Yes, I realize I broke my promise to post every day. I have no excuses.


and those who remain perfectly still.

She's still now.

He doesn't know how else to explain it. They were her words first, but they fit, so he steals them. He doesn't think she'll mind.

Since he met her, she's always been in constant motion. She's always been on a quest, and even when she wasn't actively investigating her mother's case, it was still a part of her. In his head, he likens it to running on a treadmill. She's been running since she was nineteen, her eyes always facing forward, always focused on some endpoint that was never closer, no matter how much she kicked up the speed. And then, suddenly, the treadmill was off and she was exactly where she'd wanted to be for so long, except she didn't know how to be there, didn't know how to breathe normally, because she could only remember breathing while in the middle of a sprint.

So really, what Kate Beckett was learning to do, was be still. Breathe. No more chasing. No more straight-ahead focus. She needed to be still and look around her, see everything instead of just one thing. For the past four weeks, he's wanted to show her that. He hopes he has.

It's their last night in the Hamptons. Tomorrow they'll drive back to Manhattan, and the day after that, she'll go back to work with a badge on her hip and a gun on her hand and he'll have to pray all day, every day, that she doesn't lose her stillness. He'll be there, of course. He'll always be there. But he was there before, too, and she almost killed a man. Collapsed onto her floor with a gun. Shattered.

He shakes his head. He won't think about that. That was before. Before their month in the Hamptons, before he fell more in love with her than he thought was possible, before they found their equilibrium and she discovered the freedom in motionlessness.

"Hey you," she murmurs in his ear.

He grins, remembers the text message he sent so long ago. "You are mocking me and I still find it sexy."

"Well," she says, her fingers playing at his ribs, "I am sexy. Can't help it."

He turns to look at her, immediately freezes.

They spent all day on the beach. Around six she disappeared to shower and get ready. He's taking her to a nearby boardwalk where there's strings of lights and jazz and nobody that will recognize him because it's not a place the Hamptons crowd goes. She's been tightlipped about what she's wearing. Drove him crazy all day.

Worth it now.

"You look incredible," he says.

And she does. Something about his Kate in a dress has always made him a little lightheaded, but after a month with her never out of reach? It is so much better.

And to think he hasn't even had all of her yet.

He shudders involuntarily, and she gives him one of those smoldering looks that says she knows exactly what he's thinking about. She's been giving him those looks a lot lately. They'll combust any day now, and that's okay because she's okay.

"Do I?" she teases.

"Humble," he says.

"Hard to be when you look at me like that."

"We should go," he answers.

She tilts her head. "Are we running late?"

"No. But if we don't leave now, we won't at all."

She laughs.

X-X-X-X-X

Of course there is dancing. It's jazz and there's lights and, okay, he may have known there would be dancing and he may have picked this place just because he wanted to dance with her.

Maybe.

"You can stop staring at them like that," she says.

He looks at her from across the table, caught off guard. "What? Who?"

"Them," she says, nodding at the dance floor. "I know what you're thinking."

"Do you?"

She looks down at her empty plate, then eyes her half-empty wine glass. It's her second glass. She looks up at him.

"You going to ask, or what?"

"Am I wearing my I-want-to-ask-Kate-something-I-think-she-will-say-no-to face?"

"You're wearing a face, all right. I'm afraid you're going to start naming our children."

He chokes on his wine, sputters, and she laughs. He stares at her, wide-eyed. "Our what now?"

"Rick," she says, standing up. She holds out her hand. "Dance with me."

"I'm supposed to ask."

Her eyes sparkle at that. "You coming, or what?"

He takes her hand, leads her to the dance floor as the song changes. She smiles at him as he wraps one arm around her waist, pulls her close and folds their hands together, holds them over his heart. The trumpet croons low, a ballad that's romantic and cliché and everything that they aren't, really, but it works anyway. It's their last night. He's been horribly sentimental all day, and she's been patient with him. Part of him thinks it's because she loves him and so she's willing to sacrifice, but another part of him thinks she likes it more than she lets on.

"Miles Davis," she says in his ear.

"Hmmm?" he hums.

"Miles Davis," she says again. "That's who this is. It's called I Waited For You."

He smiles. "Is there anything you don't know?"

"Plenty," she says, weaving her fingers up through his hair at the nape of his neck. "Why you're so afraid to go back home, for starters."

He stops, the smooth rocking back and forth they were doing interrupted. She keeps moving and he follows her lead; they're dancing again because she's caught him. She always does.

"I don't know what you mean," he evades.

"Isn't that my line?" she asks.

He's glad he can't see her face. She has this way of looking at him that burns right through him.

Damn it, this trip is supposed to be about her.

"I'm fine," he tells her.

She moves closer, presses against him. Her breath is hot at his ear. "Please don't lie to me," she whispers.

He closes his eyes. He doesn't want to. "I'm sorry," he says.

"For?"

"Lying. Being afraid."

"You can't be sorry for being afraid. Being afraid makes you alive."

He swallows. He's the writer in this relationship only in title; she emanates what his creative writing professor called the X factor. Can't be taught, can't be learned, can't be imitated.

"Are you afraid?" he asks.

"Of course," she says matter-of-factly. "I'm always afraid. I'm a coward."

"That's not true—" he starts to argue, but she cuts him off.

"Yes, it is."

They're silent for a while. The trumpet dips low and then lower, smoothes over them. He turns his face, his turn to whisper in her ear.

"You're the bravest person I know," he says.

She clutches the back of his neck. "Even if that's true, it doesn't mean I'm not afraid. Bravery, well, it's not about the absence of fear, is it? It's just about…getting past fear."

"But that's exactly what you did with us," he points out.
She tenses in his arms. "I'll always have my moments."

He won't let her bypass how far they've come. "But you'll always come back, too."

He realizes, only after he says it, that there isn't a hint of a question in his voice. He doesn't need to be scared, because at some point over the past month, he stopped being afraid that she wouldn't love him in the morning. She's unpredictable, certainly, and Lord knows she could have any man she wanted, but he doesn't worry about that. He doesn't worry at all. She's his, and he's hers, and well, that's been inevitable for years. Now that they've confessed it, lived it for a month, the only thing left that's still inevitable is one of them stumbling a little and then promptly finding their way back.

Because they'll always find their way back.

"When we first came here," she murmurs, "you had to find me. Every night and every day and sometimes multiple times in as little as an hour. You had to find me because I couldn't do it myself."

Her voice threads through the sound of the trumpet, braids with it, makes a sultry music in his ear that leaves him completely, utterly gone for her. X factor, indeed. She still has trouble finding words sometimes, but the intimacy of the past month, the fact that she's not trying to hide the worst parts of herself anymore—everything they are now lends itself to these moments when she's stunningly well-spoken.

"But then, you know, it got easier," she continues. "And you stopped finding me."

He frowns. "I…stopped?"

"Stopped," she repeats. "You didn't have to find me, because you helped me find myself."

Oh. Well that's…wow. Maybe she should write his next book.

"It's like…" she starts, then stops. She huffs impatiently. He frowns again, wonders why she's irritated, but her fingers tighten in his hair and he realizes she's annoyed with herself. She speaks in analogies and stories and comparisons, and though he thinks that she might believe it's for his benefit, he knows better. She has to do it so that she can understand herself.

"Jane Austen," she tries again. "She writes these beautiful love stories, but it was never the romance that moved me. If you look at her best heroines—at Lizzy Bennet, and Emma Woodhouse, Marianne Dashwood, even—they all have this fundamental blindness."

His head is spinning just a little bit. There's a fairly good chance she's too smart for him. He tries to keep up anyway.

"Blind to what?" he asks.

"Everything," she answers. "But mostly, who they are. When Austen allows them to fall in love, she isn't saying that they can't exist without a man. She isn't saying that Darcy or Knightly define the women who fall for them. She's saying that they offer them the freedom, the safety, to explore who they are. The good, of course, but the bad, too. The flaws."

"So…?" he says. He feels incredibly stupid.

She pulls away from him, meets his eyes for the first time during this entire conversation.

"So you gave me the freedom to find me. The good and the bad. I'm not saying I'm not still broken, but you're right. I'm always going to come back. Maybe you'll find me, or I'll find me, but one of us will always find whoever is lost. Always."

Yeah. He can't really say it much better than that. So he doesn't bother. He just kisses her, crushes her body against his, doesn't even care when she gasps in surprise.

When they finally pull away, she's decidedly more winded than dancing could have ever made her.

"Castle," she says, smoothing one of his lapels under her hand. It's the same thing she did when she rescued him from that bank what seems like forever ago.

She looks up at him, electricity in her eyes. It hits him then. This is happening. Tonight. They're happening tonight.

Her voice is dark. "Take me home."