No Chance
"He learned to love her before she thought it was even possible, so she didn't have the chance to hide and mess it up. And while it was a little scary at times, mainly she could not even imagine the world without him there."
- Brian Andreas
It scared her.
She had faced things that had frightened her before. The emotion should be an old friend, one that she welcomed with a pot of coffee and a smile. But it still managed to plow her over.
There had been her mother's death. While that in itself had scared a quiet teenage girl, it had been the harsh after-effects that had truly shaken her core. Her father dove headfirst into the bottle of whatever alcohol was nearby, hiding from reality in an amber-shaded otherworld. Part of her had wanted to join him there, needing the company of someone else in the same kind of sorrow as she but dreading the idea that they might not return.
Next was a rookie's mistake. Anxious to show off, she hadn't cleared a room completely before turning to meet up with her partner. The night had ended with a night spent in the emergency room with a stiff bandage wrapped around her side over the new knife wound and nursing her badly bruised pride.
She was even scared when she had parked outside of the pier where the book launch party was being held. Afraid of tripping in front of him or mumbling or just blurting out how much of a fan she really was. Now she could look back and laugh at that stream of thought; the man she had come to know past the playboy exterior would have caught her if she had tripped, made a light joke has she mumbled, and only smiled that smile he saved for her if she had been that forward with her love of his books.
When he had gone to the Hamptons with Gina, she'd built up the wall around her heart even stronger. For a moment, she had built a hole just large enough for him to climb through if he gave the effort. Hell, she had even started propping the ladder up to help him when the publisher walked into her precinct. So she had added more fortification to the wall, patching up that hole, and moving on like nothing had happened.
The complete disorder of her heart really happened that day in May and the summer after it. Every hour she spent upstate with her dad in the cabin in the Finger Lakes, she had wondered what right he had to be throwing those words at her. The next day, she'd wonder why the hell she hadn't tossed them back at him. Tit for tat. Then she saw her wounded heart, more injured with two fresh bullet holes through it, and said it was best to keep them a secret. What he didn't know wouldn't hurt him. The excuse was thin because for the next year, she saw just how much it was killing him to think she had not heard those four words.
But this topped them all. Kate Beckett was terrified that the wall she had been so sure of, the one fortified with every type of cement and mortar and glue and even some used gum, had failed her. He'd chipped away at it, out of her line of sight, until Kate found him standing next to her on the other side. Then she was terrified. She hadn't had the chance to clean up the mess her heart had been making behind the scenes as she tried to figure out her own feelings. But he had learned to love her with her broken heart, the pieces scattered across the earth and on the bottom of the ocean and on the puffs of clouds and that was something she had never thought possible.
She was overjoyed that he managed to reach her when no one else could, then she wanted to run, knowing that her relationships never lasted and always ended badly. But this one man had seen her at her absolute best and her worst and she knew he wouldn't stand by as she fled. No, Richard Castle would start right after her, continue running until he either caught her again or she gave up. Either way, she couldn't stand the thought that he might not be there if she turned away yet again.
Last time, he had taken the leap and she had let him fall, too scared to face the reality of what he offered. It was only fair that this time she was the one risking her heart for him.
They were sitting at her desk, just another Monday, waiting for a case with coffee in the soft circles of their hands. Pull the band-aid off, Kate, she told herself. Quick and painful rather than slow and drawn out. Fingers crossed, Kate prayed that he would catch her.
"Castle, I love you."