A/N: I wrote this after 47 seconds and before The Limey, so try to remember that nauseating feeling of not knowing how he would react when you read it, okay?

Dear Kate,

I wish could tell you personally what I'm about to write here. I wish I could look you in the eyes and read on them what you really feel when you hear my words. But, as we both know, that's not how things work between us. We never decide anything together – we barely even talk, as you've made clear.

So I'm turning my voice to ink to tell you this:

I'm not going back to the precinct.

A lot of people will understand my decision in seconds. Some will conclude that I've already done enough research and this "second job" is actually getting in the way of my literary production. Some, laughing, will say that Captain Gates finally kicked me out of here. And there are those who, shrugging, will be satisfied with the explanation that the man-child writer Richard Castle is tired of playing cop and decided to go back to his first-class world.

I don't want you to be any of those people, Kate. I want to be sure that you'll understand my true reason. And because of that, for the second time, I'll try my best to let my feelings clear as water for you. It's probably some sort of masochist desire that's making me do this, since the results of my first attempt put me through the worst weeks of my life.

I won't come back to the precinct, Kate, because our future is dead. Because I can't look at you and not think about everything we could've been, about everything I wish we had been, and about how that's all gone; how what was once a green flowery meadow has became nothing but dead land, gray and covered in dust as if it had just been burnt – a dry and barren land where nothing will ever bloom again.

I tried, during weeks that weren't easy, to put the job ahead of my heart, like you do so brilliantly. I tried to focus on how important it is to honor the victims and to bring some peace to the families. But I guess that's why I'm a writer, and not a cop: because my feelings emerge without me having any control over them, and I need to get them out somehow. Even if the result is a disaster, I can't reduce them to mere details and go on with my life. Feelings, whether mine or towards me, are simply too important for me to ignore.

I can't ignore my feelings for you, Kate. And more than that, I can't ignore that you ignored them. I can't ignore that you lied to me all this time, that you let me make a fool of myself and that you put on the background what for so long has taken over my heart, my mind, my soul, my whole being: that I love you.

I love you, Kate. Those were the most truthful and pure words that ever came through my lips, and I know that if I said them again they'd still be true. But only half true. Because "I love you" doesn't explain that this love has hurt me more than all the anger I've felt in my life. Because "I love you" doesn't say how much I wish I didn't love you; how much I wish I didn't care about all the letters I will not send, all the dedications I will not write, all the coffees I won't buy anymore – about the future we had and now has become a mere shadow in the back of my mind, making my heart heavy and torturing me every time I close my eyes.

It's partially my fault. I should have never believed that, just because I saw so much and felt so much, you would too. I knew from the beginning that our partnership was something I pushed. It didn't please you, it wasn't natural. But what evolved from there, the complicity, the friendship I believed I had with you, all of that came naturally. At least for me. And maybe I got things mixed up. Maybe from the beginning I was in a one person relationship, and never actually knew you the way I thought I did.

Thinking like that pleases me. It's easy to believe it; easier than believing that the person I thought I knew, the Kate Beckett who has became my friend and with whom I've fallen deeply in love, would lie to me when I was at my most vulnerable; when I showed her my bare soul and gave myself to her entirely.

I've been living a fantasy since I came here for the first time, Kate. Nikki Heat wasn't the only character my writer's imagination has created. No, I also created an imaginary Kate Beckett; a Kate Beckett who I would walk on the park with, whose hand I'd hold when we left the elevator together getting to the precinct; a Kate Beckett I would love and make happy every single day.

I've been living an illusion, and now that it came undone – now that the curtains of my little imaginary world have been brutally torn apart and my eyes were forcefully opened -, all that I have left is reality, and its cold, intense light is hurting me. So it's time to leave, Kate, at least for long enough to give my pupils time to close again. I just have to hope my heart won't do the same.

Despite the pain, despite the way things are ending, despite the resentment that will permanently stain my memories of those four years – despite everything, Detective, I do not regret. I just wish, more than anything, that we could have had a different ending.

Be happy, Kate. I'll try to do the same.

R. Castle