A/N: I loved the response I got from the start of this story! For those of you reading With Lying Eyes, you know how fond I am of cliff hangers. But this one doesn't really have on, and if it is a cliff hanger, it's a soft one. Thanks for all the reviews and follows to this story. Keep them rolling in! :)

This was not supposed to happen.

He has the plot mapped out on his storyboard in his office, but he just can't figure out how to get there. The characters are so empty now. He usually knows them well enough to be able to form convincing dialogue in his head, easily allow the reader to paint a picture in their head. But now, it's like they've gone mute. Like they've stopped speaking to him. Like they've abandoned him altogether.

This wasn't supposed to happen when he made the decision that he owed it to himself to move on while he still has a chance.

But it has. It's come back to haunt him like an old war wound, giving him horrible flashbacks when he feels it open back up. He sits slouched down on the couch, his head laying back against the cushion of the couch to where he can just see the screen of the laptop sitting on his legs without having to use his neck muscles to look at that evil, blinking cursor taunt him as it marks the beginning of an empty page.

He never realized how hard it would be to go back to his old life.

But then again, what exactly was his old life but two failed marriages followed by a string of hollow, nihilistic, nameless sexual encounters that delayed the process of him needing to grow up. Or at least that's how it looks when he reminisces on it now. She didn't really ask him to, but she forced him to grow up more than his prideful nature will allow him to admit. Even now, he feels he should go and make the effort to put on some flashy clothes and meet some nameless, empty nobody who will make him feel good about himself again.

The way they all bat their eyelashes as he throws about his wealth like they're actually interested in something deeper like he fools himself into thinking they are when they offer themselves up to him. It feels nice in the moment, gives him a good ego boost while chipping away at his moral principles. Because if he's, for once, being honest with himself like he feels he should start being, it would be nice to be around someone who made him feel like he can be enough with such little effort.

Because he's never been enough for her. And it wasn't until just recently that he's started to realize that he never will be. That he can wait around until the cows come home for her to... he feels himself roll his eyes that his own weak pity just uttered the words 'lower her standards'. But it's beginning to feel like that's what's going to have to happen. And he can't live like that. He at least deserves to be with someone who will love him back.

But, no. If she doesn't want to be with him, then he's not going to go on another meaningless self-realization campaign to get her to see it. And she clearly doesn't want to be with him as it stands. So... for once, he owes it to himself, and maybe even to her, to move on. He deserves to at least be happy, and... well, she's deserved to be happy for a long time and he's probably been fooling himself into thinking that it was him who could make her happy and all he had to do was just wait for her to see it.

But he can't keep doing that. If he has to wait this long for her just to be ready to even start a relationship with him, how long will he have to wait for her to be ready to get engaged, let alone married, or even start a family? In the annoying, buzzing words of his mother, they're not getting any younger.

And speak of the devil, his mother is just coming down the stairs. "Still sulking, dear?" She calls.

"Mm not sulking." He sulks, lazying himself into the couch with his blank page of a laptop still sitting in his lap.

"You are sulking, Richard." She calls from the kitchen, hearing her open up cupboards. "And you have been sulking for a week now."

"Never said getting over someone was a painless process, Mother." He retorts, making an excuse for his lack of motivation.

"Oh, Richard." She says and he can practically see her wave her hand at him in a dismissive fashion, hearing her open the fridge. "We both know you're just saying that. You're not really planning to move on from her, are you?" Her question is a call-out.

She's been bugging him about this for a few days and he has to say the same thing every time.

"It's for the better, Mother." He says as his heart sends a dull ache through his tired, lazy muscles. "I may never find another woman like Beckett in my life, but I can't keep putting myself through hell just to get her to smile. I can't keep..." He says as the cushions beside him sink with his mother coming to sit down next to him, "I can't keep trying to convince myself that I'll be enough for her or that in some other parallel universe, she actually wants to be with me and all I have to do is just wait until she's ready."

"Well..." Martha starts, hoping to pull her son out of this. "How do you know she's not ready?"

His expressionless, armored face looks over to her with his head still leaning back into the back of the couch, "If she was ready, then I'd know."

Martha raises a brow, "How do you know if you haven't talked to her?"

"If she was ready, she'd talk to me."

"And would you answer her or send her to voicemail like you did yesterday?"

He hisses out a breath, squinting his eyes as he shakes his head. "That was different, Mother. She..." He starts, physically feeling his doubts get the better of him, "she just wanted me to bring her her coffee so she could focus on whatever case she picked up. Something tells me that's all I'll ever be to her anyway. Just a..." He says, rolling his eyes as his blood grows cold and lethargic. "Just a glorified errand boy making sure she can focus on her job."

"Oh, Richard, would you drop the self-pity, already? Alexis and I have grown quite sick of it."

"So have I, Mother." He says quietly, looking back over to her. "That's why I need to move on while I still can. I'm not waiting around for the day when she gets hit in the head hard enough to where she will finally see that I've been standing right in front of her all this time. Because I'm beginning to think that I've been lying to myself when I said that she wants to be happy. Maybe she just doesn't want that kind of... meaning in her life. And... I'm not going to give her something that she clearly doesn't want, so... I need to move on."

Fighting the severe urge she feels to roll her eyes and knock her son upside the head, she leans forward to capture his eyes. "You know, you could always tell her how you feel."

"I tried that already, Mother."

"Yes, while she was lying on the ground with a bullet in her chest."

"Do you have any idea how hard it was for me to say that, Mother?" He asks, lifting his head off the back of the couch, his brow knitting angrily as he sends a hard glare over to her. "You think I wanted the first time I tell her I love her to be when she's lying on the ground, shaking in my arms with tears rolling down her face because she just got shot?"

"Well, then why did you tell her?"

"Because she was dying! I can..." He says, his voice growing in both volume and emotion. "I can still see the moment when her eyes fade, just a second after I get the words out, like me telling her how I feel is a cue for her to give up fighting, when... when her head goes limp in my hand. So, yes, I felt that telling her I loved her at a bad time would be a hell of a lot better than never having a time to tell her ever again."

"A time which..." His mother says, putting a hand on his leg, "she doesn't remember, need I remind you? So... you're right back where you started, kiddo."

He lets out a long sigh, "You know, when I went to the hospital the day she woke up, I was... I was almost relieved that she said she didn't remember. I can't imagine just how pathetic she would think I am if she did remember. Just... having me desperately pour my heart out at the worst possible time in her life... when I knew she didn't love me back, so... what was the point?" He says in a low voice as he sinks his head back into the cushion of the couch.

"Do you still feel that way now?"

He looks over to her with plainly sad eyes, "Which way?"

"That you still love her or that she doesn't love you back?"

"Yes, much to my chagrin, I still love her and if she loved me back, I'd know it."

"Which brings us back around to the point... how do you know if you haven't talked to her?"

He looks up to the ceiling, being fed up with this conversation. "Are we going to spend all day talking in circles or can I get back to work here?"

Martha's eyes slowly move over to his laptop, smirking to herself as she looks at the blank page. "It looks to me like you've yet to start, kiddo." She says and stands up.

"Yeah, go ahead. Nothing like a little dirt to rub in the wound."

Martha floats around to the back of the couch, leaning down and putting her hands on his shoulders. "If nothing else, Richard, at least talk to her."

"And say what, exactly?"

"Richard, don't just walk away without telling her that you're walking away. Beckett doesn't really deserve that, now does she?" She says and moves back into the kitchen.

He lets out a heavy sigh and slouches himself back down into the couch. A few seconds pass before he sees his phone light up on the coffee table. He lazily nods his head off to the side and sees her picture, which sends a stab into his gut. It's easy to keep a promise when you're not tested on it. And keeping himself away from her is hard enough without having to be reminded of how breathtakingly beautiful she is.

And when the stab reaches his chest, he ices his heart over and nods his head back to where the screen of his laptop is hiding the view of his phone.

"You've reached Richard Castle. Lucky you! Leave a mess-"

She had prepared her voice to leave a message for him but decided against it. Her eyes burn again as she lets her phone fall down to her lap, holding it in her hand with a weak, shaky grip.

She's losing him.

Out of all the people in her life, she never thought it would be him that she would lose first. She looks out her window and lowers her head to look up, seeing a shadow move from side to side through the window of the loft. The guy's been chasing after you for nearly four years. Don't you think it's your turn?

Lanie's words are almost physically pushing her out the door. But her fear, her insecurities, her vulnerability, the all too real possibility that she'll completely embarrass herself by going up there... it's then that something clicks inside of her brain.

Is this what he's felt like?

All these years, he's been going after her in spite of all those things he must have felt telling him not to, like what's telling her the same thing now. But he did it anyway... and looking back on it, she can only see herself shooting him down. She owes it to him to feel like this, maybe. And she owes it to him to push passed it and trudge ahead anyway.

When the shadow moves from the left, over to the right, staying still for a moment before continuing off to the right, she yanks on the handle to her door and jumps out of her car.