A/N: Thank you to the readers who took time to review chapter 1. I get a sense that Castle is slipping away already, which is natural now that the show has ended. So I appreciate even more those of you who would stick around to encourage those of us trying to keep the dream alive. Liv x


Always The Bridesmaid

Chapter 2

Just ten days later, Kate, Jenny, two adorable little flower girls and the bride's best friends, Tanya and Suzie, were gathered in the small preparation room: the sacristy of the church. The normally quiet space was filled from floor-to-ceiling with the chatter and laughter of excited women and girls. Even Kate Beckett, normally immune to such female frivolity, felt the tug of anticipation. There was an emotional weight, she had discovered, to being included in this special occasion. She could taste the infectious tang of excitement bubbling up all around her, excitement that made her feel proud to have been asked to be a part of Jenny and Kevin's wedding.

Once she had agreed to be on the team, preparations had moved along with considerable pace. There was a lot to accomplish in a short space of time, from clueing Kate in on the order and flow of the mass, to meeting the other girls, dress and shoe shopping with Jenny, and finally a rehearsal dinner the night before the wedding that she had attended along with Javi and Kevin.

Being welcomed into Jenny's female circle of intimacy and friendship was uplifting in a way that Kate had never expected or appreciated as a younger woman, when she had taken on the role of bridesmaid to several of her own friends. Back then it had felt like a chore to be endured; the price of friendship. Now it felt like a gift, and watching Jenny and her friends and family interact made her think differently about a lot of things in her own life.

Work and the relationship she shared with her partner, if she dare call it that, had been getting better and better lately. She and Castle were more in sync than ever, and Kate felt as if she might be closing in on a lasting happiness of her own. Jenny and her friends had an openness and a goodness to them that stirred a longing for similar things within Kate's still-grieving heart. Their company was the perfect antidote to the darkness of her normal work life, and in the days running up to the wedding she had felt her spirits lifted whenever she spent time in their company.

That lightness stayed with her long after the women had parted company, and it left Kate with a desire that took her by surprise at first, because it was a desire to seek out her partner. She found herself wanting to spend time with him, to spread this newfound joy around, to show him she could be a happy, optimistic person too.

When she thought about it, she realized she shouldn't have been so surprised. Castle, himself, had found companionship, a clubhouse of sorts, and a couple of brothers when he joined the Twelfth. He wasn't naturally a guy's guy. But Ryan and Espo were his "bros" now, his posse, and Kate knew how much that bond meant to him. A pretty solitary, self-sufficient creature herself, she had few friends beyond Lanie and, when their diaries lined up, Madison. So to find herself immersed in the kind of fast friendships that grow up around weddings like weeds was kind of intoxicating, and she had only one person she wanted to share her happiness with.

But Castle had been rather scarce the last few days, feigning last minute jobs for Kevin and once, even offering to take his mother to the matinee performance of a new off-Broadway play she wanted to see. All most unlikely excuses.

Kate watched him closely whenever he was around, noting how quiet he seemed, how difficult to engage in banter, how closed-off his posture. When she tried to ask him about it, he blew her off with a tight smile and another half-truth about a headache or a late night spent writing or he simply shrugged and headed to the men's room or the break room to make more coffee.

She thought long and hard about it, and she could only tie his strange behavior back to one moment in time: Jenny's teasing remark in the break room about them being in love. Her continued silence on the subject obviously troubled Castle more than he had allowed himself to show, and Jenny's innocent comment had reopened that unhealed wound. The bride's observation was kindly, not maliciously, meant so there was no way hold it against her. If anyone was to blame for the stalemate between the partners it was Kate herself. Too comfortable with the status quo, where both were single and secretly, if not explicitly, committed to one another. She was too fearful of upsetting that cozy arrangement by having it out with him in order to move them on to the next stage of their life. Dr. Burke had explored the issue on numerous occasions, and even Kate was becoming embarrassed by her slow progress and lack of reasonable answers to her therapist's perfectly sensible questions. She came off sounding cowardly or even childish each time she professed to "still not being ready." What did "ready" look like anyway?

Was there a timetable for love, she had long wondered? Was there some cosmic sign she was waiting for: some light in the northern sky or a moment of revelation when all would suddenly become crystal clear and she'd get the green light from above and find herself tracking Castle down to say, "Okay, now's the time. I love you and you love me. Let's do this." Yeah, that was as ridiculous an idea as she thought, one that prickled her skin and made her cheeks burn red hot with shame.

But she still felt her stomach lurch, her face color and her heart rate kick up a notch every time she thought about such things, every time she asked herself why she was forcing this good man to wait and why she was dragging her heels. Was she doing it for him? Or was she doing it for herself? Would she ever be any better a person that she was now? People weren't generated by 3D printers, and they weren't deities or superheroes either. Each one of them had flaws, Castle included, and it was time Kate realized that and took action before it was too late.

And what happened to Castle while she took her time to decide? How valued, how loved, how wanted…or how overlooked did he feel? Like a side of beef put into a chest freezer to be enjoyed on some indeterminate day down the line. Did their love have an expiration date?


She pushed these thoughts to the back of her mind while she helped Jenny secure and adjust her veil and then re-tied the slippery satin ribbons on the ballet shoes of one fidgety little flower girl. A knock on the sacristy door had them all squealing and running to block the view of the bride lest their caller be the jumpy, anxious groom. But it was simply the priest popping his head around the door to give them notice that they were ten minutes away from being ready to start the service.

"Do you think Kevin's okay?" Jenny asked Kate. Her eyes were wide with unrepressed fear and she looked pale. For a moment Kate worried that she might begin to cry and ruin her make-up. Or worse still, that she might faint.

"I'm sure he's fine. Just as excited as you are," Kate assured the nervous bride. When Jenny's anxiety failed to abate, she offered, "Do you want me to go check on him?"

Jenny's fretful face finally broke into a smile and she clutched at Kate's hands in gratitude. "Would you?"

"Sure. Of course. I'll just pop my head out into the hallway and make sure that he's okay. Close the door behind me. We don't want those nosy boys seeing inside."

Kate lifted the hem of her gown. The fabric felt soft and luxurious as it ran through her fingers. Jenny had good taste. In the end, she and Kate had made the final selection of a dress together from the three that Jenny had previously shortlisted for her friend, Ellen. She'd been on something of a surprising high after trying her gown on for the final time and the urge to call her partner that had come over her had been shocking and strong. Since when did she want to call Castle to tell him about a dress? In the end, she had resisted. But it was telling that when something important or fun or noteworthy happened in her life, he was the one person she wanted to share it with, every single time.

Once out in the cool of the church's upper hallway, the worn flagstones dry and rough beneath her creamy satin heels, she paused to gather her own scattered thoughts. Rather than be concerned about Kevin, who she was certain was champing at the bit to marry Jenny, she was thinking about her own partner who she hadn't seen or spoken to in the last couple of days. Simply put: she missed him. His absence hurt, a lot, and that fact alone was instructive. She had prodded him in the chest and accused him of eavesdropping, literally pushing him away. What had started out as a knee-jerk reaction to her surprise at Jenny's bridesmaid question had turned into a slow motion disaster movie; an eighteen-wheeler skidding sideways across an oil-slicked highway taking out everything in sight. And then he was gone.

She'd had a plan. Well, more of a panicky desire to ask him to be her plus one. She'd been building up to it. Testing the waters with glances and smiles and more finger-brushing over coffee cups to check for certain, before she made a fool of herself, that he was still into her. And God, how pathetic that sounded right now. The man had thrown everything to the wind, his family included, the day he tried to save her from a sniper's bullet, the day he poured his love out as a last line of defense while her blood pumped relentlessly, staining the grass around them. What more proof did she need?

But she had balked every time she toed that line, every time she took a breath and prepared to ask him to come to the wedding with her. Until it was too late the day that Jenny intervened. And now she found herself terrified that he'd be bringing someone else because of her pathetic foot-dragging. Another opportunity missed, her sense that she was running out of time ticking loudly in her ear.


She slipped on a step and grabbed the wall to steady herself, cursing and then laughing nervously at her near miss. That's when she finally saw him, and she was in no way prepared. But by the look on his face, Castle wasn't either. There was a blur of movement around the corner and then she caught sight of him on the periphery of her vision, and when she looked up, he was staring at her with something close to wonderment. Her pulse rocketed.

"Castle!" "Beckett?"

They both laughed awkwardly at the instantaneous cries of each other's names. The surprise and then delight on Kate's face to see her partner was mirrored back at her immediately. Her ache for him grew. She wanted out of there immediately. She wanted a burger and fries at Remy's, she wanted him to make her coffee in a quiet corner in the break room, she wanted the darkness of a cinema in the middle of the afternoon, she wanted the park and their swings, she wanted to grab his hand and flee. Anything but where they were: trapped by polite convention with a few friends and a couple of hundred strangers for the next several hours.

Castle's gaze roved the length of Kate's tall frame and slowly made its way back up again. "You look…amazing!" he said, giving Kate an appreciative, gentlemanly but, at the last gasp, a disappointingly sad once over.

It was so naked that there was no way Kate could fail to notice the look of longing Castle gave her gown and her hair before his sad eyes resettled on her face.

"Scrub up okay?" she asked shyly, holding her floor length skirt out to the side and shimmying back and forth to give him the full effect of the beautiful gown Jenny had so thoughtfully chosen for her. He nodded, too choked up to speak, it seemed. "You're not so bad yourself," Kate told him, trying to recover the moment, to turn it into something lighter given that she had an important job to do to help Jenny and Kevin's wedding go off smoothly, no matter what she herself desired.

"Really?" Castle seemed surprised by her compliment.

She nodded, her smile broadening as she did so. "Rick, you look…handsome. Ruggedly so," she teased for old times' sake. "You can stop fishing." She dug her nails into her hand. "Where's your date?"

She looked around for some glamorous woman lingering nearby. This was her way of tackling her biggest fear head-on, something Dr. Burke had been trying to coach in her – not to hide from her issues.

"I…" Castle shrugged, his brain still caught up in the glory of her kind words, and then he shook his head.

"You came alone?" The relief in her voice was so obvious that her cheeks flushed.

"Didn't have anyone I wanted to ask," he explained. But his voice was flat.

"Oh. Right." Instead of seeing this as a good sign – that she was otherwise engaged and so he'd prefer to go alone than be with anyone else – Kate's elation turned to dejection as she included herself in the list of people Castle had no interest in asking to be his date.

"What about you? Some buff guy from Vice or Gangs waiting for you in the church?"

Kate looked confused that he could appear so off-hand, so casual and unaffected at the possibility that she might have brought someone other than him to Kevin and Jenny's wedding. Her confusion morphed into hurt. "No." She shook her head and frowned. "Why would you…?"

"Hmm?" Castle's gaze was so penetrating that she felt as if he could see right inside her head.

She blushed but forced herself to speak. "Only, I thought—"

Her partner took a step closer and dropped his voice. He tipped his head to one side and his eyes appeared to caress her face. "What?" The intimacy of the moment was potent, dizzying.

"That…I thought that…" Kate stumbled over her thoughts and her words. She sighed deeply and her shoulders sagged under the weight of all the things she didn't have the courage or the time to say.

"I don't—" Castle shrugged, one-shouldered, looking for help from her to understand the mess they were in once more. "What did you think, Beckett?" he pushed, though he was gentle.

Kate reached out a hand and laid it on the sleeve of his tux. The fine black mohair felt warm and pleasingly soft beneath her fingertips. "I thought that we—" She frowned hard and tried to take a deep breath, but her lungs wouldn't expand. "That you and—"

Just at that moment, Kate heard voices at the top of the stairs, then the organ struck up with the opening notes of Mendelssohn's Wedding March and they froze.


Thank you for reading. One more chapter to go.