Richard Castle couldn't breathe.
She'd looked so small in that hospital bed, so frail, so unlike the strong, invulnerable Kate Beckett he'd come to know—and indeed, love.
Which he'd told her. Had she heard? Did she remember? She couldn't have. She would have said something. She would have beaten him to a bloody pulp. He wanted her to beat him to a bloody pulp. He wanted her to stalk off and ban him from the precinct again. Anything would have been better than this terrible not-knowing and not-talking.
Of course, not-talking was their own brand of normal.
Rick had fantasized for months about how he would tell her. He'd known since the moment he kissed her. Heaven knew how long it had been growing in him, but that was when he knew. He was head-over-heels gone on her. And once he knew that, knew it like he knew how breathe, it was inevitable that he would tell her. He'd come up with every scenario, realistic and outlandish, from a candlelight dinner to blurting it out in a hallway at the precinct. He'd imagined every response, from a passionate make-out session to a slap across the face, nails and all. He thought he had imagined every scenario in which it could go right—or wrong. He could count on one hand the number of times he'd had the words on his lips only to get a brick wall in his face. Josh was one, right next to dirty bombs and freezers.
Of all the dozens of ways it could have train-wrecked, this was by far the worst.
Well, that wasn't quite true. She could have died. Not thinking about that.
They had told him she'd listen to him. Her father, Montgomery, they said he was the only one who could talk to her, who could make her walk away, who could save her life. What else could I have said? What did I do wrong?
When she had called him, he'd picked up on the second ring. Always he'd promised her, and yet here he was hiding from himself. The guilt was overwhelming. Even more consuming was the guilt for not stopping that bullet. It should have been me.
"Please, come see me." He hated that sound in her voice. He hated himself more for causing it. He'd practically locked himself in his room until the visiting hours the next day and then forced himself not to just run all the way to the hospital. Of course, then he'd stood outside for twenty minutes wondering why his feet had turned to lead and his lungs to stone.
They'd fought twice in the two hours he'd been there. He'd almost made her laugh once. It didn't used to be that hard. It used to be as easy as breathing. He'd crack a joke, she'd hit him and then smirk when she thought he wasn't looking. Now…now it was difficult. Awkward. Now she frowned first and barely smiled. Now laughing was painful, and not just metaphorically.
He loved her, the woman who couldn't laugh. He could have saved that laugh, and he'd failed. She could have saved herself, and she'd refused. The difference between how things were and how they should have been was a gap wider than his mind was able to bridge.
He couldn't handle being with her right now.
It was the only way he could keep breathing.