Chapter Three:
Doesn't want him? Doesn't want him . . . how can he? It's just so very wrong that he could ever think that.
Kate stares at his closed-eyed, tense postured form and her heart quakes. Splinters fall from it slicing her up inside, cracks form and threaten destruction and it almost breaks her for a moment – seeing him breaking and in this amount of pain. This is exactly what she was trying to protect him from when she postponed admitting to remembering. She might have lied initially to buy herself some time to heal – but it wasn't wholly selfish – because she lied for him too. Lied so that she could come to him as unbroken as possible – to give them the best shot possible. Lied to stop herself from destroying him - by pulling him in as a lifeline and then inevitably shoving him away as she grew stronger.
Because he's always been the one with all the faith in them so far, the one perpetually pushing them forwards – keeping them together - so for a moment Beckett fills up with anger. Cold anger that he could jump to such a conclusion so quickly; hot anger that he could demonstrate so little faith in her – in them. But then the anger subsides under the wake of everything she's learned about him in the past four years. How reactive to stuff he is. How impulsive. How fiercely he loves – how he either keeps his relationships totally casual or he dives in fully offering everything that he is.
She's learnt to understand him – that his history might at first look telling – but that the real story is not actually the one it might appear to be.
After all - Kyra left him behind. Meredith cheated on him and then abandoned the life they'd built together. And Gina – well she wanted to control him. She enjoyed it – enjoyed him only as long as she could.
And still he's the most loyal person she's ever met. Still has such an open heart – still looks at the world with child-like curiosity and wonder, despite his fascination with murder and mayhem. He's proved himself to her over and over again – and now she has to give him everything that she's withheld. She has to leap now – and trust that he'll catch them both.
"Castle – please look at me."
He shakes his head, and as he turns away towards the windows of the loft she can see he's struggling for air. His broad shoulders are heaving and he's fighting to stay calm.
Well if he won't look at her she's talking anyway. One of them has too.
"If you won't look at me then just listen okay? Just stand there and don't say anything and just let me give you the explanation that you won't ask me for." She pleads.
His head shakes again.
"No. I don't want it Kate. I really, really don't. I know you're sorry. I know you don't want to hurt me. It's not your fault that you don't feel the same way and I don't blame you for not loving me – but you can't ask me not to hate you just a little bit for letting me believe that you did – that you could."
His voice is low and rough, the words ground out as he's fighting to hold himself together.
It breaks her heart some more.
"Castle . . . I."
She gets no further into a reply before the writer finally turns back around to face her. His eyes are dark and stormy, look black rather than blue, and they're full to brimming with emotion – tears sit on his lashes, but he won't let them fall. It's obvious what it's costing him to wrap his dignity around him like armor. And Kate never wants to see him like this ever again – so rigidly protecting himself from her.
"What good is an explanation to me now? I've already gone over it and over it Kate. How I could be such a fool - could have deceived myself so badly and allowed myself to see only what I wanted to see. And you know what realized in the end? Huh? I wasn't. I wasn't deceiving myself, wasn't the fool I'd at first thought I was. You led me on. You let me believe it, no more than that you made me a believer Kate. All that was missing were the words – but the subtext it was clear. You knew I loved you and you used it against me - held onto me with it – just so you'd have someone still there. Everyone was gone but me – and I'm sorry for that Kate – truly. But you had no right – I deserved more after four years beside you than to be used as a band aid to hold you together – only to be cast aside when . . .
She cannot hear anymore – she cannot bear it.
"Castle stop. Stop it." She yells at him. He falls silent reluctantly, a scowl on his heartbroken handsome face.
"You are so out of line Rick. And you are so wrong." She tells him angrily.
Kate gets up from the couch and paces away from him. An oppressive silence has descended on the loft, except for the echo of her footsteps on the hardwood floor. The cop's hands tangle themselves in the honeyed waves of her hair, she feels like ripping it out in frustration. Because how dare he think so little of her? But how dare she blame him for the situation she's created? God what a mess! Finally she regains enough of her composure to speak again, she knows she'd better make every word count now – and she'd better spell it out so clearly that he won't struggle to understand.
"If you believed before you over heard me that day - that I loved you - then I'm glad you did and I'll never be sorry for it; because it's the truth Castle. It's the truth. I do. I always have I think, I started falling for you the moment we met. I would never lead you on, or use you. In fact I'd rather die Castle - than to see you suffering so. I lied and I'm sorry – I can see it was a bad decision now – made when I was at my weakest – but a bad decision all the same. I just wasn't ready for you Castle. And I didn't know back then how to love like you do – with all of me. And I didn't want to give you anything less. And we censor Castle – you and I. We hold the truth of what we feel back for differing reasons maybe, but we both of us censor what it is we feel. You do it because you fear it's not reciprocated, I do it because I cannot bear to lose it. And no matter the why I do it – because here I stand and I'm losing it all the same. I'm so sorry Castle – I always meant to tell you the truth in the end, confess that I heard you and ask you to forgive me. I didn't want the start of us to be when I was broken. I wanted to start strong – fearless – Nikki Heat in Kate Beckett's body don't you see? And I was scared – really scared that maybe you didn't mean it – maybe you were just trying to give me what you suspected I wanted because we'd reached the end. I was dying Castle – dying in the grass and if I was leaving this life, you gave me love to carry with me. It was beautiful – and I was grateful, and I held onto it in my silence as best I could."
Kate stops to take a breath and Castle goes to speak – she silences him with a look.
"I've been in therapy Rick – tearing down the wall and finally learning to let go of the past. For you. So I could be with you, because I'd finally accepted that you did mean it Castle – you meant it and you'd be there and eventually I'd be strong enough and we'd be together. I was healing Castle – and that meant we had to wait before we could evolve, but I don't want to wait anymore. I don't want to circle you forever. But I do want you. I do need you and I'll never forgive you Castle if you don't give us a chance. I'm not perfect, I never will be . . . but I'm as tired of waking up without you as you are me."
He stares at her stunned. Like she's taken all the words right out of his head, stolen them with her confession, and replaced them with foreign ones. He wasn't expecting what just came out of her mouth. And his raw broken heart is unwillingly to believe it – and yet . . . he does. Oh wow . . . he does. How can he not? He can see the truth of what she's telling him in every tired line on her face.
The silence stretches and with every heartbeat he can see her grow more anxious, but every heartbeat frees him from the previous pain a little more.
He can breathe.
He can breathe again.
"Please Castle – just say something."
"Kate . . . "
"Castle?"
"I . . . I love you."
