Author's Notes: PhDelicious rocks, as usual, for all her help. Actually, you all rock for sticking with me through this slightly out of the ordinary story;)
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The Last Embrace
by Kristen Elizabeth
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October 2005
"Can I ask you something?"
"Hmm?"
"Am I suffocating you?"
Grissom's hand stilled on her breast. "That's been on your mind all this time?"
"On and off," she admitted.
A moment passed. "Not every comment I make has to do with us, Sara."
Frowning slightly, she rolled fully onto her back to see him better. "How do I know the difference?"
"Start with the assumption that when I'm working, my mind is on the case…" His lips skirted the length of her collarbone. "And nothing but the case."
"So…" Sara looked up at the ceiling, willing her body not to respond to him. "When do you think about us?"
Under the sheets, he worked his hand up the flesh of her inner thigh. "I'm not thinking about much else right now…"
"Stop!" Sara pushed at his chest and struggled to sit up. "I want to know."
He was genuinely confused. "What's this about?"
She took her time answering. "Catherine said something…that I can't get out of my head."
Grissom sighed when she repeated the older woman's words about co-workers and lovers. "Even Catherine puts her foot in her mouth every now and then."
"Can't really blame her," Sara murmured. "It's not like she knows we're…whatever we are."
"What are we, Sara?"
"That's not my question to answer."
He frowned. "Yet…I'm supposed to?" His sigh punctured the silence that followed. "This is why I can't think about us at work. I can't be your lover there."
"See, for me…" Sara whispered. "You're my lover all the time."
"Sara…"
"And it's only there that you have to be my co-worker, too." She shook her head. "Maybe that's the difference between the sexes." Their eyes met. "Or maybe just between you and me."
Grissom touched her cheek. "You're a lot more to me than just those two options."
Sara closed her eyes at the warmth of his hand. "Next time we're at a scene…just try to remember that I'm there. And that I'm thinking like someone who works with you and lo…" She caught herself. "…sleeps with you. Even if you can't."
"I promise to curb the unintentional innuendo." He let his fingers trail down her throat to the soft swell of her breast. "But really…do I seem like a man who's suffocating?"
A smile snuck onto her face. "Right now you just seem like a man."
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The phone rang just as Laura placed the last of the dinner dishes in the washer. Sara was upstairs giving Cassie a bath. It was two days after the funeral, and although her daughter's world would never go back to normal, Laura was beginning to see signs of life.
She reached for the kitchen extension at the same time Sara must have picked up the cordless line upstairs in the bathroom. "Hello?" she heard her daughter greet the person on the other end.
Laura had every intention of hanging up…until she heard the caller's response. "Sara. It's me."
"How did you get this number?" Sara asked after a long moment of silence.
"Catherine," he replied. His voice was very familiar, but Laura couldn't quite place it.
"She told me you'd called her about the funeral." There was the slightest tremble in her words. Only someone paying very close attention would have noticed. "But you didn't come."
His reply was quiet, and suddenly she realized where she knew his voice from. "I was there."
"You were?" There was hope behind her skepticism.
Gil Grissom paused. "I cared about him, too, Sara."
Laura didn't have to be upstairs to know her daughter was losing a battle with her tears. "I know. Don't you think I'm aware of what I did? To you both?"
"I didn't say that to…" He thought better of his words. "I don't know why I said that."
Give me more, Laura wanted to scream. But all she could do was to keep listening.
A moment slipped by. "Gil…" Sara started. She was interrupted by a splash of water and Cassie calling for her. "Hold on, baby," Sara told her daughter. "Show Mommy how you make Ducky float."
"She's talking," he said, tonelessly. "Nick must have been very proud of her."
Sara chose not to reply to this. "I should go. Before she floods the entire bathroom." There was another pause. "When are you heading back to Tennessee?"
"I'm already back. I only have one class this semester. Monday mornings."
"Nothing starts a week like an hour at the Farm," Sara said. The lightness in her words didn't seem to fit everything else, like she was putting on a sweater that was five sizes too big for her.
Gil Grissom cleared his throat. "I should have talked to you at the funeral. The phone just seemed…"
"Easier. Yeah." Cassie's splashes grew louder and more insistent. "It's not your fault," Sara told him softly. "But the next time you're in town…we should talk. Really talk."
"All right," he agreed, somewhat reluctantly. "Sara, I just want you to know…"
Her granddaughter's voice came to her in surround sound, through the phone, and also from upstairs. "Mama!"
"I'm sorry," Sara apologized. "She's mad at me. She doesn't understand why Nick's…not around."
"She's not the only one," he said. There was hesitation, like he wasn't quite willing to let her go just yet. "Next time, Sara."
Laura heard a click as he hung up. But before she lowered the receiver from her ear, she heard Sara murmur, "Next time."
When her daughter came downstairs an hour later, Laura looked up from the romance novel she'd only been half-reading. Sara stopped in the kitchen to pour herself a glass of soy milk. How she could drink the stuff straight was completely beyond Laura. She came into the living room, sat down and picked up one of her journals as if nothing more than Cassie's bedtime routine had taken place upstairs.
The tremble in her hand as she turned the pages betrayed her.
"I heard the phone ring," Laura said.
Sara closed up one journal and reached for another. "One of Nick's fraternity brothers." She opened it hard enough to tear the first page. "The grief goes on."
They sat in silence for a few minutes, each of them pretending to be engrossed in their reading materials. Finally, Laura set her book aside and leaned forward. She could see Sara trying to ignore her, but she wasn't so easily dissuaded.
Finally, Sara looked at her impatiently. "What?"
"I killed your father."
The journal slipped out of her hands. A rapid succession of emotions flitted across her daughter's face. There was a struggle there, between the little girl who hadn't been protected, the teenager who'd known nothing but betrayal and expected nothing else, and the woman who'd never learned how to harden her heart, and still had the ability to be hurt.
Sara's breath came in shallow, ragged gulps. She was unable to speak for a long time. But when was finally able to find her voice, she followed through with her part of their deal. A truth for a truth.
"I'm not sure who Cassie's father is."
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To Be Continued