Author's Notes: Sorry about that last cliffhanger. I'd promise never to leave you with another one, but I'd be lying through my teeth;) Thanks for all the reviews! Enjoy this chapter.
Letting Go
by Kristen Elizabeth
And here I go, losing my control
I'm practicing your name so I can say it to your face
It doesn't seem right, to look you in the eye
Let all the things you mean to me
Come tumbling out my mouth
Indeed it's time to tell you why
I say it's infinitely true
To: ssidle 71 hotmail . com
From: gsanders lvpd . crimelab . com
Subject: Chillin wit da peeps
Lady Sara,
Yo! Thank the good gods above that you finally have internet access! Pens and paper are so last century.
We're having a little trial-eve dinner at seven tonight at Fellini's in your honor. Don't worry; we've got your check covered. And by "we" I mean Nick. I left this same message on what I think is your cell. Since when does your voice mail message thingy say "To make arrangements for a bachelor party, contact Girls Uninterrupted, Inc"?
It's entirely possible that I dialed the wrong number.
See you there!
Greg
She arrived at the Italian restaurant fifteen minutes early, having overestimated how much time it would take to catch a cab. She stepped out of the car and smoothed down the hem of the little black dress she'd worn. It wasn't her usual style; she'd bought it at Jan's insistence while shopping in London two days before her departure. She'd left her hair loose, the curled ends swinging past her shoulders. There was no reason to be nervous, she told herself. No reason at all.
Reservations had already been made under Nick's name; she was seated right away. There was nothing more surreal for a single woman than sitting alone at a table set for eight. Sara forced herself to take the seat the maitre'd offered her. With her back straight and no visible sign that she minded at all, she ordered a glass of wine and waited.
To her great discontent, waiting afforded her the irresistible opportunity to remember what she'd tried not to think about the entire time she was preparing for the evening. The blinding white of the linen tablecloth was like a projection screen. As she stared at it, her mind wandered and the scene played again in her head. All she could do was watch.
At first, she couldn't even tell what, or who, it was that she'd bumped into on her way out of Karen's office. With her eyes downcast, she merely jumped back, to get out of the person's way. But then…
"Sara?"
Her name spoken by his voice. She'd almost forgotten that sound. Sara looked up and into his eyes. "Grissom…oh my god…"
"What…?" He started the question, but was too overcome to finish it. Running his hand over his beard, he struggled for breath. "You're…here. You're really here."
"I'm here," she echoed, softly. "Surprise?"
She wanted to touch him, but she couldn't make her hands move. Seeing him again after so long, being surrounded by everything that made him Grissom…his scent, those eyes…it was like giving a needle to an ex-junkie.
"Surprise." He shook his head. "Yes. You could call it that."
"Hopefully not a bad one." He was still shaking his head. Encouraged, she went on, "I've only been back since yesterday. For the trial." She glanced back at the ADA's office door. "I guess we're here for the same reason." When she looked back, he was staring at her, intently. Like she was under one of his microscopes. "What?"
"Your hair." Reaching out, he touched a long, straightened strand. "You let it grow out."
"You don't like it?" Damn. She was hoping that would come out light and teasing; instead, it had almost sounded like she was desperate for his approval. Which she wasn't. Not really.
"It makes you look…" His Adam's apple bobbed. "…young." His fingers trailed from her hair over to her cheek. "Why do you have to be so young?"
"No." It was her turn to shake her head as she backed up away from him. "Don't start that again."
Grissom blinked out of whatever internal reverie he'd been caught in. "Sara…I'm sorry. I didn't mean to…"
"We haven't seen each other in half a year! Even Catherine hugged me at the airport. But all you can do is pick up immediately where we left off?" Her eyes pleaded with him. "Why can't you just welcome me home?"
A moment passed. "Welcome home, Sara."
And then she was in his arms. Or he was in hers. It didn't seem to matter. All that did matter was him kissing her, touching her, telling her without words how much he'd missed her.
Greg slid into the chair next to hers silently. Stealthily. She was staring off into space, her brow creased ever so slightly.
"Sara?" he whispered. She didn't so much as blink. He cleared his throat. "Sara!"
"What!" She whipped her head around, on full alert until she saw his grin. She put her hand to her heart. "Oh my god, if I didn't know better, I'd think you were trying to off a witness via heart attack!"
"How long have you been here?" he asked with a wink.
She blinked. "I don't know." Glancing around, she asked, "Where is everyone?"
"There's an accident about three blocks down the road," Greg explained. "People could be stuck in that."
"Who all is coming?" She feigned sudden interest in her wine glass, a classic distraction maneuver that Greg saw through right away. She wasn't so much asking about the group, but about one person in particular.
"The usual suspects," he replied. The waiter interrupted them at that moment and he ordered a soda. "I'm on duty tonight," he explained to her. "So…how is it, being back?"
She half-smiled down into her merlot as the memory overtook her again. "Warmer."
There were certainly more romantic places than the hallway of the District Attorney's office, even if it was empty at the moment. But right then, Sara couldn't think of a single place she'd rather be. Grissom was kissing her. And he wasn't stopping.
It wasn't possible to get any closer to him, but she wanted to be. So close that they'd never be apart again. She wrapped her arms around his neck and held on, kissing him back with everything she had. His beard tickled, but it didn't bother her. This wasn't a dream. She wouldn't wake up alone, huddled underneath five blankets in a tent in the middle of an Eastern European forest, her body throbbing for something she'd never had.
His hands slid up and down her back, desperate for more contact, more togetherness. She whimpered at the feeling. It was too much and, at the same time, too little.
"Ahem."
Karen watched as the couple who had been clinging to each other outside her door quickly broke apart. Sara's hand flew to her mouth, touching her swollen lips. For his part, Grissom looked quite like the teenager caught making out in the backseat of his car.
"Is this something I should know about before I get the two of you on the witness stand?" Karen asked.
"No," Grissom immediately replied. "Sara and I weren't…"
She couldn't let him finish, couldn't let him talk away the past few minutes like they weren't the most amazing either of them had experienced in a very long time. "Don't worry about it, Karen." She looked at him and willed her voice to remain steady. "It's nothing. Right?"
Grissom couldn't seem to find anything to say.
"I should be going," Sara continued before she lost her nerve. "Still on Bosnian time." She nodded at the ADA. "Bye. Again."
He hadn't tried to stop her as she'd walked away.
Nick arrived with his date, the woman he'd been seeing over the past weeks. Sara could find nothing outwardly wrong with Jessica, as she introduced herself. She was very pretty and seemed to be head over heels about Nick. However, Sara doubted she'd see her on Jeopardy! anytime soon.
Warrick came alone, followed a few minutes later by Catherine and then Brass, who immediately pulled Sara up out of her chair and into a bear hug. Surprised, but pleased, she returned the embrace.
Drinks were ordered and when they came, Nick proposed the toast. "To friends. Old, new and returned."
"Here, here," Brass echoed, taking a swig from his Scotch. "I've just gotta say it. This whole group is looking a lot prettier with you back, Sara."
"Hey!" Catherine threw him an indignant glare. "I'll try not to take that personally, thank you very much."
Warrick smirked. "Sara balances the pretty. Without her, we're a bunch of dumb guys with one…" He winked at Jessica. "Sometimes two shining spots of beautiful. It's too concentrated. Three works, though. Balanced."
Catherine's lips curled up in a Cheshire cat smile of appreciation. "I knew I liked you best for a reason."
Brass glanced around the crowded restaurant and then at the empty chair to Sara's right. "We're short one dumb guy tonight, aren't we?"
"Um…not quite. Greg was supposed to bring a date," Nick quickly explained. "Fell through, buddy?"
He frowned into his Coke. "She didn't know what DNA stands for," he grumbled. "I can't even work with that."
Sara joined in the laughter, but the smile on her face didn't quite reach her eyes. She was now keenly aware of the empty chair. She'd thought it was for him and that he simply hadn't bothered to come. Knowing that it had been intended for Greg's date made it a little more bearable.
Sipping her wine, she looked around the table. She'd missed this group dynamic, but she also found herself missing the one she'd left behind in London. Could you be at home in two places, on opposite sides of the world? Was it possible to belong to more than one family, neither one of them being the one you were born to?
"So, Sara." Nick's date jolted her back to the conversation. She focused on the beaming blonde. "Nick tells me you've been overseas. Bosnia, right? How was that? I've always wanted to travel!"
Nick put a hand on Jessica's arm. "Darlin', I don't think Sara really wants to talk about…"
"No. It's all right." Fortifying herself with another sip, Sara went on. "Bosnia is nothing like anything we know here. In fact, it's so far removed from here that it might as well be on a different planet. But it's still a beautiful country." She paused. "I didn't have the typical tourist experience. I was there to do a job. We…we were there to do a job. And we…"
The first body, a boy barely out of his teens. The deactivated land mine down the road that had caused a scare during their second week. The little girl, raped with a bowie knife. The farmer and his family, living in a graveyard. The bodies that lay in repose, waiting for spring thaw.
"Sara?" Greg reached for her hand, which was wrapped so tightly around the stem of her glass that he feared she might break it. "It's okay." She relaxed her fingers enough for him to lace his through them. He squeezed gently. "You're okay."
She was about to brush off her sudden bout of emotion with a joke when she felt a presence behind her. Like he'd told her once upon a time, she didn't even have to turn around.
"Am I interrupting?" Grissom asked, adjusting his tie. "I got a message from Warrick and I…" Sara turned her head just then and he stopped short.
She shook her hand away from Greg's. All eyes alternated between her and Grissom, waiting in anticipation of some sort of scene. If only they'd been present for their actual reunion. That would have given them something to talk about for years.
Mustering her courage, Sara stood up and faced him. He looked far too good in his suit and blue shirt with his beard neat and trimmed. She forced herself to smile and to think about something else other than the now-familiar shape and texture of his lips. "Hi."
He inclined his head. "Hi."
"Wow." Catherine saluted them both with her Cosmopolitan. "Don't go overboard, you two."
Grissom jerked forward just as she did. They met in the world's most awkward hug. It lasted all of two seconds. "It's...good to…you know…see you," he said once they separated.
She sank back into her chair. "You, too."
Under his breath, Brass asked Jessica, "Is it chilly in here, or is it just me?"
She looked up at the ceiling. "We could be under an air vent."
Brass patted her hand. "I can see why Nicky likes you."
Ignoring the evil eye Catherine gave him even as he spoke, Warrick gestured to the empty chair. "Take a load off, Gris. We haven't ordered yet."
Grissom nodded and sat down. He was so close to her that for a moment their elbows touched. Sara drew her arm back towards her body. The incident in the hallway, as she'd started referring to it, had awakened something within her. He'd managed to bruise her heart again, but that hadn't stopped her from wanting him in the purest, basest way imaginable.
And if the way he shifted in his seat in discomfort was any indication, he was feeling the same thing.
"So…" Nick started, hoping to land on a topic of conversation that wouldn't send Sara on a bad trip down memory lane. When he couldn't come up with one, and everyone was waiting, he sighed. "Should we order?"
They did, and while they waited for the food to arrive, the conversation geared itself towards neutral topics, mostly recent cases. Sara tried to keep up, but eventually the references to people she'd never met, events she'd not witnessed got to be overwhelming. She found herself devoting much of her attention to her fettuccine alfredo when it finally arrived.
Greg was in the middle of a detailed retelling of his interrogation of a particularly overzealous and coked-out hooker when Sara realized Grissom wasn't listening to the younger man either. He was watching her.
She set down her fork and leaned as close to him as she could without drawing anyone's notice. "What's on my face?"
He blinked. "Nothing. I was just…" He eyed the group, but they were all occupied with Greg's story. Still, he lowered his voice. "As you pointed out, we haven't seen each other in half a year." He paused without elaborating. "Sara, what happened this afternoon…"
"I know," she interrupted. "It was just the heat of the moment." When he frowned, she continued, "Wasn't it?"
"You didn't give me a chance to finish what I was going to say to Karen."
Sara reached for her wine, to give her hands something to do. "What were you going to say to her about us?"
Grissom opened his mouth to speak, but his pager cut him off. Sara closed her eyes, smiling ruefully. Such was life.
"You'd better check that," she told him when it beeped again.
"Sara, I…" Another beep.
She could feel Nick's curious stare on them. "I'd do the same," Sara told him, speaking as quietly as she could. "The job comes first, right?"
"I don't know anymore."
If she looked into the water blue of his eyes any longer, she'd drown. "Go ahead, Grissom. This is something I could never hold against you."
Reluctantly, he withdrew the device from the inside of his jacket and examined the tiny screen. "419. Swing shift is tapped out." He replaced it. "You could come. Old times sake?"
"I'm not an employee of the Las Vegas Crime Labanymore," she reminded him. "You'll have to take Greg."
"Where am I going?" Greg asked, hearing his name.
"To Grissom's crime scene," Sara answered for him. "Better hurry."
"Sara," Grissom tried again.
"See you in court," she told him before turning to Nick's date. "So, Jessica. Where do you want to travel?"
Greg stood up at the same time as Grissom. "I'm ready whenever you are, boss," he said, pulling on his coat.
Grissom gazed at Sara as she smiled at whatever Jessica was gushing about. Finally, he forced himself to look away. "Let's go."
Having spent more than her fair share of time in the cheap motels Las Vegas had to offer, Sara had decided to splurge when it came time to reserve a room for the length of the trial. She had a modest, but clean room in the Sphere and to her mind, it was worth the expense to know that it was significantly less likely that she was sleeping on unwashed sheets.
Dinner had ended sans dessert when most of the group had to leave in order to be on time for work. On her way back to the hotel, Sara had her cab driver stop at a store where she picked up a pint of cookie dough ice cream, something she hadn't been able to find in London, despite a fair amount of searching.
The ice cream waited for her in the mini-fridge while she took a steamy bath. She made the water as hot as she could stand and relaxed in it until it turned tepid. Finally, Sara forced herself out of the bathroom. Wrapped in a hotel robe, her wet hair twisted up in a towel, she climbed into bed with her treat.
And not a minute later, just as she spooned a big, cold bite into her mouth, the phone rang.
Better to sound idiotic than swallow and risk brain freeze. Sara reached for the receiver. "Hu-woah?" she said around the ice cream.
"Um…yes. Is this room 212?"
She swallowed. And regretted it a second later. "Grissom?" Sara put a hand to her aching forehead. "How did you know where I'm staying?"
"Sara," he said, reproachfully.
"Right. Sorry. Didn't mean to question your mad investigative skills." As the pain started to recede, she began to hear strange noises in the background. "Where are you?"
"The lobby."
"But…" She licked the sticky corner of her lip. "What about your crime scene? You can't be done with it."
"That's what we keep Greg around for. To pick up the slack." There was a pause. "Is it all right if I come up?"
Underneath her robe, she was wearing nothing but very flimsy underwear. "Give me a minute."
He gave her five, and it was plenty of time for her to change into pajama pants and a soft, long sleeved cotton shirt. She freed her damp hair from the towel and ran a comb through it. When he finally knocked on the door, she had just enough time to stash the ice cream in the fridge, erasing all traces of her splurge.
"Hey," Sara greeted him, a bit breathless and not entirely because she'd rushed to get ready. He was still in his nice clothes from the restaurant, but his collar was undone at his throat. Casual, sexy Grissom. It was enough to make any woman flustered.
He waited until a couple had passed by them in the hall before he asked, "Can we talk? Inside?"
Letting Grissom into her hotel room. As a plan, it had a high probability of ending in disaster, embarrassment or worse, heartache. But she nodded and allowed him in.
"It's a nice room," he noted.
"Best of all, we've never been called out to it." She closed the door. "I checked."
Grissom smiled. "Of course you did." His smile faded slightly. "I probably shouldn't be here at all," he began. "But you have to know that this afternoon…I wasn't trying to tell Karen that there's nothing between us."
"You weren't?"
"No. I was going to tell her that there wasn't anything between us at the time of the Julia Sommers investigation."
Sara crossed her arms over her chest. "I'm sorry. I should have let you finish telling her that."
"Telling her there's nothing between us would have been a lie. There's always been something between us, Sara."
"I know. I just didn't always know that you knew it."
Grissom ran a hand down his beard. "Do you know that those few minutes we spent outside of Karen's door today were the first in months in which I've felt alive?"
The weight of his admission pressed down on her chest, making it difficult to breathe. "I do. Because I feel the same way."
"Sara…" He approached her with caution. "I want to feel alive again."
All she could do was nod. "Me, too."
It happened again. She had no idea who grabbed whom, whose lips met the other's first, who started it all. But it was just as good, if not better than before. And this time, there was no one around to interrupt them.
Say you'll stay, don't come and go
Like you do
Sway my way, yeah I need to know
All about you
- Bic Runga
To Be Continued