A/N: Thank you for staying with this story. If you need a refresher on Castle's recording, it's in Chapter 1.


A Message for My Lover

Chapter 3

After a successful book signing at Idle Time Books, Castle wandered the streets of Adams Morgan until he hit Connecticut Avenue, and then he made his way slowly back towards Dupont Circle where his hotel was located.

As he walked, he mulled over the problem that had driven him here: Detective Kate Beckett.

Perfectly imperfect, that was what he'd come to believe this woman to be over the years he'd spent shadowing her. He forgave her a lot because of her past – her need for control had been there from the start, a product of the devastation that had wrecked her family the night the police came to their door to inform Kate and her father that her mother was gone and she wouldn't ever be coming home again. There were no worse scenarios than that one.

He made allowances for her insistence on space; a by-product of the same vein of self-protection, he understood. The spikiness and the criticism he could live with since he'd earned a lot of it anyway. The sometimes impossibly high standards she held herself and her team to were more of a plus than a minus; she'd certainly made him a better man and a better writer. Her unwillingness to talk about anything personal was probably the major thing that had held them back. Everyone had flaws, but Kate's failure to communicate with him on a personal level had gradually become more and more self-defeating. Until here they were.

The one thing that hurt Castle more than anything, was the way Kate held him at arm's length when she seemed, at times, perfectly willing to allow other men into her private life and her bed. Since he'd started caring, falling for her really, watching her be with other people while still relying so heavily on him for some things…that cut him to the core. It made him feel as if he wasn't good enough in a lot of respects, while perfectly useful in others. He just hadn't been able to tell her any of these things, a failure for which he understood he shared some blame.

But in all the time he'd known her, and in all the hours he'd spent working alongside her, he'd never had her pegged as a coward before, and he'd never imagined her as cruel. Yesterday's performance in interrogation had changed that view.


Later that night, after a miserable, tasteless, room service dinner, Castle lay in the unfamiliar bed in his hotel room mulling these thoughts over.

"If you love someone, set them free. If they come back they're yours; if they don't they never were," Richard Bach, the American writer, was reputed to have said.

Or was that whole idea just B.S.? And was that really what he was doing here anyway? Or was he actually running away instead because he was in pain and too afraid to confront Kate with the difficult questions that would force them to finally face the truth they'd been long avoiding? Was his fear of her answer to one particular question driving him away from her when he should really be moving closer, getting up in her face and demanding to know why she had repeatedly lied to him?

Around three he growled into the darkness of the stuffy hotel room and threw back the covers. Sleep was not coming tonight. He made coffee with the fancy pod machine in the corner, and then he sat by the window staring out at the traffic down on Dupont Circle, glittering like a diamond tennis bracelet on an elegant wrist.

Unbeknown to Castle, Kate was awake, too. Huddled in a wool blanket in her apartment in New York, with her feet drawn up on a chair, she sat at her desk with her laptop open in front of her. Alexis had reluctantly agreed to forward the MP3 file by email. But only after Kate had reminded her that a) the message was addressed to Kate herself and b) she had already listened to its contents. So the cat was effectively out of the bag. She also promised to take the blame if her dad was upset.

Now, she sat amidst the blue halo cast by her computer screen, listening to Castle's voice on repeat. She had laughed and she had cried at some of the things he had said. The halting, unprepared speech was muffled and full of hisses and crackles caused by the old recording technology. But somehow it seemed more sincere and authentic for these homespun effects. The passion behind his words was so obviously unrehearsed. He had spoken off the cuff as though sitting right in front of her. She wondered if he had meant it when he said that she was never intended to listen to any of his rambling confession. It pained her to think so. At least now she knew why he had taken off for D.C. when he had. But to believe that he should let her go? And to think that he was the one holding them back, maintaining them in some unwanted status quo by remaining by her side? No! He couldn't be more wrong.


By the time she caught up with him, four days had passed since they had last seen one another. The very fact that she missed him so much was deeply telling. She decided this was a lesson she would take on board for once, instead of stuffing the feeling so deep inside that it disappeared for good into that emotional black hole of hers.

He was crossing the street from the entrance to his hotel when Kate spotted him. The traffic was so bad that there was no way to get to him without waiting for the lights to change and then simply running to catch up. She was out of breath when she finally yelled his name.

Castle stopped walking. More froze, actually, before he slowly turned around. He stared at her, so out of place, so unexpected. "Beckett, what are you doing here?" Concern flared in his eyes a heartbeat later. "Is Alexis okay?"

Kate held up both hands, palms facing him, placating. "Alexis is fine."

He pulled out his cell phone and glanced at the screen, checking for missed messages no doubt. "It's not my mother? Is she sick?"

Kate wished that Castle wouldn't instantly reach for the worse case scenario. This reaction was a painful reminder of the price that he had paid for being around her; he was no longer the optimistic, happy-go-lucky man she had first met. But then she supposed spending so much time mulling over death with her and the boys had him expecting the worst by now. It was a casualty of the job – peace of mind. They all suffered from it: a kind of hypervigilance, coupled with a propensity to expect the worst from situations. They'd all seen too much. She had robbed him of his innocence. It was time to give back.

She tried to smile, but her face muscles felt stiff. "Martha's fine, too. Everyone is fine," she reassured him.

"Then I don't understand." His brow knit tight. "Why are you here?" He was looking behind her for some reason, over her shoulder, searching for an explanation to a puzzle he couldn't fathom with just Kate standing there alone in front of him. "Do you have a case in D.C.?"

"No. I'm not here for work. I came to see you," she said.

The look of cold suspicion on his face was unnerving. He wasn't exactly pleased to see her and he wasn't going to make this easy, either. "Me? Why?"

Kate glanced at the ground. "Look, I know it's maybe a shock, me just showing up like this. But I'm sure, if you take a minute, you can figure out why."

She watched as Castle sighed in frustration and his eyes rolled skyward. She wasn't playing games, but it looked as if Castle believed that that was what was going on here; that she was stringing him along.

"I honestly have no idea what would bring you down here looking for me," he said. He sounded hoarse and exhausted, and he looked about as tense as Kate felt. "Did I commit some crime I'm not aware of? Are you here to execute a warrant, Detective?"

The longer he spoke, the harder he looked and the colder he sounded. If his last remark was meant as a joke, it was clear that neither of them found it funny.

Finally, Kate broke eye contact, and she glanced down at the ground again. Their shoes looked funny standing facing one another. If you looked only at their feet, you'd maybe assume that they were close, given the proximity of their bodies to one another. But as she looked up, Castle took a step back, away from her. It was almost as if he had read her mind. That hurt more than it should, and she had to fight the urge to turn tail just to force out the words, "Castle, I listened to the recording you made."

She watched these words sink in, slowly followed by their implication. A little after that came the incredulity, followed closely by the questions.

"What? How?" He glanced down at the messenger bag hanging from his shoulder. His fingers spread and his palm pressed down on the leather flap, protectively. From this tell she assumed that the original vinyl record was secreted somewhere inside. "How could you possibly have—"

"I went looking for you at the loft when you wouldn't answer any of my calls."

Castle shrugged away his discomfort at being confronted. "And?"

"And Alexis let me in."

He stiffened at this news. His features hardened again and his expression seemed strained. Normally there to supervise any meeting between his daughter and the detective, Kate suspected he was worried by the thought of them spending time alone together without him as buffer or referee. "How was she?" he asked a little formally.

"She wasn't rude to me, if that's what you're worried about. Actually, it was kind of nice." Kate smiled. "We had coffee…and we chatted a little." She watched for his reaction when she said, "Then she told me about an MP3 file some D.C. music venue had uploaded to both of you."

Castle's face went redder than she'd ever seen it go before. No matter the gaffs he'd been caught in over the last four years, he'd never looked so embarrassed.

"I thought the digital copy of that recording only went to my account," he said almost to himself.

"The Cloud…apparently." Kate shrugged. She had to fight the urge to laugh because she was fairly certain Castle wasn't up for jokes at this point. "Alexis got a copy, too."

He cursed, and then he took a breath and refocused on Kate. "So, you…you…"

Kate watched him flounder for a second and then she put him out of his misery. "I heard the recording. All of it."

"Did…Alexis?" He swallowed hard.

Kate shook her head. "When she heard it was addressed to me, she asked me to stop it so that she could leave the room."

"My God, you weren't even—"

"Supposed to hear it. Yeah, I guessed as much." She tucked her hair behind her ear and then crossed her arms over her stomach.

"So then why did you listen?" he asked.

"Castle, you were clearly talking to me. I didn't know what was on there at first, and more importantly, I didn't know where you were. I was worried about you. You took off so suddenly. Not a word to anyone. I needed a…a clue."

"And now I'm sure you've figured it out. Why I had to leave. So…" He shrugged. "Why are you even here?"

"God, you can be dense sometimes." Her frustration with both of them was getting the better of her. She flipped her head away and then turned back to him. Her hair danced around her shoulders and whipped across her face.

"Excuse me?" Castle exclaimed.

"That message? I don't want you to let me go, Castle. That's the last thing I want. All this time, I thought we both understood that we were waiting until I was better. But I'm sorry if that wasn't clear. I can see how you might have doubted me."

"You heard me that day," he stated simply, fury hardening his jaw. His eyes were flinty, too.

She nodded and a cracked, "Yes," choked out. Guilt paled her skin and pinched her cheeks.

"Why? So why lie to me? One word and I would have left you alone. But why lie all this time?"

"I didn't want you to leave me. Not forever. I guess I was buying myself time."

"And I paid the price," he said, slapping his hand against his chest.

"It's not like I planned it," she promised.

"Ah, so spur of the moment makes it better?" His mockery turned to anger. "You've had months to come clean, Kate."

"Yes, and I am so sorry, Castle. I couldn't deal with anything back then. So when you asked in the hospital, I took the easiest route out. I was in no shape to face questions or any expectations there might have been..."

He frowned, not understanding. "Expectations?"

"Who'd want the broken girl? Hmm? The fixated screw up with a target on her back and a permanently disfigured body?"

Castle looked appalled by this summation. "Do you think so little of me?"

"No, of course not. It wasn't even really about you. I thought I was doing you a favour, letting you off the hook."

"Beckett, I've never been that shallow. Ever."

"I know." She put her face in her hands for a second and then she raked her fingers through her hair. "I just needed to be able to breathe and for my brain to shut the hell up so I could think clearly. Just for a moment."

"What couldn't you deal with?"

"Everything! I was broken. They finally broke me. You were there…you know what I was dealing with. Montgomery, then Evelyn, Josh, my mom…us…and that was before the shooting."

"You kicked me out, Kate. Said we were over."

"We hurt each other. You scare me sometimes, Castle. A lot of the time, actually."

"Why on earth would—"

"Because you're more honest than I am. You share what you feel. You say what you think. And I know that being around me has stopped you from doing that. And I'm sorry. You've made me better, more open. I hate to think I've made you less honest."

People and traffic moved all around them. They were two fixed points, but the geometry felt all wrong, the streets too broad. They were too far from home and the people that they loved. It left them rudderless.

"If you needed a moment why take three months?" he asked.

"Ever been trapped by a lie? But then I thought we'd dealt with this, put it behind us."

"When?! We never talk about this stuff."

"That day on the swings," Kate said.

Castle laughed bitterly. "You mean the day you vaguely hinted that I might be your guy? Someday."

"Yes," she whispered, raising her eyes to him, pleading. "I thought you understood."

"So did I, and then I heard you the other day, and…well, here we are." He raised his hand and let it fall back to his side, slapping hard against his thigh.

"I hate that I've hurt you, Castle. More than anything I regret that," she told him sincerely. "I just needed time. But I handled things badly. I hope you can understand that some day."

Castle paused for a long moment, his eyes trained over her shoulder again, staring into the distance, and then he nodded sharply as if to acknowledge her apology. Finally, he straightened up, pulling himself back together, and his gaze landed on her once more. "I have a signing to go to," he said gruffly.

Kate blinked hard, unsure she'd heard him correctly. She quickly recovered. "Sure. I have work, too…so…" She thumbed over her shoulder, not sure where she was indicating other than backwards.

"You heading back to New York?" He almost sounded disappointed. Kate took this as a positive sign and clung to it.

"Yeah. Gates would only give me the day." She swiped at her cheek and sniffed. "Sorry I can't stay longer."

"No, yeah, thanks for coming down," Castle mumbled, like a mourner at a funeral receiving condolences from a distant acquaintance.

"Right. So, you'll think about what I said?" Kate asked, finding his eyes one more time and holding onto his gaze. "Please don't walk away now. We were so close."

The atmosphere was horribly awkward. It was as if their anchor line had snapped and they had been cut adrift from one another. A gulf had opened up and it was rapidly getting bigger.

Castle nodded. "I will. But no promises," he said curtly.

"No, of course not," Kate quietly agreed, though her disappointment was on full audio-visual display. "Good luck with the signing," she added pointlessly, before finally turning to walk away, feeling as if she was in shock.