of nothingness, the point she always knew she would reach, it only took time. She knew that once she reached it, there would be no going back.

She didn't even notice that Grissom left until minutes later when she came out of her thoughts.

She felt the tears welling up again, ready to chase the ones that had dried.

"Don't cry," she said to herself as she got up out of bed, gloriously naked, and ashamed now. She couldn't help it and she covered her mouth and whimpered. "Oh God."

She let out an increasingly growing noise that was a mix of pain, and painful love.

Grissom heard her cry, but he knew that if he turned around, he would make things worse.

"I'm so sorry," he whispered as he walked down the stairs.

Sara wrapped the sheet around her body, which now felt vile and violated, and went into her kitchen.

She had to take her anger out on something. She cried like she never cried before as she took down certain objects. Once she felt she had enough, she picked one up and hurled it against the front door. She threw one and then another, and another, and so forth until there was nothing left within her reach to throw. She sank to the floor, crying, and in an emotional ruin. She had given herself over to him and he walked out on her. Why was it so easy for him?

She got up and opened her bottle of pills. She began to count them, making sure she had plenty enough to last her awhile so that she could take three.

She heard knocking on the door.

"Ms. Sidle?" Her landlady called. "Are you alright?"

She kept banging and banging.

"Shut up," she hissed under her breath. She popped three pills and then she went back to her bedroom.