A/N: Wow. Just wow. I got over 20 reviews on the first chapter of this, which is more feedback than I've gotten for a single chapter of anything, ever. So thank you so much for the support. I know I replied to a lot of you, but I tend to reply kind of sporadically, so if I didn't, know that I still think you're awesome. For those of you who are a little unsure about the angsty-ness, I apologize in advance for this chapter. It's definitely no more cheerful than the first. But I promise that it won't be like this forever.

There was one thing that I wanted to address because a lot of you commented on it. What Castle did. Bad? Yes. Extreme? Yes. Out of character... maybe. I would hope so anyway, because unlike a lot of what I write, I would never want to see it happen on the show. And I'm paranoid about writing things OOC, so that is probably the first and only time I will ever say that I hope a character wouldn't actually do something I wrote about. But for the way I started this to work, I needed something for them to really fight about, something that just day to day Castle annoyingness wouldn't account for. And this is what I came up with. You'll get a little more background about the way that whole situation went down... right now, actually. And I'm sure more will come out as this progresses.

Expect another update pretty soon. Like most of you I'm sure, I'm trying to survive the very long four days that remain until Knockdown, and my plan is to totally immerse myself in writing, especially over the weekend. The primary goal of that is just to get myself through, but if I manage to update pretty often and help to pull some of you along with me, so much the better. :)


"You're a cut that refuses to heal."

As she stepped into her dismal little sublet, all she could think about was taking the longest, hottest shower of her life. On her way to the bathroom she reflected on how much she hated this place. It had no personality, and no matter how she set the thermostat, it always seemed cold. It was colder than Castle's car had been, at least temperature-wise. Even figuratively, it might have been a little warmer, but not much. If it wasn't for Castle, she reflected, if he'd never come into her life to begin with, she might still be in her old apartment, the one she'd loved. The one that had actually felt like home. Instead she was stuck here. It gave her a whole other reason to be mad at him, and she embraced it.

She stripped off her soaking wet clothes, leaving everything, including his jacket, in a pile on her bathroom floor, and set the water to an almost scalding temperature. She tried to let her mind go blank, concentrating on nothing but the feel of the hot water as it pounded against her skin, so hot that it actually left behind red marks, but couldn't seem to keep him out of her thoughts. She kept seeing his face, the depth of the hurt there when he considered whether he'd ever see her again.

She told herself she didn't care. She shouldn't care. He'd made his choice, and he'd chosen her. Caroline Traum. The trampy, but admittedly gorgeous, murder suspect. And because of this choice, he was no longer a part of her life.

The sad part was that he probably didn't even fully understand why what he'd done was so bad. Yes, what she'd told him in the car was true. He had messed up her investigation. He had made her job more difficult. But he'd been making her job more difficult since day one. She'd come to expect it, and she'd learned to deal with it. He'd even been involved with women who were connected to her cases before. Kyra Blaine. Ellie Monroe. Madison Queller. Each time it had bothered her, although she would never have admitted it, but she'd been able to move past it. This was different.

For one thing, at least to her knowledge, Ellie was the only one of these three women that he'd actually slept with, and she'd never been a suspect. Kyra and Madison had technically, but she'd never really believed either of them to be guilty. Caroline had been their primary suspect, if only because they'd been able to come up with no other realistic possibilities for the first few days. But for some reason, Castle had connected with her. He'd never really believed her to be guilty even when everyone else did, and he'd worked harder than ever to clear her. When the evidence did finally prove her innocent and they found the real killer, Beckett had actually been proud of him for sticking with it the way he had. Until she found out that his motives had been different from what she'd thought.

But the dominant reason that his actions upset her so much was something completely different. At the time of the incident, it had been a month since he'd broken up with Gina, and just under a week since she'd ended things with Josh. The second part, of course, he hadn't known, because she'd been too private, or scared, or stupid to tell him.

But they had been getting closer. Or, at least, she'd thought they had. They'd hit a really good rhythm with their cases, and even the complex ones had been closing relatively quickly. There had been more shared meals after long days and late nights, which led to more small talk, which led to more sharing of personal topics. She'd known when Alexis had started applying to colleges. He'd known when she was fighting with her cable company over how high her bill was considering she hardly ever watched TV.

They were small things, but it was the small things together that made up life. The more small things you knew about a person, the more involved you were in their life, and she and Castle were becoming more and more involved in each other's lives. She'd been letting him in more and more, and she was just gathering the nerve to tell him about Josh, and maybe even ask him if he wanted to do something outside of work some time, when she'd found out about Caroline.

He hadn't told her of course, but she could tell. She could always tell. This time it was less her impeccable detective skills and more that Caroline had been under surveillance, but that wasn't the point.

She'd felt hurt, betrayed, and, mostly, stupid. How could she have let herself think that she could trust him? Why had she told him so much? She knew what Castle was like. Why had she allowed herself to make these mistakes? She'd been setting herself up for hurt. She told herself that Caroline had come into the equation at exactly the right time, before she'd become too emotionally involved. Before she had taken things to another level. As it was, she kept telling herself, she could just move on. Cut him out of her life. Get rid of the constant reminder of the mistake she'd made. She didn't care anymore.

But all this time she'd been trying to fool herself that he didn't care. It made it easier to imagine that he'd completely written her out of his life, although in reality she knew that this wasn't possible, not with any meaning of the word "written." He was still under contract to write more Nikki Heat books, and she knew he'd observed her for long enough that he could continue to do so without continuing to shadow her. If she thought about it, she knew that because of the way he'd handled the character to this point, he wouldn't be able to write Nikki without at least thinking about her.

Now though, with his tortured face flashing in her mind, the image alternately making her feel nauseous and bringing tears to her eyes, she was having trouble convincing herself that she only remained in his life on a professional basis. Even if she could forget the face, which she couldn't, not matter how hard she tried, if she was just a character to him, why had he given her a ride? For research purposes he might've slowed down and tried to find out what she was doing, but he wouldn't have offered—insisted, really—to drive her home.

Besides that, he hadn't really even asked her why she was out in the rain to begin with. He had at first, but when she didn't answer him he dropped it. He knew nothing about her car or her failed case, had no idea that because of her there was a murderer walking around free, maybe in New York, or maybe, for all she knew, in Fiji by now. She tried to tell herself that he hadn't pressed because he didn't really care, but she couldn't quite make herself believe it. She knew him far too well. If he truly didn't care, he would have pressed. He would have stopped at nothing to get his answers, to form his story. The only reason he would have held back was that he was being careful. He was tiptoeing around her, not wanting to upset her any more than he already had. The problem was that his care came too late. The damage had already been done. She couldn't find it in her heart to forgive him, and the fact that deep down she knew that he cared about her, that he always had and those feelings hadn't just gone away, only made it harder to cope.

The few bitter tears that she didn't bother to choke back mixed with the hot water that she allowed to run over her face as she tried to tell herself that she'd be happy if she never saw him again. It was a bold-faced lie, but if she thought it enough times, it might become the truth. At least, that was what she was banking on.

It was with reluctance that she finally turned off the water. The feeling of warmth cascading down her skin was the only thing bringing her any pleasure at all, but it had to end eventually. Everything good had to end eventually. Like her partnership with Castle. It had been good for awhile, but it had to end.

She got dressed and then went back to the bathroom to deal with the wet clothes she'd left on the floor. She hung her things over the shower curtain bar, but was left holding his jacket, wondering what to do with it. Part of her wanted to throw it in some corner where she'd never look and forget that she had it, but it was wet, and if she did that it wouldn't dry, and then it would start to smell, so forgetting that she had it wouldn't exactly be an option. Instead, she hung it on the back of her bathroom door, deciding she'd let it dry first and figure out what to do with it later.

She went to bed after that, since it was after one in the morning and she was exhausted. She tried to empty her mind, not to think about anything that had happened that day, but she couldn't seem to do it. She kept thinking about the case, and about what Ryan had said about Castle being able to come up with something. She wished she could fully believe that he was wrong. Was she really so pathetic that she needed a novelist to help her do her job?

No, she told herself. She didn't. She'd done just fine before he came along. How hard could it be to go back to that? To simply pretend he'd never been a part of her life to begin with? Every cop in the world loses a case from time to time. It was the mantra she'd been taught to repeat every time she lost one. But it didn't make her feel any better. It never really had. She wasn't content to be just like every other cop. She wanted to be better, to push harder, to solve more cases. And she couldn't help but realize that working with Castle was the one thing that had set her apart from everyone else.

But it didn't matter, because they weren't working together anymore. She would not give in. She would not forgive him. She would not take him back. But a different, traitorous thought drifted lazily through her mind as she started to fall asleep. Try as she might, she would not forget him either.