A/N: So I feel like I shouldn't have written so much in the last one. For a one shot, it was pretty long and I kinda took Beckett to places I wasn't expecting. So I'm bringing this one back to the original aim of my series… it's a small oneshot on a TINY part of an event of an episode. Well, it's a composition of a few parts. Kate Beckett thinks about love and loss

I have to thank Shutterbug5269 for help with the Will thing.

What is love?

"Exactly how many times have you been married Castle?" she asked, knowing the answer. She was a fan, she knew that he had been married to Meredith, Alexis' mother, and Gina, the pretty blonde publicist. He just spoke about marriage so much that she couldn't help but question him about it.

He looked at her as he quickly answered, "twice", his piercing blue eyes questioned her, as if she knew that was the case. He may have been good, but she was better.

"That's it?" she replied, sort of hoping for some juicy gossip.

"Isn't that enough?" Kate couldn't believe it! Lothario Ricky Castle was a romantic deep down. If that wasn't some magazine-worthy gossip! "How about you?" he asked, grinning.

"Me, no." she replied as quickly as she could. There was silence as her companion pondered what she said, staring at her. The silence seemed to drag on forever, but she was sure it probably lasted no more than a second. Quieter than before, she added, "Never been."

"Really?" he questioned, full of disbelief. She hoped that he wasn't trying to find a story. This was not something that she had wanted to talk about.

Kate answered quickly, her lips forming a frown, "yep".

The two neared the playground, with Kate reaching out to the metal fence and Richard leaning against it. "You'd be good at it. You're both controlling and disapproving. You should really try it." He tried to catch her eyes, but she avoided his gaze.

"I'm not an 'if first you don't succeed' kind of a girl Castle. When it comes to marriage I'm" she paused, sharply breathing "more of a 'one and done' type."

He seemed to ponder what she had said, before continuing the inquisition, "Any serious candidates?"

He looked at him, and he genuinely seemed to be curious. She didn't blame him; she knew so much about him and he knew so little. The only actual facts he knew were that she was a detective and she had read at least three of his books. That was all he knew for certain. She wanted to answer and opened her mouth to tell him, but she couldn't. She hoped that he didn't see the pain in her eyes and searched the park for distraction. Seeing the girl they were looking for, Kate buried her past and did her job.

Kate was always good at compartmentalising. When she had a fight with her best friend at the age of eight, she had returned home from school without her parents realising anything was different. When she had gotten into Stanford, she was ecstatic, but was able to control her excitement to the point that people didn't notice the wide grin on her face. When her mother had been killed she compartmentalised too. It was who she was. She always buried the pain. There was something about Rick Castle, however, that seemed to bring up the painful memories of her life.

That night she sat at her small kitchen gable, eating the remnants of her dinner and reflecting on her day. That wasn't unusual; she always thought about her day over dinner. It was what she thought about that disturbed her. She kept replaying the conversation she had shared with Castle.

"Any serious candidates?"

She was awful with relationships. It wasn't for lack of trying. She often went out on Saturday nights, but hated the fact that romance was dead. It used to be so much easier. A lump grew in her throat as she thought about the past again. She hated the aftermath of relationships, especially the good ones. She hated that no matter how good a relationship seemed it could always end. When she was 13 and began dating, she thought love was forever. She looked at her parents, and they were so in love. When her first boyfriend, Luke Jensen, broke up with her, she was heart broken. As smart as she was, she thought they were forever. They weren't. It was at 15 that she decided on having a 'once and done' policy. Just because she was realistic, didn't mean that she wasn't in pain.

The relationship with Will still hurt. She told herself that it was always going to hurt the most – especially as it was her most serious relationship yet. Since her mother had died she had struggled to get close to people, especially men. People leave, not always by choice, but people leave. Her mother had already left and she didn't want to put herself through a break up. She had let her guard down and let a man into her life and the pain that came from that was her punishment.

She understood why it still hurt. Some things are just so awful that you never get over them. She just wasn't sure how they had gotten there. Where did it all go wrong? Will had seemed perfect at first. He took her out to nice restaurants. He opened doors, held chairs and walked her as far as the front door of her building. He seemed so perfect. He was handsome and charming. He could cook. He wanted forever, not just a relationship, or at least that was what he had said. As it happens, charming guys lie too.

She took a deep breath and scooped up the final piece of gnocchi. With the piece of bread that sat beside the bowl, she scooped up the remaining sauce. She had to stop vilifying Will. In his defence, he hadn't lied. In fact, he was completely upfront through the entire relationship. She knew, from the start, where he wanted to be career-wise. She knew, from the start, that there was a good chance that he would have to relocate. She knew this, but she felt so deceived the day that he had gotten a call offering him the job in Boston. No, he didn't lie, not about that. He lied to her every day for five months, telling her how much he loved her. He was lying because if he had loved her, he wouldn't have gone. If he loved her, he would have stayed. If it was the other way around, she would have stayed.

She had loved Will so much. When she loved someone, she loved hard. She gave him her heart and she opened up. She let him in and she let him see her when she was down. She had given him everything and he didn't love her enough to stay. She had fought so hard at the start, hoping to avoid a relationship with a colleague, but it seemed to right, so meant to be. She kept the relationship close to her heart, saying it was to prevent problems at work, but secretly to guard herself.

She stood, taking her empty glass with her and poured some more wine. For six months, they were perfectly happy. They had discussed moving in together and they had spent many nights discussing the future. They planned holidays together and talked about whether they would raise kids in the city or whether they would move to the suburbs. They decided the city was better. They had even looked at rings. They weren't ready for marriage, not by a long shot, but she was open to one. If Will had proposed, she probably would have said yes. Kate always figured that was the reason she had been so hurt. She opened her heart to him and started to look for more in life.

She hadn't told her friends about how she had looked at rings. It was her little secret. She hadn't told anyone about that, or about the wedding magazine she had bought. In fact, her friends knew so little about the relationship with Will that she hadn't been so shocked by the breakup. Perhaps Kate had been guarded about the relationship, knowing it would go down the drain. It was convenient in the days following the breakup and meant few awkward questions. Unfortunately it made it difficult to talk about it with anyone.

She took her wine to the couch and sat, turning the TV on. Hopefully there would be something on that would distract her. She sipped her wine absentmindedly as she lost herself in Letterman. It wouldn't work; it never did. So instead she thought about life. When she was a child, she never would have guessed that she would become a detective. She thought that by the time she was 30 she would be married with at least one kid. By the time her mother was 30 she had a two-year-old. Kate thought she would be like her mother in that regard. It really didn't look like that was going to happen.

She hated that Writer Boy had gotten her worked up like this. Kate was never the girl who wallowed in sweats, eating ice cream and watching romance movies to get over a boy. She was never the girl worried that she was never going to find a husband. Yet here she was, beating herself up for letting the one true love of her life go. She felt pathetic.