She tears a hole in the tissue that's in her hand, ripping the thin fabric with the sad, nervous twitch her forefinger and thumb are making. She has her legs curls up in the chair, feeling small, and she hasn't spoken a word since she arrived. She can't admit to herself that she's heartbroken, she doesn't know if she has that right, therefore doesn't know if she has the right to admit that she hurts... all over.
And a part of her knows that it was this kind of hurt that was stopping her from taking that plunge in the first place.
It's like the rock that used to be her heart is now sitting in her stomach, the tears that she wants and knows are going to flow are stuck in her throat, the blood in her veins feeling like it's struggling to course. "Castle found out." She struggles, her eyes down toward her thighs.
Dr. Burke narrows his eyes toward her, slowly twirling his pen in between in fingers, and waits her out.
"That I've been lying..." The tears don't burn as she feels them spill over her eye lashes, "about my shooting."
Her mind keeps imagining him in observation, watching her go after Bobby, then imagining how much it must have... shattered him to hear her admit that she could remember every single second of when she was lying in the grass, with him cradling her, pleading with her to stay. Then she replays his words. "I love you, Kate." She remembers exactly how they sounded, exactly what inflection he used, the look in his eyes. But that still doesn't extinguish her doubts, her fears of what they meant, or didn't mean. If anything, the feeling as if he's whispering them in her ear right next to her only serve to fan the patina of doubt that they seem to come with.
"And... when you say found out..." Burke prompts her.
The rock in her stomach churns, "I was interrogating a suspect, and he tried to say he didn't remember what I needed to know. I didn't know Castle was watching from observation when I told him that I remembered being shot."
Burke clicks his pen and puts his notepad on the table next to his arm chair. "We never have talked about what Castle said that day. Do you think you're ready?" He asks, interlocking his fingers together and putting them in his lap.
Her throat quivers as she as if to swallow the audible part of her tears. "No..." She mutters, lethargically shaking her head and enlarging the hole in the tissue she needs but hasn't even bothered to use. "But I need to." She adds after Burke waiting her out. That's why she's made the progress she has. All he does is get her to admit that she needs to put her pieces back together, and then makes her do it herself. "I wasn't ready to hear that."
"Would you be ready now?"
That catches her attention. She lifts her head and looks up to him. She shrugs her shoulders. "I don't know." She admits, being honest. "I'd like to think that I would be, but I wouldn't. I wouldn't want to lose what we have."
"Is that how you feel now?"
She rages inside her, battling emotions and neither side winning. "Yes." She finally admits. What they have together now... what they had was safe to her. One of the few things she could count on to be good in her life. No real drama, no real strings attached, no obligations, no hurt feelings. "He's just supposed to be..." She starts, rocking her head off to the side as she lets her gaze fall out the window.
"Be what?" He asks, not in a way that says for her to continue, but that he wants a real answer.
"My partner?" She answers, as if asking permission if that's the right answer. "My friend... just... be there to... I don't know, ease the burden."
"Is that what he's supposed to be... or what you want him to be?"
She knows she would be lying to herself if she answered the way she wants to. "What do you mean?" She asks, putting her attention back on the tissue in her hands, that she finally decides to use and presses it just on the corners of her eyes.
"When you say that he's supposed to be your partner, what you're saying is you need him to be your partner. But Kate, what do you want him to be to you?"
Kate closes her eyes, feeling her arms snake themselves around her, grasping her forearms before bracing one of her shoulders. "I... something... something more."
"Just remember what we've talked about, Kate. When your mother died, you only went after the things you needed. You convinced yourself that what you needed is to get justice for her, that you believed that's what you wanted, and Castle has done that."
She nods, "He dug up my mothers case, helped me get this far, and now I feel I need him to help me finish it. But..."
"But now..." He starts for her.
She looks out the window again and searches her heart. "Now he's... he's something more to me now."
"But there's something holding you back." He states.
She sniffles, dabs her nose with her torn tissue and looks down to her lap. "When he told me he loved me that day... he sounded honest and... like he meant every word, but..." Her heart breaks, the first real feeling she feels out of it since all this started as the next admission forms in her mind. "But I had just been shot." She says, her hand pressing against the scar on her chest. "I was lying on the ground with a bullet inside of me and he made it about himself." She argues, sad, desperate anger seeping into her soiled voice, the direction intended, she doesn't bother to find out before she continues. "He wasn't telling me because he actually loved me. He was making something tragic that happened to me about himself when he said that."
Burke's brow perks and head tilts downward. "You're afraid he didn't really mean it."
Her heart goes hot stone again and sinks back down into her upset stomach. "He wouldn't have said it any other way. He thought I was dying. If he had actually managed to take that bullet for me, and it was him instead of me, I might have said the same thing." She weakly says, knowing that it's most likely not true.
"Would you have meant it?"
Her mind flashes an image of him sitting in the chair beside her desk at the precinct that she's labeled as his, a boyish smile dancing across his face as he looks at her with that bright, blue twinkle in his eye, looking as if he's just the happiest being around her. "Yes."
"So... isn't it safe to say that he did too?"
She shakes her head, her lack of faith not in him, but herself. Or... "If I..." She sniffles again as she tries to regain herself, "if I throw myself into a relationship with him, I would give it my all. I would devote myself to him because he deserves someone who would do that for him. I would do what I felt I haven't been able to with everyone else and I would try. But..."
"Something else is stopping you."
She nods sadly, another wave of fresh tears falling down her lashes. "He's been divorced twice." She admits, looking at Burke over her tears. "Marriage... to me, is supposed to be forever. It's supposed to be a promise you never break. But if he can make that promise to two other women and go back on them... I've tried so hard to be open to him, and I know that if I were to make that promise to him, and he goes back on them the same he did with Meredith and Gina..." Her throat closes, "I don't think I could pull myself out of that."
Burke's brow knits together, "Have you asked him about his divorces?"
She pauses before shaking her head, dabbing her eyes with the useless tissue in her hands. "No."
"So why are you so certain it was him?"
Maybe she's been afraid to look at it from anyone else's perspective. "Left over from when we first started working together." She says, thinking back to his gruff, playboy self. "He was a different person back then, and when I found out that he'd been been through two divorces... with the way he was, it stuck with me that it was something he did."
"But you don't know that for sure, Kate. Divorce can be very complicated, especially if his daughter is involved." He says, trying to even the playing field for her partner.
She feels a smile prick at the edges of her mouth, but it feels alien. "He's an amazing father." She says with a sad smile, looking up to Burke again. "It's the first thing that convinced me he wasn't the person he showed he was. The way he is with Alexis, how caring he is, how quickly he puts her before himself... that's who he really is underneath all the... show."
"And you trust the person you know he is?"
She smiles warmly again, but then knowing it doesn't matter anymore at this point. "Yes." She shakes are head quickly again, trying to physically shake away the hope that she just felt blossoming in her system, making her feel almost normal again. "But it doesn't matter now."
"And why is that?" He asks, not curious, but challenging.
"I spoke to him an hour ago. That's where he told me he knew. He told me that he's waited too long for me, that..." She sucks in a stuttering breath, not ready to break... just yet. Not here. "That he can't do it anymore... that he was giving up." She wraps her arms around her legs and hugs them tighter against her chest before smothering her arms between herself. "I waited too long... I know that now. Just... excuse after excuse of why I couldn't just give him a chance yet."
"Those excuses were real, Kate."
"So was he." She adds, defending him and tearing herself in the process. If nothing else, she deserves it. "I broke his faith in me. He told me that there was nothing left between us to save. And if he's giving up on us... so do I. For my own sake."
"Is that really what you want?"
"No." She says, with another sad shake of her head. "But I have to. I can't force him to give me another chance, I've asked him to do that too many times. I don't think he could bring himself to do it again after what I did. So at this point, I have to give him up while I'm still able to pull myself out of this. He's given up on me..." She closes her eyes and closes the door on the part of her that feels all of this, icing herself over. "So I have to give up on him."
She stands up, feeling like a walking piece of cold iron, and heads for the door.
A/N: Chapter kind of short... and hard to read. I understand. I had no idea that you guys would have a hard time with the last chapter until the reviews started coming in. Thank you for reading! I wanted to devote a chapter to a conversation between Beckett and Burke without tainting it with any other outside voices. Thanks for your support. :)