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Chapter Seventeen: Surely Not I (SARA)
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"Why don't you come inside?" he said, holding the door open for her.
It was cool in his townhouse. The air swept over her in cyclical motions. She stood in the entrance until he moved into the living room, and then she followed in his wake. He was silent again, and she had yet to speak. The quiet was muffling the other sounds she knew should be there, making it impossible for her to hear her own breathing or footsteps.
He sat down on the tasteful beige sofa, and she followed suit.
She knew why she was there. She knew he was upset. She'd been able to see through the pleasantness at dinner down to the bone, and she knew that Grissom was frightened of what was happening. For a man so obsessed with control over his own life, it must have been horrifying to watch it slip away from him with Lizzie's accusation. But Warrick and Catherine had done an excellent job of directing the press's attention elsewhere, and with a settlement in the works, Grissom would have his normal, regulated life back soon.
And she had come to tell him that, except she suddenly found it impossible.
He looked heartbroken but determined. He looked irrevocably lost, as if he wasn't sure where he was, and comforting him with settlements seemed bizarre.
"How are you doing?" she asked.
"I'm fine," he said. "Fine." He ran one hand over his face, skirting his hairline, and she watched his fingertips swirl over his skin with a voyeuristic pleasure. "Just - - upset about all of this."
"I get that. It's been bothering me, too."
She wondered if he would tell her, as he had told Greg, that it wasn't really her problem. She wondered if Grissom would try to placate her, or exclude her. If he did, she'd know that what she was thinking at the moment was impossible. If Grissom said the wrong thing now, she'd know that her chance was what it always had been before: nonexistent.
But he didn't comfort her, and he didn't exclude her. He was quiet, and then shattered the silence with, "I've been thinking about my life."
It was the first time she'd ever heard him say something about his personal life, and, riveted, she leaned forward, her eyes never breaking contact with his own. She could feel her hands slipping over her knees, and she fought to keep her balance on the sofa. He still looked distant, but then when his eyes refocused, there was an intensity in them that glimmered underneath the surface, like gold thrown into water.
"About your life," she said, as a prompt.
"I made this my life," he said, with a sweeping gesture, and she knew that he wasn't talking about the townhouse. He gave her a sheepish grin, like he'd read her mind. "Work. I did overtime, I did double-shifts, triple-shifts . . . I let it consume me. And I never regretted it until now. It's fascinating. Catherine calls it a puzzle, like it's something to be solved and then set aside, but it's more than that. It's not just a challenge, it's a life. It's what I was made to do. And if I ever wanted anything more than that . . . I could be content anyway."
He cleared his throat.
"And I'm going to - - I'm afraid I'm going to - - lose it all. This life. And it seems so strange that all I have left is what I turned away from."
He's talking about me. Turning me down, turning me away. He regrets it.
"What do you have left?"
He laughed. It sounded bitter, almost deprecating. "I have Nick. He's sitting in a hotel in Boston because I sent him away when I probably needed him the most. I have Greg. He's so worried about bogeymen in the background of our lives and the proper pancake-eating etiquette that he's bordering on insanity. I have butterflies pinned on my wall, I have migraine medication, and I have six years of poker-playing experience locked in my brain."
He looked at her, his eyes heated; evaluating.
"I don't know what else I have," he said plainly. "I don't know what I may have lost. Can you tell me what else I have, Sara?"
She had never liked someone saying her name that much before. She loved the way it rolled off his tongue and slid between his lips, always sounding seductive even when they were discussing something plain or even revolting, like maggots or grout. And of course, he had not lost her. It would be impossible for him to lose her.
"You have me," she said. "You've always had me."
"People who saw us together, even at Harvard - - they could tell," Grissom said, his voice softly contemplative. "They could see the way my eyes never wandered too far away from you. The way we walked too close together. People talked about us, and they knew. And I knew. But I didn't think this could be part of my life. And now I'm losing my life."
It sounds like he's saying he's dying, Sara thought. Maybe to him, he is.
But her concern for him was washed away in this revelation - - that he loved her, or wanted her, at the very least. She meant something to him. He had her, yes, but she had him too.
"You won't lose me," she promised, and he touched her hand, just above the wrist. His fingers were scorching against her bare skin. Her lips parted, she let out a surprised, harsh breath. "You - - you could never lose me. No matter how hard you tried."
"I tried," he said, curving his hand around hers in an elaborate, almost erotic dance of fingers and skin, "but I couldn't. I couldn't forget this. I couldn't exclude you from my life, and I can't want that anymore. I have to have a life, Sara. And I want you to be it."
Not part of it, not in it, but it. He wanted her to be his life in its entirety.
It gave her shivers; thrills. She whispered his name as he raised her hand to his mouth and kissed her. And his eyes were darkened to a cloudy blue with emotion and desire, but there was something wrong there, too. Something that wasn't as sweet. There was something secretive there - - something hidden. Something he wasn't telling her.
He was a mystery. He was hiding something from her.
And for once, she didn't care. She couldn't care. He was tracing her lifeline with his lips, and if this was all she could get, if this was going to be just a one-night stand, if he was lying just to let this happen - - she didn't care. She was sick of caring, sick of wanting anything more. So she would give in, if that was what it took. She would let go.
He kissed the corner of her mouth as his thumb grazed over her lower lip.
"Sara," he said, "do you love me?"
She hated him for asking, but that didn't change the answer.
"Of course I do," she said, leaning into his kiss. His hands traveled down her back, over her shoulder-blades, sliding in a ladder pattern down her spine. He began to raise her shirt up over her ribs, and she watched it rise when her head ducked down. She didn't ask him his own question.
Her shirt dropped to the sofa cushions, leaving her sitting there in a lavender silk bra and a pair of soft, wine-colored slacks. Her lips were parted, and she whispered to him, unsure of what she was saying, but he must have understood, because he nodded.
"God, you're beautiful," he said, his voice husky. "Why did I never do this before?"
The knock at the door made them jerk back, her almost falling into him. Her skin jumped under his touch as he wrapped his arms around her belly, her shoulders.
"Don't answer," she whispered.
"I have to," he said, and the grim determination in his face repelled her for some reason she couldn't explain. "I know what they want."
He stood and walked to the door too quickly for her to get her shirt back on, and she just draped it over her shoulders, feeling foolish and naked as Grissom swung open the door to reveal Brass and two cops in their full uniforms. Brass looked at him and sighed.
"Gil, we're going to need to take you in for questioning in the murder of Elizabeth Zimmer."
Sara stood, and the shirt dropped to the ground, a puddle on the carpet, a stain. Brass looked at her with indescribable sadness in his eyes, and then down at the ground. Grissom stood firm, unmoving.
"Gil," Brass said again, "she was eviscerated. She's dead. You have to come in to the station. Not an arrest, just some questions."
He shouldn't have been standing there so quietly. He should have ranted; raved; gasped. He should have said something, anything, but he didn't. He just stood there, bleak and still, and that was when Sara understood: he had known. While he was pulling her shirt off and kissing her, he had known that Lizzie Zimmer was dead. That she was dead. That it would end.
He had known.
She said, "Did you kill her?"
It was almost as soft as a breath, and she wasn't even sure if he heard her until he flinched. And she instantly regretted it, standing there in her bra, asking the man she loved if he had killed another woman, but she couldn't help it. She had asked - - because she had believed that he was capable of having done it. Grissom, with his cold hands and colder eyes. With his touches and avoidances. With his secrets.
She had believed only for a second, but she had still believed.
I didn't say it, he didn't hear me, I didn't say it, I didn't. Of course I didn't. I wouldn't betray him like that, not in front of these people, not like this.
But she had. She had.
And they were taking him away. Tugging at his arms, pulling on his hands, and dragging him outwards into the night, they were taking him away. And he was no longer resisting, just letting himself be taken while she stood there, half-naked, in his townhouse, with blood smeared over the palms of her hands.