A Message for My Lover
Chapter 4
The train ride back to New York passed in a blur of unseen landscape and life's mess on a constant, upsetting loop. Kate took a cab directly from Penn Station to the precinct. Once there she put in the best part of a half-day's shift. No point sitting at home moping. Work had always been a constant for her; even in the worst of times it had carried her through with its demand that she focus. Today was no different, she needed its rigours to hold her up. Because she really had no idea when or even if Castle would come back to her. A part of her wanted to delay the inevitable for as long as possible, especially if it meant that he was leaving for good. So her job was a perfect forest to hide in, even if she did stray off the path now and again to think of him.
The boys didn't ask where she had disappeared to for more than half the day, and they pretended not to notice how sad and distracted she appeared, for which she was very grateful. Even Gates stayed away. She popped her head out of her office once, staring in surprise upon finding her best detective back on duty not twelve hours after she had requested a full day's leave. But for once she disappeared back inside her office without asking any awkward questions.
Kate finally left the precinct for home around eight o'clock that night. She arrived back at her apartment with a microwave meal for one and a pint of Ben & Jerry's ice cream, both purchased with little enthusiasm from the corner bodega along with a mediocre bottle of wine. For a second night in a row, she spent a restless few hours trying to read and relax, and when that failed, she walked the floor of her apartment to work off an excess of nervous energy, pausing every now and then to replay Castle's crackly recording until she had memorized his words and the rhythm of his voice by heart.
Later, much closer to midnight, while she was lying in bed attempting to sleep, she thought she heard a noise out in the living room. She rolled over onto her back and listened for a long time, her body taut, muscles on alert for danger, her hearing attuned for any repeat of the sound she thought she'd heard. Eventually, when it seemed as if she must have imagined it, she turned onto her side and fell into an uneasy, fragmented sleep.
Castle finished up at Kramerbooks & Afterwords Café around six. Graciously, and with more enthusiasm than he really felt, he thanked everyone for coming out at such short notice. Before he left, he gave special thanks to the assembled bookstore staff, taking time for selfies and signing autographs until all of his fans were sated.
It's often said that men have a one-track mind. Well, Richard Castle's mind had operated on twin tracks that entire afternoon. Since seeing Kate Beckett again, he could think of nothing else, and so he had struggled to focus on the line of eager, smiling faces arriving at the signing table in front of him. Even making polite small talk and signing his own name was a mental strain. He wasn't confused exactly, more like conflicted. He knew that he still loved Kate, but so did she, and she had lied to him about that. The only new information he now had in his possession was her thin explanation as to why she had lied in the first place.
But as the minutes ticked by and the longer he thought about it, he came to the conclusion that maybe it wasn't so thin. He tried to be generous. She had come looking for him after all. And he had never been shot, nor had he lost a parent or a mentor. Aside from some early bullying and the shock of having to raise a baby by himself, Castle had to acknowledge that he had led a pretty charmed life. Even now, the option before him was a good one: Kate had heard his garbled recording and she had run towards him, not away. She had told him she didn't want him to set her free, quite the opposite. She had said that they were nearly there. The questions he had to answer for himself were: was that enough and could he really go through with letting her go if they were on the verge of achieving the relationship he had always wanted? Could he trust her was the bottom line?
On his way back to the Kimpton Hotel, he called his agent, Paula Haas. "Change my train ticket, would you? Paula, please? I need to go home. No, I need to go home tonight."
When Kate rose the next morning, she put the coffee on to brew and then she went to fetch the newspaper from the hallway. Before she could open the front door, she discovered a buff-colored envelope lying on the wooden floor just inside her vestibule. She bent to pick it up. Turning it over in her hands, looking for any marking or indication where it might have come from, she seized upon the sudden realization that this had been last night's mysterious noise. Someone had slipped the envelope under her door, and that was what she had heard when she had been lying in bed trying to sleep.
Somewhat relieved that she wasn't going crazy, she tore into the envelope as she made her way back to the kitchen.
The vinyl record, in its waxed paper sleeve, slipped out into her hand. There was no longer any mystery as to the identity of her nocturnal visitor. Kate felt sad that her partner hadn't knocked on her door, and then she felt a little relieved, too. Then she felt bad for feeling relieved when she read the handwritten notecard that Castle had slipped inside the record sleeve.
His note read:
Kate, I keep messing this up. But the words on this recording are true and from the heart, and I'm glad that you heard them. I made this record for you, so it's right that you should have it. I hope we can get past this, somehow. Castle x
She placed the note and the recording on the kitchen counter, and then she poured herself a cup of coffee and sank down onto a stool to catch her breath. This had to stop. Something had to change. They couldn't keep doing this kind of damage to one another.
While she showered and picked out clothes to wear, she replayed the content of Castle's note in her head. He had let her off the hook, again, claiming to be the one who had messed up. She had to make him understand that she was the one at fault here, and she had to make it clear that she was willing to take responsibility for all the ways their relationship had slid off track.
'I hope we can get past this, somehow,' was a far tougher sentiment to crack. It reeked of a pragmatic, resigned decision to move on. It chilled her to even imagine him constructing this sentence, let alone putting the words down on paper for her to read.
A good detective, she trusted the evidence, making the calculated assumption that Castle was back in the city if the hand-delivered envelope was any kind of indicator. It was possible, thought highly unlikely, that he had arranged for someone else to slip the vinyl record beneath her door. But she couldn't see it. This had all the hallmarks of her partner – mad at her but unable to stay mad for too long. Besides, he loved her and she believed in him.
She shocked herself, over that first cup of coffee, when she realized that she believed in him more than she had believed in anyone, ever.
As for his sudden return to New York, she had no idea what to make of it – was it scheduled or rescheduled? She found herself hoping for the latter and dressing with more care than usual in any case, or maybe that was just in case. He could be busy, he would still be hurt, but it wouldn't hurt for her to look her best if there was any chance that she might run into him that day.
Before she left home, on impulse, she sent him a text message:
Thanks for the recording. Wish you'd knocked on my door last night. Would be good to find some time to talk if you're around. I miss you. Kate x
This message was about as bold as she'd ever got in her written communication with him. She felt a visceral thrill when she pressed send with her heart thumping and her face uncharacteristically warm. It felt like buying a lottery ticket for the Powerball. She just hoped that her odds of winning the jackpot were a whole lot higher.
The closer she got to the precinct, the more her hope dissolved. Her text message remained unanswered, no typing bubble hovering on Castle's end of their historic iMessage exchange.
By the time she arrived at the precinct, she had convinced herself that all was lost. Her phone was still a dead zone of unanswered messages and one hurriedly aborted phone call. She walked into the lobby feeling as if she was doing the walk of shame; only the shame she felt was of a completely different kind than simply wearing day-old underwear and panda eyes lined with smudged mascara. It was the kind of shame that woke you up in the middle of the night to cower beneath the bed sheets in mortification, berating your own stupidity.
When she got off the elevator, she would have sworn that she could smell the wonderfully rich scent of coffee. She wrote it off as a sense memory, not daring to hope it could be anything else. As she passed the bullpen's wire-mesh enclosure, she imagined she caught a glimpse of thick dark hair, cut in the precise, soft layers she had long-wished to disrupt with her fingers. She wrote this fanciful vision off, too, training her gaze on the floor, forcing herself to get a grip before she drowned in wishful regret with a day of serious work ahead.
But when she finally turned the corner and paused, she had a strong feeling that her whole life was turning a corner, too. If she had any influence over what happened next, that was what would happen. Because she wasn't fantasising at all: Castle was there, sitting right by her desk in his usual seat, a takeout cup of coffee waiting on her blotter as if the last four days had never even happened.
She found herself speaking softly, almost reverently, when Castle looked up from where his hands were neatly folded in his lap to watch her approaching. "Hey," she said.
"Hey," he replied, politely rising half out of his chair as she drew nearer. He offered her a gentle, lop-sided grin, which quickly turned to concern. "You okay?"
Wordlessly, she nodded while her throat clogged up and her eyes shone damply. "You're here," she said eventually. The disbelief in her voice was unmistakable, as was the profound sense of relief at seeing him again.
"That I am."
Hurriedly, Kate took off her leather jacket and hung it on the back of her chair. Castle watched her every movement. She sank down in front of him and lowered her voice so that no one else could hear.
"Does this mean—" She paused to bite her lip and catch her breath. Unaccustomed to rushing in and feeling so nervous, she reached for the coffee cup to warm her hands and stop them from shaking. "Did you think about what I said?" she asked, her voice barely above a whisper.
Castle nodded slowly. His expression was serious and considered. It terrified her.
"And?" she asked, quickly adding, "Why didn't you knock on my door last night?" to forestall his answer to her first question.
Castle's eyebrows shot up. "Honestly?"
Kate nodded. "I think that would help."
"I wasn't ready to see you again," he admitted.
"Okay. That's honest. I understand. And today? You're here now. Should I infer anything from that?"
"You hurt me a lot, Kate," he said.
She almost curled up in shame. "I know, and I am so sorry. Is there any way we can get past this?"
"You know I did a whole book signing on autopilot yesterday. This was all I could think about. You were all I could think about."
"Me, too," Kate admitted.
They were being more honest with one another than they'd ever been before, and in the middle of the bullpen, no less. But somehow, they were only aware of one another. The rest of the world has melted away.
"Castle, I really want to fix this. I meant what I said in my text this morning. I miss you."
Surprisingly, this amused him. "We only saw each other yesterday."
"Yeah, well, things weren't exactly good between us yesterday. The way we left everything…"
"I hate fighting with you, Kate," Castle said, dropping his head into his hands. He raked his fingers through his hair just exactly as Kate had wished to before he looked up again.
"Me, too." She fiddled with the lid of the coffee cup. "So…what do we do now?" she asked, breaking the awkward silence.
Castle took a deep breath. He looked as if he was building up to something big. "What do you say we just take things from here? Clean slate?"
"Did you sleep at all last night?" Kate asked as she studied the dark circles she'd just noticed stamped beneath each eye. They seemed to have stepped over their intimacy boundaries somewhere in the last few days without any discussion. The freedom to speak as she saw was actually very liberating.
Castle leaned in to place a hand on the desk in front of her. He tapped his short nails on the wood to get her attention. "Kate, did you hear what I just said?"
"Take what…things? What does that mean? A clean slate?" she asked. Her heart was hammering so hard that she felt sick.
"It means…whatever you're ready for," he told her calmly. "Whatever you can handle. Partners, friends… I just—"
"Castle, friends? I don't think—" Her voice rose automatically, and then she quelled it, breaking off when the writer interrupted her.
"Kate, just hear me out."
"Castle, no."
He closed his eyes slowly and then reopened them. His voice sounded hoarse. "Please? Stop and think about this for a second," he pleaded, imagining he was hearing, as so often in the past, the worst-case scenario about to play out.
"I've thought about nothing else, believe me," she admitted.
Castle thumped his chest. "This is my fault. That recording…so stupid."
She reached out to touch his arm. "No, Castle. That recording was…sweet and honest. It was great. A real game-changer, in fact."
He eyed her dubiously. "Really?"
Kate nodded. "Mm-hmm. Look, what I'm trying to say is...what if I don't want to wait? None of this is your fault. And I'm not fixed yet, but I don't feel so broken anymore, either. So what if…what if I want to do this? Us, I mean. Try being more than partners, more than just really good friends." She smiled nervously as she raised her eyes to meet his, searching for an answer in his face. "Is that…even an option at this point?" she asked.
Castle did a double take, looking off to the side and back again immediately. It was almost as if he couldn't believe she was sitting there in front of him asking for this, and he had to check. "So you— Really?" He seemed beyond surprised.
She nodded, smiling more broadly at his confusion, which made him look kind of befuddled and adorable. "Rick, I didn't…don't want you to let me go. Not then and not now. I know you love me and that isn't the answer. And this is not me coming back to you because you left." She touched her fingers to her chest. "I never left, Castle. I never left you. Not in here," she said, flattening her hand over her heart. "Not even when I was up at the cabin by myself all those weeks. Not then and not now. You were always here," she said, pressing harder against her sternum, "with me. I'm sorry I didn't make that clear before."
By the time Kate had finished speaking, tears shone in their eyes. As they continued to look at one another, Castle moved closer. He slid his hand under her desk so that he could discreetly lay his fingers on her knee. Kate dropped her hand from her heart and overlaid it with her partner's. The room seemed to shimmer out of focus around them. In that moment, no one and nothing else mattered.
The boys could tell that something was up. Mom and dad were being too quiet, whispering intimately to each other across Beckett's desk. No one was drinking coffee either, and that was always a sign that something big was going down.
"You guys okay?" Esposito yelled across the room. But his interruption had little effect.
Castle nodded and cleared this throat. "Peachy," he called back without even looking round.
"Can I ask what changed your mind?" Kate leaned even closer to ask.
"You, actually."
She touched her chest. "Me?"
"Yes. You, wanting me back. Coming down to DC after me. It felt like this wasn't a one-sided thing anymore, that I wasn't holding all this hope out by myself. No one's ever done anything like that for me before."
Kate felt sad to hear this. As grand gestures went, a three-hour train ride was a pretty small one. "You know you deserve so much more than that, Castle. I'm going to make sure you get it."
His face lit up and his eyebrows danced. "Sounds...promising."
Kate couldn't help grinning with him as their serious talk morphed into something more playful and flirtatious. "Oh, it will be. You won't know what's hit you once I get started."
"I look forward to that," Castle said. He looked pleased as punch.
Kate smiled softly and squeezed his fingers before withdrawing her hand. "Look…I have this report to write," she said with regret, "and I know we still have to talk…a lot, but after…" She pursed her lips and a beautiful blush crept onto her cheeks.
Castle nodded, a smile tugging at the corners of his mouth. "After is great. I can make myself scarce or—"
"Stay!" She reached for his hand again and gave it another tug. "Please? I know it's just paperwork." She frowned, earnest all of a sudden not to let him out of her sight. "But would you stay?"
The writer looked genuinely surprised and then delighted. "Sure. Of course. I'd be honored. How about I make us some fresh coffee?"
"That'd be great," she said. Her eyes were twinkling and she looked happier than she had in months. They both did.
As her partner stood, Kate dropped her head and her hair fell forward to partially cover her face. When she looked up again she appeared slightly bashful but also somewhat besotted. The writer was still hovering close by, staring at her mouth as if he badly wanted to kiss her. Kate had to fight the urge to follow him into the break room and close the blinds.
Finally, with some regret, Castle shook himself and turned away.
"Oh, and Castle?" Kate called softly.
He turned back immediately, so much hope in his voice when he said, "Yeah?"
"Thank you. For everything you do for me. You make my life better in ways you'll never know."
He looked surprised by her gratitude and then proud. "You're welcome. It's my pleasure."
"I mean it. You're a good man," she said.
Castle frowned slightly but he nodded anyway.
In the next moment, Kate's expression melted into something altogether more playful. Having finally expressed her thanks to her partner, openly and sincerely for once, there was room for a little flirty suggestion. She had more work to put in, plenty of hurt to make up for, she knew that, but she also relished the opportunity to show him, every day from now on, how deeply she felt about him and just how sorry she really was. There would be no more holding back. She would prove to him that he could trust her.
So she beckoned him closer, dropping her voice, since she was aware that the boys were still trying to listen in to their conversation. "Now, if you were to be a naughty man later," she whispered, arching her eyebrows suggestively, "I might even sing for you. You do like it when I sing, I believe. I'm sure a private performance could be arranged. I particularly like to sing in the shower," she said, miraculously managing to keep a straight face while Castle's eyes grew saucer-wide.
Not for the first time, Castle was seriously glad that Kate had listened to his rambling, uncensored recording. His body flushed with heat as he allowed himself to experience the desire for his partner that he'd long been forced to suppress. He ached to touch her, to kiss her lips, to run his fingers through her hair. A thousand fantasies flooded his feverishly turned on brain all at once, and then he winked at her. "You got yourself a deal, detective. Better hurry up with that paperwork," he said, giving her a pointedly heated look.
He watched with pleasure as a rosy blush of arousal climbed his partner's neck and warmed her cheeks. She looked delightfully flustered for once.
"Yeah, we really need to get out of here," Kate agreed, her eyes flashing.
She rose suddenly from her chair, and before Castle could ask what was going on, Kate grabbed him by the hand and dragged him off across the bullpen towards the nearest stairwell.
The last anyone heard was a high-pitched squeal followed by some crazy laughter before the partners disappeared from view and the fire door slammed shut.
The End
Thank you for reading and for your kind reviews along the way. When you enjoy a story, your comments are what make the hours of work worthwhile.
