A/N: Although not completely necessary, I'd highly recommend reading the prequel (still our hands match) before beginning this story.


"And I can't help but to run my fingers down your spine,

like you are my favorite book.

But I still cannot read you,

you are your own language.

Your pages are tired and torn,

but I want you,

I want it all."

-Like A Book, Michelle K.


The call from dispatch was a welcome distraction. Although she knew she should feel guilt for craving a murder, doing her job was so much better than sitting bored in the bullpen, watching Esposito and Ryan tiptoe around her in fear of saying the wrong thing. It had been a summer long dance they had been doing and she was tired of her colleagues walking on eggshells any time the mention of her ex came up.

The boys no longer spoke to him, treating him like a traitor, and while grateful for their never failing support, Kate wished she hadn't been the sole reason for the enforced silent treatment.

The examination of their crime scene and quick interview with their victim's boyfriend led them to an apartment in Tribeca, their first potential lead, but when they arrived at Maya Santori's apartment, the front door had been opened and they could hear movement from inside the building. Beckett, Ryan, and Esposito slipped past the front entrance, did a sweep of the first room, finding it clear, and Kate signaled to her partners before advancing forward, deeper into the apartment towards the noise coming from the closed door ahead. The three exchanged nods and Kate kicked the bedroom door open, directed the man they walked in on to put his hands in the air.

The situation had been completely under control until the intruder turned around.

"Castle?" she stated incredulously, watching as the man in front of her stiffened in surprise.

She hadn't missed him – not at all – but her body still froze at the sight of him after three months, her stomach still flared with instinctual heat in response to his presence, and the shock of meeting again reflected in his eyes, setting them alight with pleasant surprise.

She hadn't missed him.

"Kate?" he breathed, a smile almost curling his lips upwards, but her carefully aimed gun quickly wiped any trace of pleased recognition from his face.

"What the hell are you doing here?" she hissed, lowering her weapon just slightly, but glancing over her shoulder and silently warning the boys to keep theirs raised and ready. Castle turned towards her, prepared to explain, but when he did, she immediately noticed the gun still in his hand.

"Put it down," she snapped, the boys joining in, demanding he lower the weapon while he stood glancing between the three of them in confusion.

"Whoa, whoa, okay!" he exclaimed, cautiously setting the gun on the floor. "It's not what it looks like. Kate-"

"It never is," she muttered, striding forward and turning him by the shoulders. She clicked the cuffs closed around his wrists, did her best not to touch his skin. "Richard Castle, you are under arrest for murder."


Ryan and Esposito led him away, out of the apartment and towards the building's exit, but his head kept swiveling to look over his shoulder, to catch a glimpse of her trailing behind them, and she diverted her eyes every time.

He rode with the boys to the precinct, knew they would set him up in interrogation for her, and she was grateful for the time to herself. She needed it if she was going to face him after what had happened over the summer.

Her heart was still in jagged pieces after the summer.

At the station, everyone gave her encouraging nods and sympathetic eyes, making her want to disappear into the ground, but she merely strode through the homicide floor to interrogation room 1, where Esposito had told her Castle was being held.

He was just another suspect, just another unexpected part of the job. This was in no way personal.

Beckett glided inside without looking at him, dropped the case file on the table between them and pulled out her chair with ease.

"You've been informed of your rights, Mr. Castle?" she questioned coolly, folding her hands in front of her and awaiting his response.

"Really? This is how we're playing things?" he answered, half amused, half disbelieving.

"You are aware you're under arrest for murder?" she replied calmly, doing her best to keep them on track. She could not let things become unprofessional with him, not here.

"And I thought you were being rough with the cuffs just for fun," he mused, arching an eyebrow at her, and she glared sternly at him while silently praying he wouldn't bring up how they actually had used her handcuffs for fun in the past. Not when her colleagues were sitting behind the glass. "You let your hair grow out," he said a little softer, his eyes warm and roaming her face. She vehemently ignored the way he still made her stomach flutter. "You look good, Kate."

"You look good too," she murmured, her lips tilting upwards, before quickly catching herself and adding more seriously, "For murder."

"Why are you so mad at me?"

The anger flared hotly in her chest and it took everything she had to rein it back in, to remind herself this wasn't about what had happened between them nearly three months ago. Murder, case, crime scene – he had been at a crime scene.

"Maybe because you were found standing over a dead body with a gun in your hand."

"Yeah, but I told you she was dead when I got there," he said simply and she dug her nails into her palm.

"Why didn't you call?"

He looked slightly taken aback at that and took a moment to smooth his hands out over the surface of the table, going over his words in his head.

"I was going to call you," he began to explain, his voice in a calm, placating tone. "But then you showed up before I could."

"Really? Well, then why did we find you in our victim's apartment?"

"Well, because she called me."

"Oh, so you and Miss Santori were in a relationship?" she surmised, the last word like bile on her tongue because if he had been sleeping with this woman-

Castle narrowed his eyes at her. "I bought a couple sculptures from her."

"Were you sleeping with her?" she asked bluntly, watching his eyes widen incredulously.

"How is that relevant?"

"Motive."

"Ah," he murmured, unconvinced. "No, I was not sleeping with her."

"Are you sure?" Kate pushed, sensing that she was hitting a nerve already and unable to stop. "Beautiful woman, single man…"

"I just came out of a very serious relationship," he answered tightly, leaning in towards her. "If you must know, I haven't been sleeping with anyone since."

She nodded, tampering down the stupid relief that rushed through her system. She didn't care who he slept with. He could sleep with whomever he wanted. The more, the merrier.

She proceeded to question Castle about why the hell he had been at their victim's apartment, knowing for a fact he hadn't killed the woman, but having to listen to his side of the story nonetheless. It was when Roy interrupted them, pulled her aside and showed her the gun that shot their victim was not the gun Castle had been holding, that she was finally able to release him.

"So what's our next move?" Castle quipped, already on her heels as she headed back into the bullpen.

"There isn't one, at least not for you. You're going home."

"Whoa, whoa, whoa. Two victims, one of them an acquaintance of mine, and you're sending me home?"

"You're a witness, Castle," she sighed tiredly. "I can't have you involved."

"I'm already involved," he protested, snagging her writst and she spun on her heel, ripped her arm from his grasp.

"Rick, go home. You-"

"I don't want to go home. I want to be here, I want to be with you," he said quietly but fiercely, his words surprising and knocking the wind from her lungs, and she took a step closer to him, if only to keep onlookers from overhearing the privacy of their conversation.

"What the hell is wrong with you?" It came out quietly, uninhibited, and she knew the moment it registered for him, the unmistakable whisper of hurt in her voice, but she continued before he could answer her. "If you had wanted to come back, to be with me, you wouldn't have let me leave the Hamptons in the summer. You wouldn't have walked away when I tried to explain-"

"I asked you to marry me, Kate," he argued roughly. "Did you expect me to just bounce back when you turned me down?"

"No, but I didn't expect you to storm off like a twelve year old either. Maybe if you had been willing to hear me out, my answer would have changed by now." She hadn't meant to say that, to reveal so much, but her retort shocked him into momentary silence, and Kate took the opportunity to end this.

"Go home, Castle. I've got work to do."

She left him standing in the middle of the room and forced herself not to look back until she knew the elevator doors had closed behind him.


Castle kept conversation with his mother and daughter short when he returned home to the loft, excusing himself to his bedroom as soon as he walked through the door. He was still reeling from seeing her again, from being rejected by her again.

Part of him hated Kate Beckett. Just a little, because she made it impossible to truly despise her, especially when he was admittedly the one in the wrong this time. He couldn't hate the woman who had walked away from him, yet still made the time to take his daughter out to lunch and attend his mother's plays whenever she got the chance. If anything, he should be grateful to her, for treating his family with such respect despite what had happened between the two of them.

Castle plopped down on his bed, tugged open the top drawer of his nightstand, rummaged around until his fingers skidded across the familiar outline of the framed photo he had tucked away after they had ended things. He sighed and leant back into his headboard, stared down at the picture Alexis had taken in the beginning of the summer when they had all gone to the Hamptons together, when things had been easier and they were happy.

He had originally only invited Beckett to attend for Memorial Day weekend, knowing she no longer had as many vacation days after her apartment had been blown to pieces months before. But she had managed to get the week off and spent it on the beach with him and his family.

In the photo, she was in a pretty white sundress, her hair in a loose ponytail, brightened by the sun, just like her skin, and her hand was intertwined with his as they walked the beach together. The shot had been taken at a slight distance, Alexis attempting to be discrete in her photography, but if he squinted, he could still see the way her eyes had shone with the sunset as she looked up at him. It had been the day before he had asked her, the day before she had said no. And maybe he had overreacted when she had rejected him, his heart sore and his pride wounded, and maybe he could have stayed to listen to her when she tried to back up the hesitant Castle, I just don't think it's the right time yet she had whispered while lowering to her knees in front of him on the moonlit balcony outside his bedroom. But he had snapped the little blue box closed, slipped it back into his pocket and walked away before she could say any more. Before he could register the yet that had followed her gentle refusal.

She hadn't wanted to hurt him and he knew that, but at the time, he had felt scorned and had definitely not recovered by the time she had decided to leave that same night, driving back to the city alone. He had tried calling her the next morning, after he had slept off the disaster of an evening alone in their bed, but she didn't answer. She didn't answer for weeks, and when she finally did, she tonelessly told him to stop calling her, that there was nothing to talk about, and they hadn't spoken since. Until today, that is.

Kate had said at the precinct that she would have said yes. Basically. If he would have waited, if he would have tried to understand her side of things, in time, she would have said yes. He had screwed up, he regretted it, but there had never been a moment since that fateful day in the summer that he hadn't wished for her, wanted her back with an aching intensity.

He had a lot to make up for, but if he could convince her to give him another chance, he would work as hard as he could to show her how sorry he was. And how much he still loved her.


"Are you kidding me?" she growled the next day when Castle was found at their crime scene again.

"Just listen to me," he began, but she released a mirthless laugh as she retrieved her cuffs from her belt. Again.

"Why? You don't listen to me?"

She stalked forward, arguing with him over his presence, the cuffs lifted like a barrier between them until they entered the next room and his back bumped into an empty vending machine.

"Look, Castle, I'm sorry about your friend, I really am, but that doesn't mean you can just show up and act like nothing's happened. The truth is, is if you wanted to come back, you would've already, but you didn't. So, let's just face it, the only reason that you're here right now is because you were at the wrong place at the wrong time," she summed up, but suddenly Castle was cupping her face in his hands, holding her eyes too seriously despite the presence of the boys in the next room.

"Do you know what these bodies are? A sign."

She swatted his hands away, her cheeks tingling from the warmth of his palms.

"A sign?" she parroted back dubiously.

"A sign. A sign from the universe telling us we need to solve this case together. You don't want to let the universe down, do you?"

Kate exhaled a frustrated breath through her nose, shook her head and placed her fingers at her temples.

"You're not going to go away no matter what I do, are you?"

"I respect the universe," he said with a shrug. "And I love you."

Her heart stopped at the second part of his nonchalant explanation, her body shuddering subtly as her skin broke out in a cold sweat. Richard Castle was the only man she had ever known who had the ability to throw her off with such ease. He knew which buttons to push, which wounds to poke at, which words could bring her to her knees and turn her head upside down.

"No," she murmured, adamantly shaking her head against him and those treacherous words. "No, you don't get to do that."

"Do what? I'm telling you the truth. I love-"

"Castle," she snapped, anger and heartache and some ridiculous but familiar excitement bubbling altogether in her chest and making her dizzy. "You know what? Fine. I will let you join me on this one case, as long as you promise to do what I say when I say it, and not to do any investigating on your own."

He was already nodding eagerly, but she held up her index finger, not yet finished listing her terms and conditions.

"And you do not get to use our past to play with my emotions."

"Kate, that isn't-"

"Just – don't, okay? We can work a case together like before, but the rest of it? That's over. So just accept it."

She could already see in the flash of his blue eyes that he would do anything but accept that, but he still nodded once more, said what he needed to earn his temporary place back in her life. "I promise. You won't regret this."

She scoffed and pivoted away from him, towards the boys and the dead body on the couch. "I already do."


When they go to arrest Kitty and Earl just as the two were preparing to leave the country, Beckett's life was put in danger, and the instinct to protect her prevailed as he tackled her to the ground, both of them narrowly avoiding the bullet that whizzed past.

Castle had spun them, landing on his back so she wouldn't hit the concrete at full force, and for just a moment, before the frenzied chase for the two fleeing killers began, she looked down at him the way she used to, without the guarded steel in her eyes. But the moment was just that and then she was jumping up, directing Ryan and Esposito to go after Earl while she prepared to find Kitty.

"Stay here."

"Wait, what if they come back?" he questioned, but Kate merely handed him her backup piece, closing his fingers around it.

"Just be careful," she whispered before striding off in the opposite direction.

He ended up chasing Kitty out into the alley, where he was met with Beckett pointing a gun at him. He didn't have the time to tell her why he had his aimed at her in return, hated the confused furrow of her brow and shadow of doubt that fell across her face, but it was worth it when their guns fired in unison and took down both suspects in perfect synchronization.


They had made a bet in the middle of the case, a dangerous bet that could put him back in her life all too easily, and as they had worked the case together, effortlessly falling back into their familiar pattern of back and forth banter, she found that she wouldn't mind too terribly if he won his way back into the precinct. It was too much fun watching him light up with crazy theories, beaming when something finally clicked for him, and she didn't even realize she was allowing him to win the bet until it was too late.

"So, uh... I guess you won the bet."

"Yeah," he grinned before his smile quickly fell. "But look, if it's too much, if you don't want-"

"No, no, you won fair and square," she nodded, pursing her lips to smother a little smile as he watched her curiously.

"So," he murmured, taking just a small step closer to her. "See you tomorrow?"

"See you tomorrow," she confirmed, ducking her head when he leaned in to brush a quick kiss across her cheekbone before spinning happily on his heel and trotting away from her.

This wasn't what she had wanted, was probably the opposite of what she needed, but she had missed him too.

As long as he stayed away from her heart, there was a chance they could make this work.