Disclaimer- I don't own Castle, Andrew Marlowe does. Please don't sue me for writing this story! Just having fun playing in the Castle Sandbox! Errors corrected, but I do not have a beta reader, so there's probably typos and dropped words (my apologies). I am not getting into the fandom and making friends for a reason; all my experiences with fandom in the past have brought me friends and some great charity work, but at the same time, incredibly gross and unappealing drama (like having my account hacked. Nice job, right?). I actually had my life threatened by someone once (are you kidding me? It's only fanfiction!). I am never going to fall into that trap again. It's not worth it at all. But the nice people who've reviewed the prequel to this story, I do appreciate you! Thank you!

I continued with querying my novel until I was pretty sure I had queried every major literary agent in the market. I had several offers to read partials and fulls, but they never asked me for representation. I took a break from querying and read some more. I realized that this manuscript was garbage and my query letter was the best part. Maybe I didn't know as much as I thought I did. I officially "shelved" my first manuscript, tearfully and over a bottle of wine and a blunt. The next morning, after working a shift hungover at the coffee shop. I went to Dad's house to tell him the bad news.

"Every successful author had a manuscript or two they can't pitch or sell," Dad said when I called him to tell him about my choice. "I've got a few. Can I finally read it?"

"Okay," I muttered. I emailed it to him, and he proceeded to tell me where my flaws in the manuscript were. It was easier to hear it from Ben or a friend, but from my Dad, I really had to control how upset I got. He took a day to read it, and called me back.

"There just wasn't enough upping the intensity," he said. "You didn't have enough connection between the characters. I got some relationships, but others were sort of weak. The plot just wasn't as cohesive. Look, honey... why don't I buy you tuition to a writing workshop at the New School? Or maybe a professional editing job with Linda Hargood, a friend of mine?"

"You mean ex-girlfriend? No, I'm going to make it on my own, I have to pay for it myself. I'm not using your connections to get ahead."

"What if it was your birthday present?"

Frowning to myself, I considered. If it was a birthday present, it wasn't taking something that I hadn't earned. It was a gift, instead, which was fine. "Okay. I could do that."

When I told Ben about Dad's offer, he shook his head. "Don't take him up on that."

"Why not?" I asked. "It's education, not a hand-out."

"I don't like it," he said. "Just like how I don't like you accepting $800 a month from your parents."

"I'm not accepting it, I'm earning it by baby-sitting two and three nights a week! That's work they're paying me for!"

"Are they paying taxes and social security on it?"

"No, I am."

"Alexis, you're walking a fine line."

"It took me a while to find a happy place in this world," I said. "Where I'm earning my own living. I didn't grow up having to pay my own way, and I don't want to waste my trust fund on living expenses. I'm trying to learn on my own!"

"I forgot about your trust fund," he muttered, rolling his eyes.

"What the hell is that supposed to mean?" I shouted.

"Shit. Nothing." Ben got up and got another beer out of the fridge. I came at him with all my ginger rage and we had another fight. This time, if he had hit me, I was ready to fight back.

In the morning, he acted like nothing had happened. That ticked me off, but I let it go. What bothered me the most was that I actually considered that when he got this angry, I was considered that he'd hit me. I felt guilty just for thinking he'd do that. But when he got so angry I didn't recognize him, that's when I became afraid of him.

I remember telling Mom during a run that I was getting scared of Ben when he got like this.

"Alexis, I want you to move out," she said, stopping. I slowed down and turned back around. "There is no reason in the world to be afraid of your boyfriend."

"I'm not afraid of him," I said. "Except when he gets angry."

She shook her head and crossed her arms, staring at the ground. "And he came home with a four-hundred dollar check and took you out after the attempted burglarly at your place? No. That's the honeymoon part of the cycle."

"Mom! He's not abusive!" I cried, shocked.

"I know, but I don't ever want him being abusive with you. I don't like this. Promise me that if he ever raises his hand to you, you'll come home?"

"You're not telling Dad these things, are you?" I asked.

She didn't meet my eyes.

"You do? Mom! How could you?!" I cried.

"Alexis, do you remember the codependecy exercises you did in therapy and inpatient?" she asked. "I want you to remember all of that. I know that nothing I can say will convince you walk out on him, but please, don't become another statistic."

I was mad as hell at her over this. I promised Dad that Ben wasn't hitting me, but Mom asking me to think about all the codependency therapy I had been through bothered me. I read all of the self-help books about codependency I had amassed during inpatient, and I saw the unhealthy part of my relationship with Ben and the "cycle."

No, I did not like it. At all. Leading up to our departure for Bonaroo, things calmed down for me and Ben. I looked at the writing workshops at the New School and decided creativity wasn't really something I could punch on a timecard. I decided to take the professional editing route, instead. I chatted with Linda and begged her not to tell my father my pen name for the sole purpose of trying to do it all myself. She agreed she'd take time for professional editing if I'd just finish my second manuscript.

Later that week, Gilbert, Sadie and I left with Ben to Tennessee in a rented Winnebago. I enjoyed the week I spent in Tennessee, but I saw the anxious, angry side of Ben edging out after we met his American side of family. I had been to Atlanta a few times, but Tennessee was very, very different. The little time I got to spend with his sister Jana from his mother's 1st marriage, I got a better look at Ben's upbringing; they rarely spoke about his first stepfather, as if that marriage had never happened. Jana was twenty-five, engaged, and living in the apartment over the garage, and his step-brothers from his mother's current marriage had kids of their own. Ben showed me Vanderbilt's college campus and Hillsboro Village. Nashville was a pretty cool town, but the way the people were so nosy kind of bothered me. I felt like a fish out of water. I think being around his family made him anxious and agitated. They proudly displayed his military picture where he was in uniform, in front of an American flag.

"So, when are you and Ben gonna get married?" his mother Jennifer teased me.

I was slightly stunned. "Um..."

"Don't you wanna get married and have kids?" Jana asked. She had his black hair and blue eyes; she was really stunning, had been on the beauty pageant circuit a bit, but never anything above a county title.

"Not right now," I said, finally. "I didn't get to enjoy my college career that much, so I'd rather enjoy my twenties, wait until my thirties-"

"But you'll be so old!" Jennifer cried, horrified, as if women went into menopause at age thirty or something.

Just how much they expected me to give up my career to have Ben's kids bothered me, but I didn't say anything. I sort of understood why his family annoyed him. "My mother had her pregnancies in her thirties," I said. "And her kids are perfectly fine."

"I am so ready for Tristan to finally get off his ass and start planning our wedding with me," Jana sighed.

I heard Jana and Jennifer gossiping about what a Yankee I was that night when they didn't know I was downstairs. They said it like I was new money and obnoxious.

I was so thankful when Gilbert and Sadie finally came back around with the Winnebago from Chattanooga to take us back home to New York. Ben even relaxed. I took Dad's notes into account to start plotting out an idea in my head on the drive home.

I had had a nightmare after a really bad meal at Cracker Barrell in Lebanon. But there came the main character; her name was Riley Fox, and she was an orphaned Manhattanite socialite-to-be redhead whose father had disappeared mysteriously. She was sent to live with her father's mistress, Anna, who worked as a bounty hunter. But what Riley didn't know, walking in, was that her father's mistress was not only bounty hunter, but a zombie slayer as well. By the end of the book, she discovers 2 things: her father had become a "skin-walker," but almost completely functioning zombie that could pass for a regular person and that Anna was carrying Riley's half-sibling. I thought it was a pretty bad-ass concept, personally, and I got the whole idea plotted out in an outline.

Getting back to New York was a relief; I missed the way New Yorkers minded their own business and left me alone. Of course, I especially missed my younger siblings. Jo-jo and I had a slumber party almost immediately after my return.

I spent the summer evenings on the fire escape, writing and doing my reading for my internship at Elizabeth Elsberg's office, where she had upgraded me to pre-reader and was finally paying me a meager sum. After Bonaroo, Ben and I rarely saw each other anymore, sex was out of the question these days. I knew I shouldn't miss sex so much, but having it did make the difference in our lives together. I felt like we weren't connecting anymore. Coupled with his crazy, semi-violent episodes before Bonaroo, I finally began to ask myself if I really wanted to be with Ben. Maybe these episodes had been fanned by not wanting to see his parents, but being forced to because we were going to Tennessee. His mother was so codependent and controlling, I saw his agitation. But did I really want to be with a man who had a family this messed up? I wasn't sure.

I immediately dove into going to see my old friends from Marlow Prep. We had a girls' nights where we went to all the gay bars in Manhattan, and we actually ran into some straight guys. I insisted I had a boyfriend and couldn't get serious, but the attention Matthew but on me felt nice. I felt special again. I never saw Matthew again, but I realized what I was missing. I never strayed from Ben, though. For the first time, he felt like a weight on me.

On the one date night we finally had towards the end of June, Ben and I talked about it, and he encouraged me to write my second manuscript and to try to enjoy it. He was miles ahead of me in the manuscript and query game, and I was starting over. I felt a little inferior.

I wanted Ben's opinion on my writing before I emailed it to Linda. He promised and promised that he'd read it. Finally, one morning, on my way to see Mom and Dad's for Sunday brunch, he walked in the door, dead-tired.

"I'm going to go to my parents," I told him. "Are you coming for brunch?"

"It's Sunday?" Ben asked, looking pretty drunk. "Nah, I don't think so. Tell them I said hi."

I poured a cup of coffee. "Ben?"

"Huh?" he asked, sitting down the bed to take his shoes off.

"What color are Riley's eyes?"

"Uh... they're blue. A clear, beautiful blue, just like yours."

I gulped back a sob. "What does she do when her boyfriend get murdered?"

"She uh... she..."

"Ben, you've had my manuscript on your email for over three weeks," I said. "Her eyes aren't blue and her boyfriend never gets murdered because she doesn't have one. You keep saying you're going to read it, but you haven't."

"What's the big deal? Your dad bought you an editing session with Linda Hargood."

"Ben, it's not that," I said softly. "Ben... I want your opinion on my manuscript because it's important to me. Because I love you and I value what you think about my work."

"Honey, what I think doesn't matter-"

"It matters... the most to me. Because I want to write something you're proud of," I said. "Ben, I've read everything of yours!"

"Babe..."

I felt hurt beyond compare. This was something we did for each other because we were going to get married once we were both published. "You haven't shown me anything in months. You're bartending all the time-"

"Because I'm trying to make ends meet," he said.

"You could always edit, too."

"I don't have your qualifications."

"My qualifications are my dad let me beta read for him before sending it off to his editor, that's it."

"I don't have the time to build up a business from scratch like that," he said.

"Look, you had a long night. I'm going to Manhattan by myself. Let's just take a day to calm down and cool off. I'll see you tonight." I reached for the doorknob.

"Alexis?"

I shook my head and turned around.

"I'm working tonight," he said.

I shook my head in disgust and walked out the door with my laptop bag and purse.

I found myself crying on the subway, heading to my parent's house. I tried to cheer up before I got there, but the moment Dad and Mom saw me, they knew something was wrong. Jo-jo, Jace, and Noel came running around the corner, screaming. I tried to be cheerful and hug and kiss them all, but they knew. Jace didn't even ask me for my sparkly pink shoes. By the time Grams and Grandpa Jim showed up, I had washed my face and Mom had reapplied my eyeliner and mascara. She had some concealer, but it was just a yellow blob on my super-pale skin and we had to wipe it off.

Once the kids were asleep for afternoon naps, we talked a little about what was going on with Ben, and I dissolved into tears. "I feel like we've gotten so distant," I said. "I love him, but I never see him anymore and... and I sent him a copy of my manuscript, and I'm waiting on his feedback on it, but he... he's not reading it. He's had it over three weeks!"

"He's not treating your feelings like they're important," Grams noted. "Maybe he's dealing with his own problems, sweetheart."

"But I should know about them," I said.

"He's pulling away," Mom said. "He's dealing with something and he's just not ready to open up to you." She and Dad exchanged a knowing glance. "Maybe you should just let him go through it."

"But..."

"Don't worry about his opinion on the manuscript," Dad said. "If he wants to pull away, let him."

The idea of doing that and just letting go of him seemed so horrifying to me. But I loved him so much. But I liked being wanted and having someone dote on me, and Ben wasn't doing that. The confusion was terrifying.

Mom had me spend the night that night, making up the couch as a bed. I had already called around and gotten someone to cover my morning shift at the coffee shop, and I still had some fresh clothes at their house. She and I watched the Hunger Games together while Dad worked in his office.

"Are you feeling any better?" she asked.

"No, not really," I admitted, taking a bite of popcorn.

"I went through the same thing with your Dad," she admitted. "After I was shot, I just couldn't open up to him and he pulled away. I had to come to him and tell him I loved him."

I held my pillow to me and squeezed.

"Love is not an easy game. I danced around the relationship with you father for about four years, but I knew, deep down, that it was inevitable. Maybe that's what's going to happen with you and Ben. Maybe he just needs a break?"

I shivered. "Maybe," I admitted.

"Breaks and break-ups are never easy."

I nodded. "I just wish I could make him open up to me."

"You can't make him. It's only going to push him further away."

I curled up into a fetal position. "I went out with Tara, Jules, and Nina right after Bonaroo," I admitted. "We ran into some straight guys, and there was this one that just thought I was the greatest thing ever. I told him I had a boyfriend, but he paid attention to everything I said, he opened doors for me, paid for my drinks... it was nice to have somebody pursuing me. I feel like Ben doesn't anymore."

"And I don't like the way Ben's been blowing up."

"I think that had to do with knowing we were going to go see his family," I offered. I had told Mom everything about how nosey and annoying his mother was almost immediately upon return from Nashville, and how much she didn't know her boundaries and smothered Ben and me. When I had told her about the when are you going to get married comment, Lainey had been with us. Lainey had almost cried with laughter when I said that, and then later explained Jenny said that to her when she was dating Uncle Javi and that comment broke them up. I wished Lainey was here tonight; she was always good advice.

"Don't make excuses for him," Mom said.

"I'm not, I swear."

"Alexis, we worry about you breaking up with Ben. Honestly, we do. We don't want you backsliding with your eating disorder."

"I won't. Promise."

"Don't make promises if you can't keep them."

"I don't know if I can," I admitted. "I'll try. Of course, Dad would probably quote Yoda right now."

"Do. Or do not. There is no try," we quoted together. We tried to laugh.

"Your father wouldn't know what to do if you got sick again," she admitted.

"I wouldn't either."

"Just know that breaking up with Ben won't be the end of the world," she said. "We'll do anything to help get you back on your feet. You're probably strong enough to bounce back on your own. You have your own friends and they'll support you."

"I know," I sighed.

"I'm so glad you've gotten your life and your finances so together in the last two years. We're proud of you, even if you don't have a boyfriend, okay? We've got an eight am double-header in the park tomorrow morning, so I have to get to bed. Good night."

"Good-night, Mom."

The next morning after Noel and Jace's baseball game in Central park, I went back to my apartment and made some coffee. I emailed my manuscript to Linda and sat out on the fire escape to enjoy my coffee. I went by Ben's bar and checked to see if he was there just to talk to him. I saw that the hours were listed.

The bar was closed on Sundays.

He had lied to me. I felt embarrassed and foolish. And then, I realized I felt angry. How dare he lie and humiliate me like this? What else had he lied about? For the first time in my life, I started to understand why it was so horrible to lie and how much it hurt.

By four a.m. the next morning, I woke up and started my coffee. Right as I was taking a sip, Ben walked in the door.

He felt like a stranger. I also felt like I had been punched in the stomach all over again.

Neither of us said anything.

"You know I love you," he said. "And I've been reading your manuscript-"

"You lied."

"I didn't lie about anything. I had started it before you asked me on Sunday-"

"That's not what you lied about. Your bar's closed on Sundays."

For some reason, I couldn't cry now. He didn't say anything.

"I'm not going to make excuses," he admitted. "Yeah, I did lie to you."

"If you didn't want to go see my family, why didn't you just tell me? I'd have been okay with it. I know my dad annoys the hell out of you."

"Alexis, I... I don't know why I lied," he said. "But I know I love you."

"Do you really? I don't know if I can be with you if you're going to lie. I've put up with your temper tantrums and outbursts and threatening gestures... everyone's told me to leave you, but I wouldn't! This is the last straw, Ben! I can't put up with this!"

He poured another cup of coffee for himself. "I could promise never to lie to you again, but why would you believe me?"

I nodded, unable to look at him.

"I guess this what it is," he said. "So are you leaving me?"

Finally, hearing the words out of his mouth, I felt the pain in stomach again and my eyes filled with tears, finally. "Yeah, I guess so."

I packed a bag and he watched from the couch as I walked out of the bedroom.

We stared at each other for a long time.

I honestly thought I'd marry Ben, eventually. I had given my virginity to him, we had been so happy together. I honestly thought we'd have that fairy-tale romance of him being my first and only love ever. Sex was such an intimate thing, we had done things that I thought he'd never do to another girl again, ever. I foolishly believed he was the only one I'd ever be with and that I'd never jump from bed-to-bed like so many girls I knew. I felt angry tears gather in my eyes as he nursed the tumblr with a few fingers of whiskey in it.

"So, is this it?" I asked. "Any parting words?"

"I love you, Alexis Harper Castle."