She stopped going home every night. The darkness crept closer and closer every time she stepped through the front door, the shadows running cold fingers over her cheek as she lay in their bed. Instead, she keeps drinking coffee already gone cold until her body crashes at her desk, waking up with her own handwriting imprinted on her face from sleeping on the legal pads strewn over her workspace.
Kate scrubs at the black lines, her skin turning red and raw in the bathroom mirror. Her hands shake, nearing the crash that always comes once her last cup of coffee has worn off, but she braces them on the white porcelain to force them still.
Just another cup of coffee. (And another and another and...) Then she can get through maybe ten more hours before she can sneak back into the apartment so she doesn't have to tell Martha and Alexis she still has nothing. Nothing but the jitters from lack of sleep and a hidden file in her desk of dead ends.
She sits back at her desk, glancing at the white board. At the print-out of his book jacket cover because she couldn't stand to use a candid shot from her phone.
Thirty-seven days.
She stopped hoping today would be the last without him weeks ago, tired of getting her hopes up that he'd be sitting on the couch at the apartment with his mother and daughter, waiting for her.
A coffee cup appears in the corner of her right eye and the smell of vanilla sparks something in the part of her heart she has tried so hard to lock away. She swallows hard, trying desperately to keep the the emotion at bay as she turns in her chair to see who came in at four in the morning.
Her heart catches in her throat and she can't breathe.
"Kate," he sighs, standing at her side, the coffee still held out like a peace offering. "I am so sorry."
She reaches out, her hand shaking with something other than caffeine withdrawal. His tee feels soft under her fingertips, his body underneath solid and warm and real.
"My mother said I'd probably find you here," he says, the words stilted and broken. "She said you don't really come home anymore and I just needed to -"
Her chair slides backwards as she surges up into him. The cup of coffee crushes against her chest and the hot liquid burns, seeping into the denim jacket she wears as armor but it doesn't matter.
He doesn't disappear under her touch.
He stays.
She sobs his name into his neck, letting him lift her up onto her toes with his arms tight around her back. "You're here," she whispers. "Oh God, Castle, you're here."
"Got coffee on you," he mumbles, his hand curling into her hair, his palm heavy against her neck. Keeping her close against him.
"Don't care. God, I don't care." Her kiss glances off his jaw, tasting the salt of her own tears on his skin. "Just don't leave me."
He frames her face, his thumb smoothing the blue smudges under her eyes. "I'm so sorry for everything. I don't know what happened or where I was but we'll figure it out, right? Together?"
Everything falls into place, all the shifting pieces of the last thirty-seven days finally sliding into their correct spots.
"Yeah. Together."