Kate gasped as she bolted upright in her bed. A layer of sweat covered her and her chest heaved as she tried to draw in air. Her hand automatically shoot out to the nightstand and she grabbed her phone without thought.
A moment before she hit the send button, she froze and a cold, heavy lump formed in the pit of her stomach.
Darkness surrounded her and right then she wanted nothing more than to reach out to her shining beam of warmth, but he wasn't there. Or maybe he was, but it didn't matter. She couldn't call him and it made her chest constrict. A rash of hot tears sprang to her eyes. She batted them away angrily.
It had been so long since she'd had to do it, it took her some time to remember what she did before him. Then she pushed the buttons on her phone that would connect her.
A moment later a groggy voice answered with a whispered, "Hello."
"I'm so sorry," Kate began. "I didn't mean to wake you."
Lanie cleared her throat and Kate heard the rustling of blankets, then a man's voice in the background.
Lanie said something she couldn't hear then came back on the line. "I've been expecting you, to tell the truth. I figured I'd hear from you earlier."
"I slept for a while. Then I had a nightmare," Kate explained.
"Give me fifteen minutes," Lanie told her. "I'm on my way and I'm bringing the ice cream."
"Screw ice cream," Kate replied. "Bring liquor."
And true to her word, as always, she arrived fifteen minutes later at her door with a pint of Ben and Jerry's and a bottle of Tequila.
"I even remembered to grab the salt and limes while I was in the grocery store," Lanie proudly proclaimed.
Once they were settled with spoons for the ice cream and shot glasses for the liquor, Lanie turned to her. "Alright, tell me everything and don't leave anything out."
Kate laughed. "I'm not sure if I should. Part of the fight was about him talking to people we work with about us. Won't that be a little hypocritical of me?"
"No, it was ridiculous to get mad over something like that to begin with. So now we know that you at least owe him an apology over that. Now, what else did you do?" Lanie explained.
Kate widened her eyes at her friend, watching her as she poured the first shot. Kate clutched the ice cream tighter into her chest and dug the spoon in a little deeper.
"Why are you so convinced I did something wrong? You're my friend. Aren't you supposed to be asking me what that mean old man did to me?" Kate protested.
"It's because I'm your friend that I suspect it was more your fault than his," she replied, tartly.
She bit the end of the spoon, while setting the carton aside and letting her head fall back against the blue, floral couch cushion. "I don't know why I keep doing things like this," she said tiredly.
"Because it's who you are," Lanie answered, handing her the shot. "And we wouldn't want you any other way. We just wish that sometimes you weren't so stubborn. Now tell."
She took a long, deep breath and let it out slowly. "He made me dinner," she began. "And there were candles and music on the balcony."
Lanie shook her head woefully. "That bastard."
"But he lied about the whole thing," she protested, after throwing a pillow in her friend's direction. "He said it wasn't a date. He told me that wasn't what it was about. And now I think he set up the entire night just to get me in bed."
Lanie threw her shot back and nearly choked on it at hearing what Kate was saying. "You think he made this elaborate dinner with the music and candles just to sleep with you?"
She threw her own shot back and held the glass out for another. "It was a set up, Lan, you should have seen it. I just couldn't help wondering how many other times he'd done the same thing. Which number was I?"
After pouring the drink, Lanie said, "As long as you're the last, what difference does it make how many were there before you?" She took a shot, following it with the lime and salt. "The way I see it, the higher the number the more chance for them to figure out what they're doing before they get to me."
"But how could he do that to me? I'm supposed to be special," she sighed dejectedly.
"Oh, don't give me that crap. I'm not even going to indulge you there," Lanie scolded her.
"What does that mean?" she asked.
Lanie sighed, threw back another shot and made a face. "It means that you know very well that you are special. You're grasping at straws to find a reason to be mad at him because being mad is how you deal. So what's really going on?"
Kate tossed back the drink in her hand and followed it with another. "He kissed me."
Lanie turned to her slowly as if she wasn't sure she'd heard her correctly. When Kate refused to look at her she knew she was right. "Now those are the details I've been waiting for. What did you do?"
She shook her head sadly. "I freaked and pushed him off of me."
"Why the hell did you do that?" she demanded. "Is he a sloppy kisser? I hate that. It's almost a deal breaker for me."
Kate could feel the warmth of a blush rising in her cheeks as she tried to contain her smile at remembering how his lips felt on hers. "No, he isn't a sloppy kisser."
"Wow, that must have been some kind of kiss." Lanie replied at seeing her not-so-well hidden reaction.
"It was," she answered before she could filter herself.
"Okay, so what is the problem?"
Kate took one of the blue pillows from beside her and bunched it up in her lap. Then she leaned into it and let out a scream. "I know this is going to sound insane, but it was just too good."
Lanie sat up a little straighter. "Too good? You are serious, right?"
"Yes, I'm serious. I don't think you understand," she went on.
Her friend shook her head in dismay. "Oh, I understand, alright. I understand that you need to be on the phone trying to fix this instead of sitting here with me."
"I can't call him. We had a huge fight and it was all my fault, apparently, but I can't just call him. I don't even know what to say to him."
"I'm sorry might be a good jumping off place," Lanie commented, dryly.
Kate's eyes widened at the suggestion. "Just like that? I'm just supposed to call him up and say 'I'm sorry'?"
Lanie laughed. "Yeah, you might be surprised how well it works. He's a good guy and he's so in love with you it's painful to watch sometimes. Make the next move and call him before he thinks you really don't care and decides it's time to move on." Then her eyes fell to the Kate's phone where it was lying, turned off, on the coffee table. "How do you know he isn't trying to call you? Your phone is off."
"If you'd been there for the last conversation we had, you'd know he wasn't trying to call me," she answered, dishearteningly.
"Well then, I guess you'll have to call him," Lanie answered.
"It's half past one in the morning. I'm not going to call him right now," Kate insisted.
Lanie put her hand on her hip and cocked her head to the side. "Because calling him at one in the morning is something so unusual for you. You stopped calling me at all hours so I can only assume that he's the one that took my place."
Kate looked down and away instead of answering.
"Want me to leave you alone to make the call or would you rather I stay?" she prompted.
"I'll wait and call him in the morning," she repeated.
"Now," Lanie crossed her arms over her chest. "In the morning, there will be work and all kinds of distractions."
Kate leaned forward and reached for the phone. It went to voice mail without him answering. She couldn't help the tears that formed in her eyes. He wasn't answering her calls. He was avoiding her.
Lanie put her hand on her shoulder, comfortingly. "This make take more groveling than I expected."
Before she had a chance to set the phone aside, it rang and the caller I.D. surprised her.
"Martha? What's wrong?" she asked as soon as the phone was to her ear. "Where's Castle?"
"Oh Darling, I've been trying to get in touch with you. You have to come quick. Richard's been stabbed."
Rick Castle was having a hard time remembering the events before the searing pain in his chest began.
It seemed the pain had been there all night, perhaps not as debilitating as it was now, but still as sharp, as harsh.
He remembered it started as he stood on the sidewalk outside of his building, watching her taillights get swallowed up by the city around them. He remembered not wanting to turn his back on them until they were completely gone. And when they were, he had never felt so alone in the world.
His steps were slow and weighted as he made his way inside. The elevator ride was torturous, the slow, steady rise felt as if it took hours.
His keys felt cold and burdensome in his hand as he unlocked the door and stepped into the vast, quiet, emptiness of his loft.
No one was home yet. He had been holding on to the small hope that Alexis and his mother had made it back. Now that hope was dashed as well. It seems to be the theme for his evening. Dashed hopes and unrealized expectations.
It didn't take him long to find a bottle of scotch, the good stuff that he hid from everyone else, and make his way to the living room.
He was halfway through it when the front door finally opened and the two other women in his life stepped inside.
Alexis was the one that found him and she hadn't wasted anytime coming to putting her arm's around him, snuggling into his side and hugging him tightly. He had the best daughter in the world, hands down.
"Oh, Richard, what did you do?" his mother had asked from the doorway when she found him, too.
"I don't really know," he mumbled out and was ashamed at how slurred his speech sounded even to him. "I thought I was doing the right thing. I thought it was time to do something."
Alexis still hadn't let him go and his words were a touch muffled in her strawberry blond hair. "It's okay, Dad," she assured him. "We'll fix it."
"That's just it," he insisted. "I don't know what I'm supposed to fix."
His phone sounded from his pocket and he pulled away from his daughter far enough to answer it.
"Castle." he quipped without even bothering to see who it was.
"Are you alight, man?" Javier asked them the other end.
"I'm alright," he assured his friend.
"Kev and I are just finishing up at the precinct. We were wondering if you wanted to go grab a drink."
Castle sighed. He really wouldn't mind, but the thought of how angry she would be if she found out stopped him cold. He was apparently already in enough trouble. "Mother and Alexis just got home. So I'm going to have to get a rain check," he replied as nicely as possible. He really was touched that the offer had been made. It meant a lot that they considered him one of the guys and wanted to be there for him.
"Alright, but call me if you change your mind," he answered, before they disconnected.
His mother stepped up to him and held out her hand.
"What?" he asked dumbfounded by what she could want from him.
"Give me your phone," she told him.
"What? No," he replied, clutching the devise tighter in his hand.
"Richard, you are sitting there with a bottle of scotch in one hand, the phone in the other and a broken heart. Give it to me before you do something stupid that you can't fix," she insisted.
"She's right, Dad. Just give her the phone. You can have it back when you're sober," Alexis agreed.
He sighed tiredly as he placed the phone in her outstretched palm. "Again, your confidence in me is astounding." he muttered. "Please, keep it on, though. We are in the middle of an investigation."
Martha chuckled as she slipped the phone into her pocket. "I'll keep it on, but you aren't in any condition to investigate anything except a cup of coffee."
"I'm not as drunk as I think you are," he assured her without even realizing his mistake.
She laughed again and nodded sagely, "Of course not, Dear."
He threw his head back against the cushion behind him and stared up at the ceiling. "I just thought things were going to go differently," he confessed.
"Differently how?" Alexis asked. "What happened?"
"I made dinner. I thought that was okay. Then I just got so caught up in everything, there was wine and music and we were dancing."
"You pushed," Martha finished for him, settling into his other side.
He nodded. "I pushed. But isn't it time to push? I've been patient. I'm done with patient."
"I guess she still isn't ready," Alexis surmised.
He huffed and took another drink. "But I'm ready. It's time. This is getting ridiculous. I just don't understand why she's so scared of me." Then he raised his head and eyed both women warily. "Is it me? Am I a scary person? I don't mean to be. I try to be nice."
"Of course it's not you, Dear," Martha assured him as she patted his leg.
"No, Dad, you're great."Alexis answered at almost the same time. "Kate knows it, too."
He looked at her, narrowing his eyes. "How do you know? Have you talked to her about me?"
Alexis looked away from him and found the floor, staring at it, intently.
It was her tell. She knew something she wasn't telling.
"Tell me," he insisted.
"We weren't really talking about you," she tried to dodge.
"But she said something," He didn't bother to make it sound like a question. It was obvious he was right.
"She just said that something was happening and she asked if I was okay with that," she replied finally.
"What did you tell her?"
"I told her, of course I was okay with it," she said. "Then you came out of the bathroom and we didn't get a chance to say anything else."
"See, Richard. Kate sees it, too. You just have to be patient." Martha advised.
The longer he sat there, intermittently taking swigs from the bottle in his hand that neither woman had tried to take away from him, thank god, the more confined he felt. The walls appeared to be closing in on him and it felt as if all the air was being sucked out the room.
He got to his feet, proud of himself for wavering so little in the process, and set the bottle aside. It was now almost empty anyway. His mother could finish it off.
He needed to move. He needed air. He needed something he couldn't quite figure out.
"I need some air," he announced.
"Dad, you can't go out like you are," his daughter reminded him.
He turned and looked at her, holding his hands out to his sides. "What do you mean? How am I?"
His mother got to her feet and came to him. She took his arm and tried to lead him back to the couch. "Richard, Sweetheart, you're drunk. You can't go walking around the streets like that."
He resisted, planting his feet and refusing to budge. "But I need to get out of here. I just need to walk this off."
"Yes, well, all that will lead to is a night in the drunk tank at the jail," she replied, still pulling on his arm.
"I'll call a cab and go for a ride instead,"
"No," Martha answered. "If you leave this loft, you will end up on her doorstep. And what you need to do is give this some time to blow over."
"How do you know? Maybe she wants to talk to me, too."
She reached into her pocket and pulled out his phone. "If that were true she would have called you."
"Maybe she's trapped under something heavy and she can't get to the phone," he tried again.
"Maybe she's mad and needs some time to cool off."
"Maybe she's being held against her will and my showing up at her doorstep will create the distraction she needs to take the guy out." He looked to his daughter who was still perched on the couch watching the exchange intently. "You're a girl-"
"What am I?" Martha interrupted him. "Why is that you'll listen to her and not me?"
"You aren't a girl," Rick waved her off. "You're my mother." Then he turned his attention back to Alexis, ignoring Martha's scoffs of indignation. "You're a girl. Do you think she's just mad and needs to cool off, or do you agree with me that her life might be in peril and I need to rush to her at once?"
Her brow furrowed like she was really thinking about the answer. "I have to go with Grams on this one, Dad."
He threw his hands up at both of them. "It's a conspiracy," he muttered. "I thought you were supposed to be on my side."
"We are and that is why we are trying to talk you out of doing something stupid," Martha told him.
"Fine, then I'm going to bed," he announced.
He grabbed his bottle of scotch and took off towards his room.
"Are you sure you don't want to stay up and talk about it?" his mother called to his retreating back.
"No," he replied before slipping into the darkness of his room. "I'm going to bed."
It felt like hours that he waited, constantly checking to see if the lights in the front part of the loft were out yet.
He was eternally grateful when he finally heard his daughter's soft footsteps making their way up the stairs. He was even more grateful when the sound of his mother's heels followed soon after.
He was determined now. He needed to get to her, to see her, to talk all this out and get his happily ever after. He'd been a good boy, he deserved a little happily ever after.
Having finished off the rest of the bottle of scotch while he waited, he moved as stealthily as possible in his inebriated state. He was very proud that he only stumbled twice coming down the hall, once crossing the living room and once in the foyer. Considering the length of the journey, he figured he wasn't doing that badly.
By the time he got to the elevator, Kate was the only thing on his mind. He had to talk to her. He just had to. He couldn't let either of them go to sleep angry. He remembered reading somewhere, probably in one of Alexis' girly magazines, that you should never go to bed angry at your partner. He was her partner. Maybe not like he wanted to be, but her partner all the same. Now his mind was set. There was no other alternative. He had to talk this out with Kate before he could sleep, before she could sleep.
What if she was already asleep? he asked himself suddenly. What if he was too late to stop her?
"Evening, Mr. Castle," Murray, the doorman waved at him as he stepped off the elevator and into the lobby. "Can I get you a car? It's starting to rain out there. Not a good night for walking. I think I heard some thunder, too."
Castle stopped with his hand on the door and a refusal on his lips. Murray was right. It really was coming down. He wondered, inanely, where that had come from. There wasn't a cloud in the sky earlier.
"Yeah, I guess I need a car," he answered after briefly considering walking to her place in the pouring rain to confess his undying love for her. The romantic in him cheered at the notion. The pragmatist said he hated wearing wet clothes.
He waited impatiently for the cab to arrive, shifting his weight from one foot to another and wringing his hands together.
"Something's got you pretty uptight," Murray commented. "Is everything okay?"
Rick vividly remembered looking over at the man with a sudden sense of calm and purpose. It was as if something had leaned into his ear and told him that all he had to do was get to her. If he could just do that, everything would be alright. He'd taken a deep breath, releasing it along with all the anxiety that had been building in his stomach. Then he'd smiled. "I'm on my way to see a girl," he'd told Murray. "When I get to her, everything will be okay."
The cab picked that moment to pull up along the sidewalk.
He also remembered, vividly, squaring his shoulders and stepping out into the chilly, damp night air and thinking that in just a little while, if everything went his way, in just a little while, he might be holding her again.
That was the last thought he had before the searing pain in his chest and then nothing.
