One Year Later:

Sara had never really thought of herself as being an impulsive person. Certainly she'd done some impulsive things over the course of her life, but generally speaking when it came time to make some sort of major life altering decision, she liked to mull it over and then plan her course of action. However, when it came to her heart, impulsive was the word that probably described her best. Why else would she leave a promising career in San Francisco where she'd formed close friends on the whim of a man that she'd met briefly while he'd been teaching a six-week course on forensic entomology? She hadn't even thought twice about hopping a plane to Vegas to help him investigate a member of his team and when he'd asked her if she would consider staying to work with him, she hardly blinked before she'd picked up the phone and asked one of her friends to have her apartment packed up and the contents shipped to Las Vegas. She clearly thought that Gil Grissom was a man worth giving up everything for.

What she hadn't counted on though was that the man Grissom was in Vegas was in stark contrast to the man she'd gotten to know in San Francisco. Here he seemed to be more serious and driven and there was no time to linger over coffee and discuss theoretical physics or how the discovery of a new insect might hold the cure for things like cancer or how the extinction of a single insect species could easily spell disaster for fragile ecosystems. To say that she was disappointed was an understatement, but then again, Sara had never been one to shy away from a challenge and Gil Grissom was definitely a challenge; and while it had been a challenge, she had eventually captured his heart. At least she thought she had; the fact that he'd insisted that they had to keep their relationship a secret caused a pang in the deepest recesses of her heart and the longer they were together the more profound that pang became until she could no longer ignore it. She had asked him to go public and he'd refused her and it had become apparent to her then that she would probably always come in second to his career. He had broken her heart like no other man ever had and so she'd left him.

And while she may have moved to Vegas because of Grissom, she ended up staying because of everyone else.

Among those other people was Nick. He had accepted her no questions asked from the start and although it was apparent that he was good friends with the man she was brought in to investigate, he didn't seem to be taking any side except the side of the truth and for that she felt as if she'd found her first real ally in Vegas besides Grissom. They had become fast friends and despite the flirty banter that seemed to accompany them most everywhere, she had never viewed him as anything more than a very good friend.

That is until the kiss they'd shared after Sophia Curtis had been shot; that single kiss had awakened something within her that she hadn't known was there and for the first time since she'd moved to Vegas she seemed to have feelings for someone that rivaled her feelings for Grissom.

Her decision the day Grissom had asked her to go with him to South America had changed everything. One man's hope had come true and another man's hope had been crushed; yet Sara had never been happier than she'd been these last twelve months. It was as if making that decision had finally allowed her to give her whole heart to one person and as a result, she was able to fully receive the love they had offered to her.

Sara pulled her car into the lot at the crime lab and smiled as she considered that it had been a little while since she'd been here; strange really when she'd spent the better part of the last six years in that building. She was already tired; it was going to be a long day and it was unseasonably warm out even in the rising sun, making her long for the days when she worked the nightshift. She wasn't working at all now; instead she was getting ready for another phase of her life that she could never have anticipated that she would be this excited about. She gingerly pulled herself out of the car and began to slowly walk towards the front door of the lab.

Judy the receptionist glanced up as she entered and a wide smile spread across her face as she recognized the brunette, "Sara, I haven't seen you for a while." One glance at Sara's belly caused her eyebrows to curve upwards as she seemed to be doing some internal calculations, "isn't your due date soon?" Judy looked as if she was prepared to jump into action if Sara showed any signs of going into labor.

Sara smiled and let out a soft laugh, "Actually, it's not for another three weeks, but I feel like I'm overdue and I'm beginning to think this baby is never going to come out." As her hand skimmed over her expansive middle, refracting light drew attention to the large diamond in the ring on her left hand.

As if on cue, the man responsible for both the ring and her current condition came meandering down the hallway towards the reception area. A wide grin spread over his face as he saw her standing there; there wasn't a day that went by that he wasn't thankful that she had chosen to be with him. He greeted her with a soft kiss and his hand instinctively covered her belly hoping to feel their baby kick, "Hey, you ready to head over to the diner for the baby shower?"

As he pulled away, Sara smiled as she looked up into his deep brown eyes, "I still can't believe that Greg organized this thing." She appreciated the gesture; it wasn't the shower she was looking forward to as much as getting to spend time with the friends who had become the only real family that she had known.

If anyone had told Sara a little over a year ago that not only would she be married, but that she would be expecting a child, she was sure that she wouldn't have believed them. But then again, stranger things had happened.

It had surprised her that day when Grissom had asked her to go with him to South America that she had said no, and yet she had absolutely no regrets about staying in Las Vegas to be with Nick. Three weeks after Grissom had flown to Peru, Nick had asked Sara to marry him and they'd quietly eloped with just a few people from the nightshift there to serve as witnesses.

And as for Grissom, according to the postcards he'd been sending from all over South America, he was having the time of his life.

The End