"So now what? Where do we go with this? What is our next step?"

"I think you need to know a bit about me, about my demons!"

"You have demons Griss?" Sara asked coyly.

"Yes as a matter of fact I do, buckle up, it could be a long ride!"

Sara nuzzled in beside him on the bed and listened inventively as he told her about his past. "When I was a boy, my mother went deaf. She had otosclerosis, it is a genetic disorder, I too had it, but me being as stubborn as I am waited until the last possible time to get help for it. I had to have an operation. I was going in for surgery that next morning after you asked me out, my head was spinning, and then you asked me out and I panicked, so I said no."

"I am so sorry, Griss, I didn't know!"

"It is not your fault Sara, it is mine, and I thought I was using self-preservation when in fact, I was mildly self-destructing. That is not even the half of it. My father left my mother when I was just a kid; he felt that she was too much of a burden. I haven't seen him since and that has been nearly forty years. He left us, so I figured he didn't belong in my life. My mother raised me the best she could, I learned ASL at a very young age, mom could talk, she just couldn't hear, she could read lips though, she had learned that quickly. I was a loner growing up, I played with dead animals and bugs, that is partly why I became an entomologist, the bugs are safe friends, they don't ask for much and they don't require a lot of attention." Grissom paused for a few minutes.

"I have been in love before, I was twenty-two and she was nineteen, we were in love, we were both science geeks in college. I had to work my way through college because we couldn't afford it any other way, I worked as a coroner. I met her there; she was studying medicine and was doing her internship at the county morgue. We hit it off famously. She was the yin to my yang." He got a bit choked up.

"What happened to her?"

"Well, like I said, she was my world. We loved each other madly. We were together for nearly two years and we planned to get married. We were right down to the chapel, I was standing at the altar waiting for her to arrive, all of a sudden I felt this gut-wrenching feeling in my stomach. I knew something was wrong. When the police arrived at the chapel, I knew it was bad. They informed me that she died instantly, like that was supposed to make me feel better. It seems she got hit by a drunk driver, head on, she didn't know what hit her." Grissom was choked up.

"Griss, you can stop, you don't have to go on, we can do this later if you want."

"NO Sara, you did this, now I need to do this! At that moment I figured I was never supposed to love, if that is what happened on my wedding day then I wasn't supposed to be happy. I retreated further and further into myself. I didn't let anyone get close, until I met you. I have worked with Catherine for more than ten years and she barely knows me. It is my thing, I don't let people in, and they always get hurt so I just don't let them in to begin with. But you….you were different. When I met you at the seminar, there was something about you; it scared me. You made me feel things. I felt awful, you were so young, and for someone my age to be having thoughts about someone so young and beautiful was just uncalled for. It got worse after you came to stay in Vegas permanently."

"You asked me to stay!"

"I know, Sara. I asked you to stay because it would be good for the lab. Being good for me was just an added bonus," he flashed her a smile, "You see, I spent so much time hiding my feelings for you that I nearly lost your friendship over it. I will admit, I did flirt with you, sometimes openly, but once I realized what I had just done, being your supervisor and all, it sickened me, so I had to retreat further and further into myself. It became maddening. I even tried dating to get my mind off of everything. I picked people I really didn't care about, I know that sounds calloused, but it was a survival mechanism. Take Terri for example, I tried to date her, she seemed interested, we had things in common, but I was to inept to date her. I ended up sitting down to dinner with her, my pager and phone going off and looking up and she was gone, that was the last time I saw her and that was nearly three years ago, I hear she is happily married now." He stopped for a minute to take a breath.

"Then there was Heather, I thought that would be a good decoy, I was wrong, it was just sex, nothing more, no feeling, just sex. I decided being alone was better than what I had experienced in the past few years. When I heard about you dating Hank, it was like a knife in my heart, I know I told you to get a life outside of work, I was happy, to a degree that you were happy, I wanted to kill the bastard when I found out what he did to you. He was awful to you, but I must have been even worse. Then the lab blew up, you were hurt as well as Greg, my tongue slipped and I called you Honey, I had hoped you hadn't heard me, but I know you did," he looked over as she nodded. "I didn't know what to do, so I resorted to my norm and retreated further and further into myself. The crowning moment for me was the Debbie Marlin case. She looked so much like you, I had trouble concentrating on the crime scene, I just kept thinking, what if this was you, would I? Could I ever do that to you? I confessed my feelings to Dr Lurie. I kinda sympathized with him, being attracted to someone so young and beautiful being middle aged man. I felt his pain being rejected by her. It was awful Sara!"

"Griss, can I confess something else?"

"Sure."

"I heard your confession to Dr Lurie, I was in the other room with the intercom on, I have know all along, are you mad at me?"

"I am not mad at you, Sara, if anything I should be mad at me, for doing this to you. After your DUI though, I really had to do some thinking. Catherine kept telling me to get my head out from under the microscope, the problem was I didn't know how!"

"This is a step, isn't it?"

"Yes it is, is there anything else you want to know Sara, I am baring my soul to you today!"

"Yes, Griss, there is, I er..um..I..um"

"Well, spit it out!"

"Do you love me, Grissom?"

He was silent as he gathered his thoughts, "You know what Sara, I think I do!"

"So where does this leave us?"

"Naked!"

She laughed at his humor, "As far as I can see, we are both fully clothed, I know what you mean though, we have all of our cards on the table, we are both vulnerable, so where do we go from here?"

"Would you like to spend Christmas with me Sara? I would like you to meet someone very dear to me."

"Christmas, egh, where would we be spending Christmas at?"

"I thought that maybe we could go to California, so that you could meet my mom."

"I will on one condition!"

"What's that?"

"If we could swing by a little B & B in Tamales Bay for a day, would that be alright?"

"I think it would be perfect, we will fill out the paperwork tonight, if you are feeling up to going in."

"I feel much better now, thank you." She leaned up and gave him a peck on the cheek.

"Me too!"