this is my first story ever and I just couldn't get it out of my head. please review and let me know what you think! :)
She hated this time of year, she always had… well at least for the past twenty years. There was a time when she thought she'd learn to love winter again, what with her fiancée, ex-fiancée's, abundant love of all things Christmas. But the world had other plans for her. Not only was the cold front of winter a reminder of how her mother had been killed, it now also brought her back to that fateful day when she realized he was gone forever.
She'd had faith when he first disappeared the day of their wedding; had done everything in her power to find out what happened to him. But the months passed, spring turned to summer, then to fall, finally to winter and then just three days after the anniversary of her mother's death they found it. The incontrovertible evidence that he had been killed and wasn't coming back.
Three years later she's caught the men that did that to him, solved his case just like she did her mother's. But unlike her mother's case she had to do it alone. No crazy theories to bring her out of her shell when her walls went up, no morning cups of coffee to ease her into her days, just his picture on the murder board, his impossibly blue eyes and self-assured smirk watching over her. This one too was unlike her mother's in that she still longs for something even now that it's over. That hole inside of her is still there, she's not sure it will ever be filled.
Derek helps with that. Helps take her mind off of the darkness that surrounds her work. He's a lawyer – straight out of the world she thought she would live in when she was young. He's not perfect, but he's kind and understanding and funny in his own way. It was Alexis that forced her to go out with him. She said her dad would have wanted her to be happy, and for Richard Castle, Kate Beckett would do just about anything.
So here she is, a few months into a relationship with a stable man who cares about her. Well, loves her apparently, if what he just said is anything to go by. She gives him a sad smile before pressing a kiss to his lips.
"I'm sorry," she says, and it sounds lame even to her own ears.
"I don't understand, I thought we were doing great" he replies, confusion lining his face.
"We were, are, I just… I can't."
"Can't what? Say it back? I can be patient if it's too soon… you're worth waiting for you know."
She gives a watery chuckle and glances out the window at the falling snow. In a different life, at a different time, this would have been exactly what she wanted. But not now. Kate Beckett was many things, but a liar wasn't one of them and she had to tell him before she let this get too far.
"No, I can't love you. Please understand it's not you, I care about you a lot, as much as I possibly can. I want you. I need you. But I'm never going to be able to love you. I'm sorry. I gave my whole heart away a long time ago, and I never got it back. I've always been a one and done kind of girl and I always will be."
He looks at her, the beautiful woman in front of him who's known more pain in her less than 40 years on this earth than most experience in three lifetimes, and he can't let her down again, can't cause her more pain. So he gives her the most genuine smile he can muster and says "well you know, Meatloaf did say that two out of three ain't bad, so that's something".
She smiles then. A beautiful stretch of her lips that lights up the room more than the sun reflecting off the snow outside.
"Thank you for understanding."