A/N1: Reminder, I uploaded TWO chapters at once, so make sure to read Chapter 17 first! My gift to you for continuing to read and review this story. You rock, and I hope you enjoy.

A/N2: Another thanks to doc100 for dispelling my writer's block on this many months ago. A simple suggestion went a long way.

CHAPTER 18

His lips blazed a fiery trail from the soft spot behind her ear to the hollow at the base of her throat, and down, down, down. His ministrations left Calleigh gasping.

"Eric," she whispered.

"I'm kind of busy," Eric managed to murmur back to her, and a soft chuckle escaped from Calleigh.

"Eric," she said a little louder.

He placed a lingering kiss on her hip and looked up at her. The only light streamed in high through the East-facing windows of Eric's bedroom, and the glow of the moon added a magical effect to their skin, the bed, Eric's eyes…

Calleigh looked into those eyes, the ones she so often dreamed of, and forced herself not to look away, as hard as it was, because they pierced the deepest part of her. Their normal chocolate flavor had turned licorice black with heady desire, something that sent a shiver through Calleigh's body and found a resting place low and tight in her belly. He wanted her. He truly wanted her, and she wanted him. But she couldn't think about that right now, not tonight. Not ever.

The two friends had crashed into Eric's condo two hours ago, clothes flying and bodies desperately attempting to be as close as possible. What started as an unexpected kiss in a corner booth at a bar spiraled out of control until they simply stopped trying to fight their desire for each other, their mutual, long-simmering need for a more profound connection.

They fell asleep wrapped in each other after that first collision, exhausted from what was arguably the best sex of Calleigh's life. Now, something had awoken them in the night, and they were well on their way to what Calleigh suspected would bump their earlier romp down to second place.

Although, this was nothing like their initial rampage. Eric may have been discovering her body for the first time tonight, but he paid attention to her every reaction and used what he learned to his advantage. He was worshipping her. Calleigh could see it in his eyes and feel it in his touch. And it was the very thing that had her pausing now.

"Eric, what are we doing?" she asked him quietly.

He grinned. "If I have to explain this to you, we need to have a serious chat with your 7th grade sex ed teacher," he laughed.

Calleigh rolled her eyes and tugged him up by the shoulders, so he was hovering over her, their eyes now level. "Seriously, what are we doing?" she asked, again.

Instead of answering her, Eric leaned down and captured her lips in a devastating kiss. He pulled away, only a little, and said, "Tonight, we're doing whatever we want. And what I want, is to make love to you." He traced his fingers along the silky strands of hair at her temple and settled his thumb on her cheekbone, then her chin. "Will you let me?"

He asked the last question with such vulnerability that it clenched Calleigh's heart. She lifted her head the inch it took to press her lips to his, and he had his response.

The kiss turned deep; they drank each other in, explored gently, and built a roaring fire touch by touch, until finally they couldn't stand for their bodies to be apart any longer. Their slow tempo evolved without thought, like waves crashing on the shore, excruciatingly intimate.

Eric whispered in her ear how beautiful she was, how good she felt, that she was the only…

"Ahem."

A cough interrupted Calleigh's reverie and tore her from the memories that so often visited her over the last three years. When she whipped around to face the intruder, Calleigh suddenly remembered where she was, and her cheeks flamed bright red.

"I didn't mean to frighten you," said the woman standing before her, hands held out in treaty.

Calleigh nervously tucked her hair behind her ear and silently hoped the embarrassment didn't show too much on her face. Was it embarrassment, or a classic sense of guilt? Because she currently sat in the hospital's chapel, before a cross and an altar, lost in memories of Eric doing things to her that would surely make Jesus blush.

Cal cleared her throat and greeted the woman, who she discerned as the hospital reverend, if her clerical robes indicated correctly.

"You didn't frighten me, I was just lost in thought," Calleigh assuaged with a small smile, until everything came back to her and the smile vanished. She remembered the reason she found herself in the chapel in the first place, where her mind had wandered as she prayed. Eric was the one who went to Mass every week, not her. If he were here, he would probably grin and tell her God still listened to rusty prayers.

But he isn't here.

As reality sank back in, so did the weight on Calleigh's shoulders, along with the gut-wrenching fear and the heartbreak of potentially losing the man she loved more than life. For she did, she did love Eric that much. It was yet another emotional, soul-changing discovery today that threatened to overwhelm her.

Tears welled in Calleigh's eyes immediately. She had been pleading with God on her knees to save Eric, and even her thoughts that wandered to their intimacy were a cry to God to deliver him from death and back to her arms.

She averted her eyes from the clergywoman's gaze. Those eyes were too understanding, too curious. Cal took a deep breath, exhaled, and turned to collapse in a nearby chair. Something about being in this place tore down her carefully constructed walls.

"Can I sit with you for a while?" Calleigh heard the woman ask.

Cal could only nod. She felt the sweeping of robes against her arm and a warm body gently take a seat next to her.

"Something bad happened," the reverend said quietly in a way that set Calleigh at ease and on edge at the same time.

Cal simply nodded again, swallowing hard to fight the lump in her throat. She knew her body language screamed how lost she felt and how desperate she longed for a miracle, and she anticipated the next question.

"Do you want to talk about it?" the woman carefully probed.

No. Calleigh did not want to talk about it. But, to her unending surprise, her mouth opened, and words tumbled out. "He was shot."

"Who?" came a third question from the calm-spirited reverend.

"My partner," Calleigh explained, then she corrected herself. "Well, he's more than my partner. He's…he's just…I don't know."

She uttered the last three words in a strained whisper and lowered her head to eye her fingers where they picked at the dried blood in her cuticles.

Earlier, before Horatio left with Tripp on their mysterious errand, he found her a pair of scrubs and ordered her to get cleaned up with one of the overly-kind nurses. She scoured and scoured her skin, but not even the stiff bristles of the sterile brush could entirely free her of the blood under her nails and cuticles.

"You're in love with him," Calleigh heard her seatmate remark matter-of-factly.

At her words, Calleigh's head whipped in her direction and their eyes met. Cal wanted to retort that it wasn't really anyone's business; she still felt raw from opening up to her friends earlier, even if she'd left out the most intimate details. She had sighed in relief that she and Ryan managed to explain to Tripp and Natalia the events of the preceding weeks without completely destroying her closely-guarded privacy.

But sitting here now, she simply no longer possessed the energy to cling so tightly to her secrets. Something about this woman made her want to open up. Maybe laying it all out on the table would relieve some of the pain pulsing in her veins, beat after broken heartbeat.

"Does he know?" the woman next to her prodded when she didn't immediately answer.

Numbly, Calleigh nodded, afraid to look anywhere but at her now raw fingers.

A laden pause ensued, during which Calleigh's eyes eventually wandered to survey the newcomer.

"What is your name?" she inquired when the pause started to become uncomfortable. She asked partly to ease the knot in her stomach, and partly out of curiosity. The woman reminded her a bit of Valera, if Valera was a tall, portly woman in her sixties with an impossibly kind bearing.

The reverend smiled warmly and replied, "I'm Ruth. What about you?"

Calleigh's Southern sensibilities kicked in and she automatically extended a hand, which Ruth briefly held. "My name is Calleigh Duquesne."

"That's a beautiful name," Ruth observed quietly. "What does it mean?"

With a sentimental half-smile, Calleigh remembered a long-forgotten conversation with her mother in which she complained about the difficult spelling of her name. The kids at school teased her and all the teachers kept calling her "Kelly."

"It comes from a Greek word meaning 'beauty,'" Calleigh responded. "But the way it's spelled, it means…"

She paused as a thought occurred to her-the meaning of her name never meant so much as it did today. "It means 'guarded by God.'"

Ruth nodded her head but said nothing for a moment, because Calleigh appeared to be lost in contemplation. As the thoughtfulness faded from Calleigh's features, Ruth reached over to pat her knee in the most gentle of ways. She immediately felt the blonde woman tense, then relax.

Calleigh felt surprise wash over her at this. Yet another tightly held piece of her heart seemed to be crumbling. Fearing what she'd discover if she dwelled on that feeling, she redirected and turned the tables, "What does Ruth mean?"

A pleased smile spread across Ruth's face. "My dad named me after my mother died during childbirth. Ruth means 'friend' or 'companion.' It looks like you could use one right now."

Calleigh let out a long sigh, shifting in her seat and running a shaky hand through her long hair. "I suppose," she equivocated.

Ruth sensed the pain in Calleigh's hesitation, along with what she decided was the sound of self-preservation slowly disintegrating. "You don't have to talk to me, but seeing as my feet are killing me after visitations and this seat is rather comfy, do you mind if I just sit here?"

Calleigh chuckled. "I think that would be okay," she granted.

They sat that way, in quietude, for a good twenty minutes, Calleigh's mind a whirl of complicated emotions, and Ruth's full of supplication to the God she trusted to heal her new companion's heart. She correctly intuited that Calleigh would resist the notion of someone praying on her behalf, but Ruth figured what Calleigh didn't know wouldn't hurt her.

Out of nowhere, Cal turned her head to Ruth and broke the silence. "He doesn't deserve this. He's the best man I know."

No tears brimmed her eyes or ran down her cheeks. But her tone dripped heavy with grief.

"And don't tell me sometimes bad things happen to good people, or that everything happens for a reason," Calleigh continued, rolling her eyes.

"Ha!" Ruth exclaimed ruefully. "I don't subscribe to the first. But as to the second, I do believe we can always find something good from our darkest days. I get the feeling your partner believes that, too, or you wouldn't be sitting here."

Calleigh thought about that for a moment. "He does," she finally responded. "He told me once, about a year ago, that he felt he was on this earth for a purpose, he just hadn't found it yet…"

She thought back to her memories of that evening a little after Eric's shooting. When he shared with her those words, Calleigh felt he wasn't being quite truthful. She surmised he did, in fact, know what motivated him to come back from the brink. And after the last two weeks, she had a good idea what it was.

Tears finally prickled Calleigh's eyes again. Ruth studied her with a knowing look and offered her a compassionate smile. She reached a hand out to kindly pat Calleigh's knee for a second time, hoping some of her peacefulness would pass to the broken woman.

"Looks like he found it, after all," she murmured. Ruth saw affirmation in Calleigh's surprised eyes. "Honey, he has a lot to fight for. Keep holding on. Piece of advice, though? Don't guard your heart so much. Your path is already guarded by God."

With that and a wink, Ruth stood and left her new friend to think and, for the first time in a long time, to explore the tiny bit of faith still left in her heart. Maybe not the kind of faith Eric and Horatio possessed, or Ruth, but she had faith in Eric and his determination to live…for her.

Standing from the chair to stretch her muscles, Calleigh paced a few steps, eyed the altar, and slowly made her way back to it, sinking to her knees and resuming her silent prayers, not knowing if anyone up there would hear her, but desperately wishing they could.