Disclaimer is back in Chapter One, but I'll reiterate that I don't own any character from the show "CSI."
I'm back from my vacation(I loooove summer) and couldn't wait to get this next chapter posted. Hopefully, I'll have everything posted by the time school starts again in 2 weeks. (I feel so juvenile discussing high school starting) I'm already planning a sequel to this. Please hang in there and keep reading and reviewing!
Sara's friend Miranda had once remarked "shit travels in cycles." It was true, in Sara's opinion: her beliefs about bad days could be summed up by Miranda's statement. There were weeks with horrible, gruesome cases, and then those weeks where Sara actually left the lab before shift ended because she was bored. There were weeks where drama just appeared, manifesting itself comfortably in her existence, and then months where her life was so boring and mundane her cat would be moved to tears—if she even had a cat. (Weeks like those, she actually considered it.)
The week that the girls started school was possibly the busiest week of her life, and one of the most complicated. The girls started school and tentatively seemed to enjoy it. Their days got busier, as they spent mornings at club meetings or the gym 'training,' their afternoons at their respective sport practices, and their evenings howling about calculus. Lilly's nurse Jessie moved in—she was a tall, broad, rough-but-motherly type who guarded her patient fiercely but never succumbed to sentimentality or babying Lilly. She had a chillingly realistic outlook: Yes, Lilly would die. Yes, it would be soon. But, dammit, she was going to go comfortable and loved.
Jessie and Dr. Ringo both recommended that, though it was quite late, Lilly should undergo an operation to numb the nerves around her kidneys and pancreas. The tumors, they discovered, had metasized and spread to her bones and lungs. Nobody needed to say that it wouldn't be long until the funeral.
Lilly, however, refused to become negative. She could not swallow anymore, had to be fed by somebody most of the time and could hardly walk or even move some mornings. Because the cancer was located in her gastrointestinal system, she had trouble taking pain medication orally, so Jessie would often inject it or use IVs. She spent most of her time writing down quick memories for the girls and was adamant about staying at home until the very last possible moment.
At work, they all continued to slug away on the Skylar Westborough case. It finally cracked, a bit anticlimactically, after Skylar's mother talked to Nate, on Wednesday night. The teenagers had clumsily tried to play sex games: they snuck into the pool area and Nate tied Skylar to a ladder in the shallow end, and then duct-taped a sock into her mouth. "We're both people that like to go to the limit—we'd been trying to outdo each other with the kinkiness since we'd started sleeping together." He'd explained clumsily. "I guess it got a little too rough. We were both really drunk." After realizing that Skylar had died, he'd undone the duct tape and the sock and untied her, and fled. Sara, after hearing the story, had gone to a bar and sobbed into Greg's shirt until somebody found Nick, and then she sobbed into his shirt.
Thursday night was her first date with Nick, a no-strings-attached pizza and a movie. Afterwards, they made out on his couch. She hated herself for being attracted to him and acting on it, because it just seemed to complicate everything tenfold. Still—she hated herself even more for admitting it—she couldn't stop herself. When she was with him, it seemed righter than anything else in her life. The regrets only came afterwards.
One movie turned into Rollerblading at a park, then into more movie nights, then into Nick cooking dinner for her. She picked out some things, too—seeing the Blue Man Group show at the Luxor and finding out-of-the-way restaurants to eat at. She looked forward to any evening with Nick. He relaxed her without making her totally forget about—and thus feel guilty about—the girls and Lilly. He came over several times too, just to hang out, and the girls adored him. Warrick and Greg also made it a point to stop by several times to see the girls. She wasn't sure it was a good idea for Nick to come over so often and for the girls to get used to him, because they technically weren't dating and she didn't want anything to go wrong in the future and throw the girls more off course. Sara knew he thought she was nuts when she explained it to him, but said that if Sara thought it was best for the girls then he would go along with it.
One morning, Sara got off work and was pleasantly surprised to find Nick outside. It was ridiculous and against all of her instincts, but she was immediately happier after seeing him. "I was thinking pancakes and a movie." He grinned boyishly and kissed her.
"God, we sure turn date night upside down." She intertwined her fingers with his. "How was your shift?"
He shrugged. "Boring. I have tonight off."
"Isn't that great? I've got tonight off, too."
"Should be interesting, then." Nick opened the door for her.
She called the girls, making sure they got to school and Lilly was fine, and then spent an hour at the IHOP before going over to Nick's place. "What'd you rent?" It had been his turn to pick movies.
He grinned. "Million Dollar Baby and Spider-Man 2."
Sara grinned back, only wider. "I've been wanting to see that."
"I know." He smiled. They sat down comfortably to watch the movies, Sara's legs thrown over Nick's lap. He absentmindedly massaged her calves throughout the movies. He knew better than to talk to her during movies. "How'd you like them?" he turned to her and she began kissing his jawline as soon as the credits from Spider-Man 2 rolled.
"I loved them. Which one was your favorite?" she said in a half-husky voice.
"Definitely Spider-Man 2." He said, reciprocating her soft kisses. He searched her face for her mouth.
"Figures," she smiled, their lips pressed together.
Twenty minutes later, as his hand snaked up her shirt, Nick began to think that this was a bad idea. However, as Sara's fingers were fumbling with his zipper, he nixed that thought. Five minutes later though, as they stumbled towards his bedroom, he decided it was a good idea to pull back. The last thing he wanted was a guilty, regretful Sara to wake up next to.
"Sar…Wait." He wriggled loose and sat on his bed, hands on her hips. "Do you really want to do this? Less than three weeks ago, you didn't even want a relationship because things are so complicated. This is the last thing I want to mess up right now."
Sara smiled tenderly and sadly. "You're right. Everything is complicated right now. Every-damn-thing—except this. This, Nick," she sat down too, a knee in between his thighs, and put her hand over his heart. "This feels right. And good, and everything else." She tilted her head downwards and kissed him long, hard, and slow. "There's nothing that I want more right now."
Nick didn't need anything else; he attacked her with a raw passion Sara had never seen before. Cupping his cheeks in her hands, she deftly flipped them backwards and sideways onto the bed.
Several hours later, after what was definitely the best sex of her life, Sara was lazily rubbing her leg against Nick's when she heard the whine of her cell phone. Jumping out of bed, she grabbed it and was immediately worried when she saw both the time—4:32—and the ID—Grace. "Yeah?" she said, flipping it open.
"Sara?" the normally calm, stoic voice was close to tears. "Sara—they want to put Mom into the Hospice for good. Please—come home."