A/N: Two-shot that came from reading the dedication for 'Raging Heat'. I am calling them 'companion' pieces because while the same premise, there is a different setting and outcome for both.
Three days from the holiday weekend, Gina Cowell is not who she expects to find hovering on the other side of her door. But she's there, dressed to the nines and impeccably put together with a cool stare and a handbag that costs more than Kate makes in a week.
"Kate, do you have a minute? I need to talk to you," she says, breezing right past her into the loft with a familiarity that only comes from someone who once called the loft home. And though it should probably ruffle her feathers, Kate doesn't feel anything except a lingering curiosity.
By the time she's closed the front door, Gina has dropped the bag and pulled a thick stack of pages from the depths. There's no effort to conceal what it is, not with the title RAGING HEAT stamped in bold letters across the front.
Castle's last complete book. The one he had worked on until the early morning hours in the weeks leading to the wedding, the one that he had been desperate to finish before their three-week honeymoon in the Maldives.
'No work Beckett, just play,' he had told her once when she'd found him hunched over the keys at 5 a.m., fingers typing out a steady rhythm of edits. Kate had left him to it, dropping a kiss against his cheek while she headed to an early crime scene.
Just like that, with two simple words, her heart lurches somewhere towards her throat. The knot of emotion and the prick of tears come at her fast, smacking into her with the force of a train. In the myriad of other issues and pressing matters, she's never given a thought to the book. In fact, she hasn't even read the Derrick Storm novel that came out a couple of months ago.
Kate takes a moment, pressing her eyes closed against the emotional surge, sucking in a long breath of air to find some balance and clarity. It's not that she cares so much for Gina to see her emotional, but that sometimes it all rises up and strikes with a heavy blow that leaves her disoriented.
"The book is finished," Gina begins without a preamble, her voice solid and sure despite the reluctance that swims in her eyes, "Rick did some of his best work in here, and we had already decided on a release before..." the sentence goes unfinished, the implication of his unknown status rising heavily between the two women.
"September," she supplies the month automatically, her brain hedging a little on which date exactly. "One of the reasons we moved the wedding up." A rather small reason, but still a valid one. Kate's just proud she can say wedding without a waiver in her voice.
"Right," Gina says, glancing down at the pages resting in her hands, "well, under the circumstances, I thought you, Alexis or even Martha might want to write something in his honor. Acknowledgements were always a speciality of his, usually as well thought out as the books themselves."
The pause stretches on then, the blonde shifting her weight from one Christian Louboutin peep toe to another before she dives into it. "If this is his last book, I didn't think it'd be right to put it out there without some proper farewell. Of course, I can write something but the three of you really should get the choice of it."
It takes an incredible effort to hold back from snapping at Gina, to insist that his last book is an unfathomable situation that will only arrive decades from now. But Kate's always been logical, always looks for the evidence before drawing a conclusion and even though it breaks her heart she can admit that truth to herself.
Castle might never come back, though she will never stop looking and hoping.
It takes a week for the three of them to decide, and both Alexis and Martha defer to Kate. Nikki is as much hers as Castle's, a central part in their love story and partnership.
The manuscript is still where she left it, front and center on the glass topped desk in the office with only a thin layer of dust to indicate how long its been resting there.
She's settled on the couch with a glass of wine when she flips away from the cover page, apprehension and grief curling in a bitter mix in her gut. In some ways, reading Nikki and Rook's journey has never been easy because its always closely reflected their own rocky path. This isn't the first time she's read Castle's words with the idea that she might never see him again, either.
It's just the first time that the assurance he's still safe and sound isn't there for comfort.
The deep cleansing breath does very little to ease her nerves, her eyes roving over the page to take in the dedication that pushes the wind right out of her.
'To KB - the stars above us, the world at our feet.'
There's a measure of familiarity to Castle's writing process, and she's known for years that the last thing he writes is the dedication and the acknowledgements. His two bookends, a story of his personal life embedded within the pages of a fictional world.
The first time he'd told her that Kate had rolled her eyes at him. Now she does her best to stifle the sob that breaks from her throat. It cuts into her like a knife; those nine words that are so neatly scrawled onto the front of the manuscript. The last thing that Castle ever wrote, one final declaration of love before it all went horribly, painfully wrong.
Stopping the hot surge of tears is a useless activity, two of them already staining the neat typeface that bear the words that are embedded in her memory. The words he'd used to convince her that their rooftop venue was perfect, that writer's brain conjuring the perfect phrase to ease her worries and her fears; to end the brutal and nearly unbearable search for the place to house their perfect wedding.
The subtext radiates forever. It's a promise of always.
It isn't the first time she's unleashed her emotions over the ordeal, and she's sure it won't be the last, but the words strengthen her resolve even as the tears blur her vision and obscure the single sentence.
She'll get him back, they'll have their wedding.
Forever and always are coming.
Just not today.
