Author's Notes: Thanks to everyone for the continued feedback;) It probably seems like I've forgotten my other WIP in favor of this story, but I promise you, I am working on the next chapter of "Beauty and the Beholder." It's just coming along slowly for some reason, and this story is flowing. It happens;) Enjoy!
Someone Else's Star
by Kristen Elizabeth
Never apologize for showing feeling. When you do so, you apologize for the truth. – Benjamin Disraeli
When he got home, Grissom tried to keep busy. It was the only way, he figured, to keep his mind off of the fact that Sara had the emails.
Best case scenario: she set the folder aside and forgot about it.
Worst case scenario: she looked inside…then wrote him off as a pathetic old man who clung onto fragments of a relationship that existed only in his affected head.
He poked at the bran cereal he was forcing himself to eat. It had become soggy, evidence that despite his efforts, she was still in his thoughts. Maybe he should skip the fiber and go straight for the grain alcohol. It didn't take long for him to decide against that. Last time, he hadn't been able to control his dialing finger. And he'd made things with Sara even more strained.
But in the middle of that beautiful feeling of freedom that came from inebriation, he had just desperately needed to hear her voice.
Grissom dumped the sodden remains of his breakfast down the sink's disposal just as his doorbell chimed.
Wiping his hands on a dishtowel, he went to answer the door. The first thing he saw was the manila of a very familiar folder as it was thrust into his face.
Well, she hadn't just set it aside.
Hurricane Sara blew past him and thundered into his tidy home, just as she had thundered into his tidy life so many years ago. She turned on him.
"Why?" was all she said, yet she asked for so much.
"I don't know," was his honest reply.
They held their positions for a moment before Sara advanced. Dropping the folder onto the floor, she reached for him, but Grissom unconsciously jerked back. Undaunted, she moved again, faster this time until she held his hand between the palms of her slender hands.
She touched her lips to his, exerting no more pressure than the wings of a ladybug. It was all he needed to release the floodgates. Ten years of harnessed impulses suddenly set free had him grabbing her waist. He could feel his fingers digging into her giving flesh, but her only moan was of approval.
Kissing had been awkward for him in the past. He'd never been quite sure of where to put his tongue or how to move it or if he was, god forbid, slobbering all over his partner. Kissing Sara, he still had all those worries. But they weren't quite strong enough to make him stop.
An earthquake wouldn't have been quite strong enough to make him stop.
Sara slipped her hands down to his shoulders, then continued along the length of his shirt. Their mouths still danced together when she paused at his belt buckle. It was an invitation and a question.
They broke apart and watched each other. Finally, Grissom reached down and covered her hands with his. But instead of moving them away, he started to help her with the buckle.
The word love was never spoken. In fact, no words were spoken as Grissom made a mental map of every new inch of skin he explored. He simply laid her out on his bed, and annexed whole areas in reverent silence.
Because she'd giggled when he'd nuzzled it, and he couldn't remember ever hearing her giggle, he claimed her flat belly just above her patch of silky down in the name of Grissom. He also laid claim to the slope and undercurve of her right breast, baby soft and flawlessly designed. It wasn't that he didn't admire the left one equally, but he didn't want to be too greedy. Especially since he'd also appropriated the notch at the base of her throat and was considering taking possession of the small of her back.
Grissom traced the length of her spine as she slept on her stomach, exhausted from a long shift and what he hoped had been a satisfying experience. It certainly had been for him. He replaced his fingers with his lips and planted a row of kisses up the smooth line of her back. She shifted in her sleep and murmured his name. Grissom covered her body and slipped a hand underneath her to cup the breast he'd claimed.
"Sara," he whispered against her ear.
Her lashes lifted and the corners of her lips turned up. "What?" she whispered back.
"Are you okay?"
She rolled over beneath him and reached up to twist a rumpled silvery curl around her index finger. "Yeah."
Grissom relished the intimate, loving gesture. "Do you need anything?"
"Another chance," Sara eventually replied.
"To what, honey?"
He reminded himself that she was fifteen years younger and trained in martial arts when she managed to flip him onto his back and pin him down in a matter of seconds. Straddling his waist, Sara smiled wickedly. "To make you lose control."
Somehow, his alarm clock had been kicked off his nightstand with enough force to unplug it from the wall. Grissom realized this when he woke again and become conscious of the fact he had no idea what time it was.
He left Sara to her sleep (this time she was curled up around one of his pillows) and pulled on some old, comfortable pajama bottoms and t-shirt. He followed the trail of their discarded clothes to the living room and checked the clock. It was after two in the afternoon.
Lunch in bed, Grissom decided, and he set about slicing bread and cheese and butter. He was just about to lay the sandwiches onto a heated griddle when his doorbell rang for a second time that day.
Panic momentarily gripped him. He had a very naked co-worker in his bedroom and the handful of people who might be at his door were the same handful of people who didn't need to know about it.
The bell chimed again; if he didn't do something, it would wake Sara. Grissom sighed and started for the door.
Matt Wilson stood on his stoop. "I'm sorry to show up like this," he said when several seconds had passed in silence. "I got your address from Sara's cell phone."
For the first time since he'd learned of the younger man's existence, Grissom didn't feel inferior to him. Matt might have had a brief moment in time with Sara, but in the end, she'd chosen him. She was in his city, his lab, his bed.
Grissom folded his arms over his chest. "What can I do for you?"
"I need to know something." Looking him straight in the eye, Matt asked, "Do you love her?"
They stared at each other. Finally, Grissom stepped back and gestured the man inside. He closed the door and turned around to answer, but Matt cut him off. "I do, you know. I love her. She's the only woman I ever have."
"Then why did you let her go?" Grissom asked with a fair amount of triumph. He hadn't let Sara go; he'd held onto her, kept her from leaving.
"Because I made a promise to myself to be the only man she's known who's never left her, disappointed her…or tried to control her." Matt slipped his hands into the pockets of his khakis. "Do you have any idea what she's been through in her life?"
Grissom walked to the stove and turned off the burner. "She's shared her past with me."
"Really? She's told you about being tricked into testifying against her mother at her trial? She's told you about the foster family who forgot to feed her for a week? She's told you about losing her brother to drugs? About working two jobs in high school to try to pay for braces, but never making enough money to even come close?"
All Grissom could do was blink. "Do you know that she can handle any bodily fluid except saliva?" he eventually shot back. "Or that she carries industrial strength disinfectant with her to hotels? Or that she has a scar on her palm from an explosion in the lab? And did you know that she's trained in weaponless defense?" He stopped. His list could be summed up in one word. Superficial.
"Do you know why she's trained in weaponless defense?" Matt countered. When Grissom said nothing, he went on, "She was attacked at a crime scene. Nothing life-threatening; she was just roughed up. She dislocated her shoulder and she was sent to me for therapy. As soon as she was able, I recommended defense classes."
Grissom's eyes narrowed. "What is it that you want exactly?"
"I want you to ask yourself if you're really the better man for her. What are you prepared to do…what are you prepared to sacrifice in order to make her happy? Happy like she deserves to be?"
He swallowed. "My relationship with Sara is…complicated." And, he wanted to add, none of anyone else's business.
"Translation: you're not willing to give up a damn thing." Matt thumped his fist against his chest. "I am. I let her go. I gave up six years of my own happiness so she could find hers. But she hasn't. You haven't made her happy."
"You don't know what you're talking about." Even to his own ears, Grissom's words were less than convincing. The younger man was hitting some sore spots.
"Even if you could make her happy for one moment, one night, maybe even a few days…could you keep it up? Can you live the day-to-day reality of being with her, supporting her, fighting with her, raising a family with her, giving up things for her…loving her sometimes more than you love yourself?"
"I…"
Matt interrupted him again. "If you care about her at all, you'll be honest with yourself. Are you prepared to make her the most important thing in your life? I'll admit that I don't know you very well…and I'm biased because I don't like you very much…but something tells me that if you haven't taken your chance by now, you never will. So if you're not going to…let me. Because I can do all those things. And I will." He stopped. "That's all I wanted to say. I won't bother you anymore." Another pause followed. "I'll see myself out."
The door shut behind him, leaving Grissom adrift in a sea of unwanted thoughts. He closed his eyes to block them out, but it didn't help. They were still there, pouring salt onto wounds he'd opened a long time ago. Wounds he'd tried to ignore when Sara pulled him into his bedroom.
Grissom opened his eyes, surprised to find them wet. He could boil everything down to one simple truth.
Matt Wilson had a point.
Sara was sitting up in his bed, looking deliciously rumpled. She loosely held the sheet up to her chest, a movement that was innocent in its seductiveness and heartbreaking in its shyness.
"What time is it?" she asked as he entered the room. "The clock's gone."
"Almost three." Grissom cleared his throat; something seemed to be caught in it. "Sara…we need to talk."
To Be Continued