One chapter left after this one. Thanks, as always, to my betas. Reviews are welcome, appreciated, and dearly loved. Chapter title is a song of the same name by Mads Langer.

"Nothing," Alexis said to her grandmother quietly. She didn't take her eyes off of the closed door of her father's office. "No laser tag, no ice cream, no zombie movies. Nothing."

Martha nodded. "I know, kiddo."

The older woman watched her granddaughter stare at the office door that had been shut all day, every day for over a week. Alexis sighed. "I got on his laptop the other day, Grams. When he was sleeping."

"Oh? And?"

"And the next Nikki Heat hasn't been opened since Kate left."

"Well, yes, we suspected that. The same thing happened that summer she wasn't speaking to him, remember?"

"I know, but…" Alexis trailed off and bit her lip. She finally looked at her grandmother. "What if she doesn't come back?"

For the first time in she didn't know how long, Martha didn't know what to say. Richard had been completely inconsolable ever since Kate had bolted to wherever it was she'd gone. He locked himself in his office, but didn't write. Martha had her suspicions about online poker, but that was before she'd found Heat Wave clutched in his hand when he'd fallen asleep at his desk on Tuesday.

"He'll snap out of it," Martha said finally, patting Alexis's hand. "He always does."

Alexis looked at the door again. "I don't know, Gram. Dad's never acted like this over a girlfriend."

"Well, Kate was a special woman."

"But she's not gone forever. She's coming back. Right?"

Alexis turned her wide, innocent eyes to her grandmother. The teenager was asking for herself as much as she was asking for her father, and Martha swallowed. She knew Richard had a firm honesty policy for his daughter, but she couldn't bring herself to say that as strong as Kate Beckett was, she wasn't infallible.

"I hope so, kiddo. I hope so."

X-X-X-X-X

Tyler spent an hour lying on his bed, staring at the ceiling and trying to get the sound of Katie moaning another man's name out of his head.

God, he wanted her. Katie Beckett was everything he'd ever wanted, he just hadn't known it. After Panama City, he'd realized that they could be so much more than what they had been. If it hadn't been for the distance, it would've worked between them. He knew that. But when Johanna died, the possibility disappeared. The last thing Katie needed back then was to lose her best friend because he couldn't be 'just friends', and so he'd forced himself back into that zone. That's where they'd been ever since.

But tonight…tonight Panama City had come rushing back. Yes, he was drunk. So was she. But kissing her had jolted him to the core, even through the alcohol. It was like waking up from a dream, and now that he was awake he couldn't fall asleep again. There was something about her, something goddamn extraordinary, and God help him, he couldn't stay away. He wanted her.

Who the hell was Rick?

Ty knew there was more to her visit than she'd told him. Something had happened at work, something bad. She had the scars to prove it. But there was something else too. Someone else. That's why she'd come out here; she was running away from someone.

Tyler ran his hand through his hair and sighed. He had to talk to her.

When he opened his bedroom door to find her, an odd sound floated into his ear. Coughing? No, it was…

Katie was throwing up.

Tyler strode toward the open French doors, then out onto the back deck. Katie was leaning over the railing of the deck, throwing up into the sand below. Tyler noticed the bottle of vodka and the empty cup sitting next to the deck chair he'd found her in earlier that afternoon, the bottle considerably less full than it had been the last time he'd seen it. Katie's shoulders heaved as she threw up, her hands fumbling to keep her hair out of her way, and Tyler could practically feel his heart breaking.

He closed the distance between them and stopped next to her. He reached out and smoothed her hair away from her face, holding it for her. Her hands dropped away from where they'd been holding her hair, and then her left hand groped outward and clutched at his shirt.

He held her hair until she finished; whispered the words he knew would comfort her in her ear, the same words that he'd whispered periodically over twenty years when she'd been upset or sad or sick.

I'm so goddamn tired, she'd told him once, two years after she'd joined the force. She'd been killing herself, working all day and then searching for her mom's killer when she was off duty, and one night she'd called him at three in the morning her time sounding like she'd just been hit by a train. I'm so goddamn tired, but I can't sleep. Every time I close my eyes it's there, Ty. Every time.

Something else was there this time, flitting across her eyelids when she closed them, and Tyler wanted desperately to fix it. She obviously couldn't handle it on her own. Katie Beckett didn't get drunk like this, not to the point of throwing up, and she certainly didn't do it alone. But here she was. He knew how hard it was going to be to get her to open up, but he couldn't stand to watch her do this.

She finished at last, her breathing a step faster than normal. She wiped the edges of her mouth with the back of her hand and looked up at him as he lowered his hand from her hair. The hollowness of her eyes was staggering. Tyler offered his hand to her, remembering that he couldn't function after he threw up until he brushed his teeth. Maybe she was the same way.

She took his hand wordlessly, and he led her into the house and back to the bathroom. She wobbled slightly as she walked, and Ty held her hand tightly. He put the toothpaste on her toothbrush, trying not to think about how wrong it was that she let him do it for her. He leaned in the doorway and watched her brush, and when she was done and turned toward him he didn't even give her a chance to do or say anything. He hugged her, and she lifted her arms to hug him back.

"I'm sorry," she said into his chest, her voice muffled.

Tyler didn't say anything right away. He waited until the tension slid out of her body and her shoulders relaxed, planting a kiss on her hairline while he waited. At last, he leaned away and looked down at her.

"Who's Rick?"

Something flashed across her eyes, and she looked at the floor. "He's no one."

"Didn't sound like no one."

She didn't say anything. He reached for her hand, led her out to the couch in the living room, and sat her down. He sat down next to her and waited until she looked at him.

"I know you," he started. "And I know you didn't come out here for a casual visit after a bad day at work." She looked down at her hands, but was still silent. "I didn't push you because I figured you'd tell me when you were ready. But Katie…look at me, Katie."

She didn't right away, but he waited. He was used to waiting for her. Her eyes lifted and he reached for her hand. "You're scaring me. What happened?"

She studied him for a moment, her face impassive, and then pulled her hand from his. She turned away from him, resting her elbows on her knees, and put her head in her hands. Time dragged on, the silence roaring in Tyler' s ears, and then finally she spoke. She still wasn't looking at him.

"Remember when I told you that Richard Castle was shadowing me?"

X-X-X-X-X

He didn't let her go. Not out of his sight, or out of his reach, and Kate wasn't entirely sure if she loved it or if it drove her crazy.

She'd told him everything. Everything. How she'd slept with Rick after a game of truth or dare. How her psychiatrist had become her worst nightmare and tried to destroy her, right up until the moment when Rick shot him after he stabbed her. She told him about her dad and how he would never wake up again; about how she'd fallen for Alexis Castle as much as she'd fallen for Rick; about how she couldn't be Detective Beckett anymore because she'd failed and she didn't think she could come back from that and she wasn't sure she wanted to because she was just so goddamn tired.

She knew she was drunk, that her words were slurring a bit and that she was probably telling the story with way more detail than she normally would've, but she couldn't stop herself. He listened, the same way Tyler Harrison had always listened to Kate Beckett. When she started crying, the first time she'd cried since she'd been released from the hospital, he swept her up in his arms and held her. Eventually she ended up falling asleep. There were no nightmares this time.

She woke up to find that he wasn't there. After checking her watch to see that it was two in the afternoon, she sat up and saw him standing by the French doors with his back to her, looking out at the ocean. She stared at him for a while, her eyes trailing over his broad shoulders and the impressive V that his back formed, and then she got up and walked across the room and wrapped her arms around him from behind.

"Stay with me," he said after a while.

Kate didn't answer, didn't move from her position with her cheek pressed against his back.

He turned around to look at her, but she avoided his eyes. He tipped her chin up so that she had to look at him, then trailed his fingers along her cheek. "Resign. Move out here with me. Start something new."

"And do what? Sleep on the beach all day while you work?"

"Join the LAPD or the Sheriff's Department. Go back to school. Whatever you want. As long as you're here."

"Ty…how long have you been thinking about this?"

He shrugged. "Long enough. Stay with me, Katie."

X-X-X-X-X

Rick was ignoring Gina's phone calls. She called twice a day every day, and he ignored every one. She wanted the next Nikki Heat, and he couldn't give it to her. He didn't have it. Writing Nikki Heat without Kate Beckett in his life was like trying to run a car on the wrong type of gasoline. Nothing in Rick's life was running properly anymore.

He played a lot of online poker. Truth of the matter was that most of the sites were populated by adolescent boys with nothing better to do, and Rick didn't mind bringing a taste of reality into their perfect little worlds by beating them soundly over and over again. When things got really bad he switched to chess, because it required more brain power. He had operatic arias on repeat on his iPod. He wore button down shirts and boxers every day, but only the ones that Kate had worn before. Some of them still smelled a little like her.

And that was it. That's all he did. He wore clothes that reminded him of her, listened to songs in languages he didn't understand, and played games that only kept his mind off of her for an average of ten seconds. At night, after dinner, he went to Italiano Joe's and sat at the bar while Joe brought him tequila. Then he went back home and slept until noon and then started it all over again.

He was still seeing a therapist, still dealing with the fact that he'd killed a man. He wasn't sorry that Mark DeLucas was dead. He wasn't even sure he was sorry that he'd been the one to do it. When he'd held a sobbing Kate Beckett in his arms in the middle of Manhattan General, he knew he'd do it if he had to. But that didn't make it any easier to deal with. His therapist said that for a while nothing would seem to make it better. Rick was pretty sure that if Kate were there when he reached for her in the middle of the night, it would've been better.

DeLucas was dead. But he wasn't gone. He was in the back of Rick's mind every second of every day. She's never going to let you in. Kate Beckett always holds back. The voice was relentless, awful, because it was true. She hadn't let him in. She'd held back. When she walked out of his life she hadn't just kept him from being there for her, she'd kept herself from being there for him. Maybe it was selfish, but he needed her. He needed her to be there when he woke up in the middle of the night thinking that her blood was all over his hands again.

Was it his fault she was gone? Maybe if he'd gotten to the gun faster and stopped DeLucas before he stabbed her. Maybe if he'd pushed her harder to talk to him, or maybe not pushed as much. Maybe if he hadn't gone downstairs to get that package then DeLucas never would've gotten him and Kate never would've had to find him and there wouldn't have been a showdown in the mansion that he was going to sell the second he cared enough to call his real estate agent. Maybe…

Maybe it would go away eventually. The way he felt about her. He'd been through breakups before. Why was this any different? Mope for a few days, and then move on. Play laser tag with Alexis, eat some ice cream, watch mindless movies, date some models.

Except it was different this time. And not just because he was on the side of the breakup that he wasn't accustomed to. It was different because it was her, it was Kate fucking Beckett, and somehow he must've fallen for her before they'd actually slept together and not after. Because he dreamed about the way she talked to herself at the murder board as much as he dreamed about shower sex, he remembered her laugh as much as he remembered the way her back arched when he pushed into her, and he couldn't stop thinking about the words that would've tumbled out of her mouth in the hospital if he hadn't stopped her.

She loved him. She had to love him. I lied. What the hell did that even mean? You couldn't lie about something like that. You couldn't lie about the way she'd reached for him the night her dad ended up in a coma. For God's sake she'd thought she was dying on the floor in his library, and what had she said? Those might've been her last words, and what did she choose? All in.

He'd dialed her number a million times. He'd composed texts that he'd never sent. He'd written emails and letters. But every time the moment of truth came, he didn't follow through. He wanted to fight for her, but he didn't know how. Kate broke the mold. Rules for other women didn't apply to her, and he didn't know what she wanted or what she needed. And at the end of the day, the selfish prick that appeared on page six was not what he wanted to give Kate. Boxers and Texas Hold 'Em and Verdi and Puccini could get him through if that's what she needed. He'd do that for her. But what if she needed to be chased? What if she was waiting for him to come after her? He hadn't gone after Kyra. He couldn't and wouldn't make that mistake again.

Tomorrow afternoon he would go to the precinct and talk to the boys and Montgomery. Maybe Lanie. See if they'd heard from her, or if they could find out where she was so he could buy a ticket and fly there and tell her that he wasn't going to let her break a pinky promise. Because you don't break pinky promises. It's the rule.

X-X-X-X-X

When Roy looked up from his computer to see Rick Castle in the doorway of his office, the Captain felt a wave of déjà vu.

"Castle," he said, leaning back in his chair. "What are you doing here?"

Castle pulled the office door closed behind him, and Roy stared in wonder at the man in front of him who looked nothing like the writer he'd come to know. He hadn't seen Castle in over a week, since Beckett's hearing, but the change was appalling. He looked pale, exhausted, almost…empty.

"Have you heard from Kate?"

Roy didn't answer right away, because the hollowness in the writer's voice was so odd. "What do you mean have I heard from her? Did she go somewhere?"

"Yeah."

"Where?"

"I don't know."

A wave of panic washed over Roy. "What do you mean you don't know? When did she go?"

"Ten days ago."

Roy stared at the writer, stunned. "Ten days? And you didn't go with her?"

Castle looked like he was about to cry, and Roy couldn't keep the horror creeping up on him at bay. "She…we…" the writer cleared his throat. "We're not together anymore."

"Jesus," Roy muttered before he could stop himself.

"I was hoping if I gave her some time she'd come home," Castle continued, raking a hand through his hair. "But she hasn't called, she hasn't texted, she hasn't been to her apartment…"

Roy was frozen. Castle must've recognized that something was wrong, because he stepped forward, his eyes suddenly wild. "What?"

Roy looked up at the writer. "She came to see me. If I'd known she was going to leave…"

"What did she say?"

"She tried to give me her letter of resignation."

"She what?"

"I've tried to call her, so have Ryan and Esposito, she won't pick up…"

The writer and the Captain stared at each other for a long moment, the weight of what they'd both just realized sinking in. Kate had tried to resign, and then she'd left. The only reason she'd walk away from her job and away from Castle was if…

She wasn't going to come back.

Where the hell had she gone?

Roy was already out of his chair and halfway to the door of his office. Castle was right behind him. "Esposito!" he roared when he was in the bullpen. "Find Beckett."

The detective looked up from his desk, confused. "What?"

"Track her phone. Now."

It took a few minutes, but they got her. "California," Ryan murmured. "Why would she be in California?"

They all looked at Castle, and the writer shrugged. "I don't know. I-"

"Hey guys," Lanie greeted as she approached the huddle around Esposito's desk. She shared a brief look with Esposito but was interrupted by Castle, who lunged toward her and grabbed a hold of her arm.

"Lanie! Why would Kate be in California?"

"What?"

"California," Castle said impatiently. "Why would Kate go to California?"

"I don't know. Maybe…" the medical examiner trailed off, and a look of recognition flashed across her face.

"What?" Castle demanded.

"Tyler," Lanie answered, looking back at the writer.

"Who's Tyler?"

"They've been friends since they were kids. They went to high school together. He lives in Malibu."

"So she's visiting an old friend," Esposito said. "That doesn't mean she's not coming back. Maybe she wanted a vacation."

Castle shook his head and looked around at all of them. "Have any of you heard from her? Has she called? Texted?"

Roy watched as everyone shook their heads. Kate certainly hadn't returned any of his phone calls.

"If she was taking a vacation she would've called," Castle pointed out. "She would've at least called her best friend." He nodded at Lanie.

"Kate won't talk until she's ready," Lanie argued. "That's the way she is. She needs space."

"She tried to resign," Castle shot back. "That's not needing space. That's goodbye."

"She did what?" Lanie demanded, echoed by Ryan and Esposito.

Castle looked at each of them before he spoke. "She's not planning on coming back."

The collective hush was painful as everyone stared at Castle. Esposito spoke first.

"So what do we do?"

"We go get her. I'll go get her. I've already waited too long."

"You need an address," Esposito told the writer. "And to get an address, we need a last name."

Castle looked at Lanie. "Do you know his last name? Something we can use to look up his information?"

Lanie shook her head. "No, I've-"

"Yearbooks!" Ryan interrupted. "You said they went to high school together. I bet she's got yearbooks in her apartment."

X-X-X-X-X

Esposito had barely gotten the door open before Rick shoved past him and into Kate's apartment. He flew toward the bookshelf in her living room and scanned the shelves quickly before he found what he was looking for. He pulled all four of them off of the shelves, sat in the nearby arm chair, and started flipping through the first.

"There's got to be a dozen Tylers in that book, bro," Esposito said. "How are you going to know which one?"

Rick ignored him because he saw something poking out of the top of the book. He flipped to the page and then froze.

They were pictures. Four of them. The first was of some blond, strong jawed guy grinning at the camera. Rick recognized that the girl he was giving a piggy back to, the girl with the long hair who was grinning from ear to ear, was Kate. Rick stared at her, enthralled. Kate in high school. He'd never seen any pictures. They'd never talked about high school. His eyes roved down to the guy, and he wondered if that was Tyler.

The next picture was the same guy and Kate. Kate was in her cap and gown and leaning into the guy. Rick felt a twinge. He flipped to the next picture. Kate and the same guy, still grinning, only this time in swimsuits. Kate looked fantastic, but Rick was a little more concerned with the muscles rippling underneath the blond guy's skin and the way Kate was draped over him. Who the hell was this guy, and why had Kate never talked about him? Rick flipped to the last picture. The blond guy was in football pads and a uniform, and he had Kate folded under his arm protectively.

Rick stared at all four pictures, feeling the same way he had when DeLucas had informed him that Kate went to the Macy's windows every Christmas Eve. Did he even know her at all? And this guy, whoever the hell he was…did she have feelings for him? Is that why she'd broken up with him and flown to the other side of the country? Lanie said he was just a childhood friend, that they went to high school together, but these pictures…that didn't look like a friend.

Rick had no sooner looked away from the pictures than his eyes fell on the yearbook page they'd been marking. There was a half-page picture on the right side page. Kate was in what appeared to be a nurse's costume paired with fishnet tights, and she was standing next to the same guy from the other pictures. The guy was dressed as Superman, and was striking a pose with his hands on his hips. Kate was on her tiptoes, leaning forward to mimic kissing the superhero on the cheek. Rick glanced down at the caption. Senior Class President Tyler Harrison poses with Sophomore Katie Beckett at the Halloween Dance.

"Castle?"

Rick didn't look up from the picture. "Harrison," he breathed. "His last name is Harrison."

A moment later he heard Esposito murmuring into the phone, but he didn't care. He couldn't stop staring at the picture in the yearbook. He felt sick to his stomach. What if Tyler Harrison wasn't just a friend? What if…

What if Tyler Harrison was Kate Beckett's Kyra Blaine?

X-X-X-X-X

Tyler had the next day off, so they slept in. While he made breakfast Kate sat on the couch with her eyes closed. She hadn't answered his request for her to stay. They hadn't talked about it. She didn't know what she wanted. Sometimes when she looked at him she saw the twenty-one year old version of him, smiling at her as he waved from the other side of airport security on his way to visit med schools on the west coast. Before her mom had died. Before everything she'd planned got ruined.

A lot of times she saw Rick. Tyler's green eyes morphed into blue, his laugh got lighter and louder, and she realized that joking was different than banter and she and Tyler didn't have banter. They just had memories and dreams that they'd never really gotten over.

Kate heard a noise and opened her eyes to see Tyler standing next to the couch with two plates in his hands. He was watching her. She straightened. "What?"

He shrugged. "I love you."

The breath rushed out of her. She pressed her lips together and didn't answer. After a moment of staring at him Kate put her elbows on her knees and covered her face with her hands because she couldn't look at him without seeing the look on Rick's face after he'd said the same thing to her.

She heard Tyler put the plates on the coffee table. He crouched in front of her, moved her hands away from her face, and Kate had nowhere to look but straight at him. His eyes bored into hers, the same green they had been since he'd looked down at her that day at the park after he'd beat up the kid who knocked over her sandcastle. Some part of her had always hung on to that image of him. Things changed; people moved across the country to follow their dreams, mothers died, and suddenly the two kids who had met in the sandbox were adults with broken hearts and broken dreams. Yet even with the brokenness Tyler was the same as he always had been, and Kate couldn't understand why she didn't want him.

Because he could've been her knight in shining armor. The look in his eye told her he wanted to be, told her he was trying to be, and she knew they were only waiting on her. She saw it all, their whole life together, and something inside of her burned with terrible loss because it was the life she'd always thought she would have. Kids and PTA meetings and soccer practice and date nights on Fridays and Jesus Christ it hadn't called to her like this since she'd ducked under her first yellow crime scene tape to see her first victim that also happened to be her mother. A normal life, a life with Tyler on the beach in California and a huge rock on her fourth finger and her mother's cookie recipe baking in the stove.

He tucked her hair behind her ear and then trailed his fingertips over her face, and Kate fought violently not to conjure up an image of the last time Rick had touched her like that. Tyler's other hand found her knee, flattened, slid ever so slightly up her thigh, and she lowered her eyes just long enough to look at it and then back up.

When she met his eyes again she knew it was coming. Oh, it was definitely coming. His gaze flickered down to her lips, and that's when her heart jumped and started racing. Was this actually happening? What was she doing? Twenty years…God, twenty years.

He leaned forward, slow enough not to startle her, and she closed her eyes, tilted her head just enough to the left that she met him half way. He didn't push her. Didn't even move at all except his lips, which moved against hers in the softest way possible. His hand grasped her face, and when his tongue slid along her bottom lip to beg for access she opened her mouth slowly to let him in.

Kate waited desperately to feel something, anything. But there was nothing. Nothing but the pure, carnal lust that any woman could feel for any man at anytime. There was nothing special about this, no spark, no life, no thudding sky-diving rush of letting go completely and having more than just sex, having intensity. Tyler was Tyler, and the connection was exceptionally deep. She loved him.

But he wasn't Rick.

Something inside of her strained under an unseen weight, pushed back against the truth that she wasn't kissing who she wanted to be kissing. Why the hell couldn't it be Tyler? Why not? Why couldn't she walk away from New York, away from Detective Beckett, away from Richard Castle? California was great. Tyler was great. He was a good man, she trusted him, felt safe with him; he reminded her of when things had been simpler, easier, and dear God he was crazy about her. He'd always been crazy about her. So why not?

Why not?

Rick.

"No," she said, turning her head away from him and breaking their kiss, her hands pushing against his chest.

He stopped instantly.

For a second they were both still, and Kate closed her eyes. God, what had she been thinking? She was hurting Tyler, hurting Rick, hurting herself. What the hell was she doing?

Tyler's head fell forward, rested against her shoulder, and Kate bit her lip. She looked toward the French doors, out at what she could see of the ocean. He lifted his head to look at her, and when she didn't look at him he pressed a kiss against her temple.

"Kate."

She couldn't remember him ever calling her anything but Katie. She looked at him. He was blurry. Fuck. She was crying.

"It's him again, isn't it?"

Ty's voice was low. She closed her eyes. It was him. It was always him. Rick fucking Castle. Damn that man. Damn the way he made her feel, damn the stubborn hold he had on her, damn him for stealing her one and making sure it couldn't be undone.

"Do you love him?"

She shook her head. "No."

"Liar."

She laughed. God help her, she laughed, though it came out as more of a choked sob with a little bit of a lilt.

"What are you afraid of?" Ty whispered next.

"I can't be what he wants."

"I think you already are."

She didn't say anything, and Ty moved to sit next to her on the couch. He pulled her with him so that she was curled into his side, small inside the circle of his arms.

"Did you actually tell him why you were leaving?" he asked.

She shook her head. "There was no point. He and I wouldn't have worked."

"No," Ty disputed quietly. "We won't work."

Kate stared up at him in astonishment. Tyler smiled at her softly. "Kate, honey, you can't be with me if you're in love with someone else."

Before she could answer, the phone rang. Tyler sighed. "It could be the hospital. I have to get it." He got up and went into the kitchen, and when he was gone Kate put her head in her hands. She heard him answer the phone.

"Hello?" There was a pause. "Um. Yeah. Hold on." Kate didn't realize that Tyler was standing next to the couch until he cleared his throat. "Kate?"

She looked up at him. He held the phone out. "It's for you."

Kate stared at him. What the hell was he talking about? "Who is it?"

Tyler didn't answer. His face was emotionless. He held the phone closer to her. Kate gave him a look and then stood up, took the phone from him, and put it to her ear.

"Hello?"

"Kate?"

His voice. Oh, God, his voice. Kate closed her eyes. "Rick."

There was a long pause before he spoke again. "Are you okay?"

Kate opened her eyes. "What?"

"Are you okay?"

"Of course I'm okay, why wouldn't I be okay?"

"Nobody's heard from you, we were worried…"

Kate stared at the floor. "Where are you?"

"The precinct."

"Is that how you got this number? The boys tracked me down?"

"Lanie told us you might be with…" he trailed off. Kate felt her heart drop. He knew about Tyler. Lanie didn't know everything, but she knew enough. She knew the history. God, what was Rick thinking? How did this look to him? Was he upset? Mad? Jealous?

"Are you happy?"

His voice stabbed into her brain like a hot fire poker, and she frowned. "What?"

"Are you happy? With him."

Kate didn't know what to say, so she just didn't say anything. There was a long beat of silence, and then Rick spoke again.

"Tell me you're happy, Kate. Tell me it's what you want, and I'll let you go."

"Rick-"

"You're not supposed to break them, you know," he interrupted. "Pinky promises. That's the rule. But if he's what you want…"

She couldn't speak. She tried to, she opened her mouth, but nothing came out.

"Right," Rick said after another pause. "Okay. Well, I…" His voice wavered and Kate closed her eyes again. "I still love you. Just so you know. I want you to do what you need to do. I want you to be happy, even if it's not with me. So if California is where you want to be…don't come home."

There was one last pause, and then he hung up. Kate lowered the phone from her ear and stared at it, stunned. She couldn't process what had just happened, couldn't understand what was going on.

"Kate?" Ty said. She didn't look at him. "He wants you to come home doesn't he?"

Kate stared at the phone but didn't say anything. What was she supposed to say?

"Katie, you can stay with me. Don't go back if you're not ready. That night we were drunk, what happened just now…it doesn't matter. I'm your best friend. That won't change. You can stay as long as you need to. I'm always here."

Kate nodded. "I know."