It had taken a few minutes for the initial shock to wear off, but then Catherine had knit her brows together and crossed her arms over her chest as she regarded her friend. Her tone belied the anger that she felt at him for being so monumentally stupid. "What did you do, Gil? You must have really fucked up if Sara left you." She hadn't even begun to tell him what she thought about the surprise of the whole situation.

Grissom fumbled with his words momentarily; he seemed oblivious to the interrogation going on just on the opposite side of the glass. "She wanted everyone to know about us...I'd be risking my career, Catherine."

"And she wouldn't be risking hers?" Catherine was incredulous. "What kind of an idiot are you? Do you honestly think that everyone was oblivious to the feelings she had for you, or for that matter, the feelings you had for her? Why in the hell did you think that hiding a relationship that almost everyone thought was inevitable was a good thing?" She just stood there and shook her head. Grissom had never been particularly good with people, but this was definitely the most idiotic thing she'd ever seen him do.

"People knew?" Grissom had that deer in the headlights expression on his face. It had never entered his mind that since neither he nor Sara had said anything about it that anyone could have any clue that there was something going on between them.

"Not that you were actually seeing each other, but we all knew you both felt something." Catherine's expression softened. "Gil, you're her supervisor, how did you think that was going to work? I always thought if you finally realized what was right in front of you that you'd step down so there wouldn't be any ethical issues; I'm the one who usually acts first and worries about the consequences later." Catherine had made a string of very bad professional decisions over the last couple of years that could have adversely affected her career had Grissom not intervened. She was definitely grateful to him for that, but there was really nothing she could do to help him in this situation and she was not about to interfere in a relationship between Nick and Sara; especially since the more she thought about it the more she thought they just might be good for each other.

"I thought I could have both." Grissom was realizing that the reasoning behind his decision had brought more hurt upon his life than he could have imagined possible. He wasn't sure there was anything he could do to get Sara back; even if he sacrificed his career it might just be too little too late.

"And you just thought Ecklie would just ignore it if he found out?" She knew there was no way in hell Ecklie would let something like that slide. As it was the man seemed to have it out for Sara, if he caught wind that a romantic relationship had ever existed between she and Grissom while he had been her supervisor, her career would be history.

"I knew what Ecklie would do; that's precisely one of the reasons I told Sara that we had to keep things under wraps." Grissom seemed to be in full confession mode; something that happened very rarely.

"I don't think you love her as much as you think you do." Catherine had seen Grissom act impulsively on rare occasions, and she'd seen him act irrational once in a great while, but she'd never seen him make a sacrifice for a woman and perhaps that was part of his eternal quest for self preservation. There was so much that even she didn't know about the man and she had known him longer than anyone else at the lab, except for maybe Brass. She knew enough to know that he didn't open up to people very much, so it really didn't surprise her that he didn't seem to have clue why his relationship with Sara had fallen apart.

"What?" Grissom's mouth fell open slightly. "Why does everyone think that?" He was sure that he'd never felt quite like this towards any other woman he'd ever been close to. How could this not be love?

"Everyone else?" Catherine quirked her brow at him. "Just who else are you sharing this secret relationship with?" It surprised her that anyone else had actually known about it.

"Nick." Grissom looked pained. "He told me that if I didn't at least try and win her back that I didn't love her as much as I thought I did." He looked up a Catherine with a bewildered expression. "What if I gave up everything for her and she chose him anyway?"

Catherine could hear the hurt oozing out of her friend and she reached over and put a hand on his arm. "There are no guarantees in love; just look at me and Eddie. You don't choose who you love, you just do. If you think that there's a chance she might still love you, you have to decide if it's worth the risk." And she could see Nick being the ultimate gentleman offering Grissom one last chance before he considered Sara his own.

"Sara told me that she still loves me, but she still wants to be with Nick." Grissom didn't understand how you could love someone and want to be with someone else more, unless you loved that person more. He shook his head. "I can't compete with him; I don't even want to compete with him." If he did, it would make the dynamic of the team even more awkward than if his relationship with Sara had been made public and then she'd left him.

"Gil, I don't know what to tell you." She knew there were no easy answers, but she couldn't help but feel that if Grissom and made a point to get a demotion or look for a position outside the lab that there was no question that Sara would never have left him. However, he hadn't done that, he'd put his career first and had made Sara question how much he actually valued her; something that Catherine was sure that Nick would never allow to happen.

"Maybe I should just give up on love." Grissom mulled over his failed relationships over the course of the last several years; he'd put his career before Teri and she'd left in the middle of dinner knowing he was never going to change. He'd done the same to Heather, underestimating that she would have fully cooperated with the investigation if only he'd asked, but he'd slipped right into investigator mode, completely ignoring the human element. And Sara, she knew how he was, she was so much like him, but even she needed to know that she came before his career in the overall scheme of things. He had really blown it and now she was with Nick; and his gut told him that she would probably stay with Nick regardless of whether he asked for a demotion now. It was a case it seemed of too little, too late.

Catherine had to bite back a smile at the absurdity of it all. "Gil, I'm not sure that you can give up on something that you haven't fully given a chance in the first place."