After chapter 53 was posted, this story hit 400 people that are subscribed to story alerts for this story! Wow! And as I publish this chapter, the number is up to 407. I thank each and every one of you for following and especially to those of you who continue to encourage me with your wonderful comments! I know I don't respond to all of them, but I read them all, and I love to read them, and honestly, they make me want to write just a little bit more to get you updates faster. So thank you, my faithful reviewers!

Standard disclaimers apply.


The trip back along the beach seemed a little longer, probably just because they were just walking on this trip, not engaging in splashing contests and piggy-back rides. But it was still nice just holding hands and walking in the waves. Despite the beautiful day-the bright sunshine of the afternoon, the crash of the waves and the birds flying overhead-Kate felt herself get just a bit sad when she thought that this would be her last afternoon to experience this. Then, from out of nowhere, as she walked beside Rick in the wet sand, a little voice invaded her brain, telling her, 'No, this doesn't have to be your last afternoon of this. If you marry him, he'll give this to you whenever you want.'

She quickly looked over at Rick just to make sure he hadn't tried some ventriloquist thing-after all, it sounded like something he would say-but his mouth was closed and he was staring at a boat out in the water. No, the voice was from inside her head. Oh, God, she was going crazy. Maybe the sun was getting to her. She didn't need some little rogue voice inside of her head telling her to marry a guy just so she could be jetted off to a beach on a whim. So she mentally tried to slap that little voice silly.

'Oh, you idiot. You know he loves you. The vacation is just a nice bonus.'

Crap. The mental slap didn't seem to have worked. That voice really needed to shut the hell up. She was not ready to get married. She was still getting used to this relationship thing, well, particularly this relationship thing with Rick Castle. So far it was going well, but what about when they got back home? Things were going to change. Her whole life was going to change. A lot. How would they work together now that things had changed, really changed, between them? And how would everyone else treat their relationship? What if they just crashed and burned because they couldn't handle a relationship in the real world and with all of the pressures that came along with that?

It was a whole different world back there. It wasn't all fun and games. She had a job, and he had other committments. He had a daughter. Oh, this was so complicated!

She'd never been in a relationship with anyone quite like him before. And frankly, when she met him, she never thought she'd ever be in a relationship with him. She'd been determined that she was not going to be the flavor of the month, week or night. She thought he was a shallow, immature, uncommitted, selfish, live-for-the-moment playboy that didn't have a serious bone in his body. Now she knew differently. Very differently. Well, he was still somewhat of a live-for-the-moment type of guy, and there were definitely quite a few bones in his body that were about as un-serious as they could be.

But over the last years of getting to know him, she'd found out that she was wrong, so very wrong, about all of those other things. So much of it was his public persona. It was odd to try try to equate the man that knew and loved now with the man that she'd thought him to be then. But even with how much she knew she loved him now, with how different she knew he was now, what if the magic faded as soon as they got back to the real world? Then a random thought occurred to her-Castle really was rubbing off on her-and she looked sideways at him.

"Why did you start shaving?"

His hand immediately went to the vacation-stubble that was coating his lower face and jawline now. "Huh? Beckett, do you need glasses? Or is the sun in your eyes?"

"No, not now. I mean a while ago. When I first met you, you had that devil-may-care attitude, and you didn't really bother to shave very much. You always had some stubble, like you wanted to look a little like a bad boy."

"You are seriously asking about my stubble, lack thereof?"

"Yes. So shut up and answer the question."

"I was a bad boy. Well, kind of. I just didn't care." He paused, and didn't say anymore, so she continued the story.

"I know. And then you started following me around. But somewhere in there, you started shaving more, and it got so that seeing you with this look," she reached up and ran her free hand over his jawline, "became really unusual." And now, she could admit, kind of hot. But back to the point. "So what changed?"

"I don't know." He shrugged. "Why?"

"I was just thinking about how you were when I first met you and how you are now. Then it occurred to me that you always had that 'been-out-all-night-partying' look when you first started following me around. Part of it was the stubble. And then eventually you started shaving regularly and voila, the stubble was a thing of the past."

"Why, Detective, I didn't think that you noticed those tiny things about me, especially back then!"

"Oh, shut up, Castle. I certainly didn't lose any sleep over your stubble or lack thereof, so you can get that out of your mind right now. I just remember wondering a couple of times early on, when you had apparently annoyed me excessively well, why you couldn't at least bother to shave. I mean, we were professionals and you turn up like you're trying out for a 'Bad Boys Weekly' cover or you just rolled out of bed. We were trying to do a job and it was all like it was some big game to you that you couldn't even bother to finish grooming yourself in the morning." She rolled her eyes to punctuate how annoyed she'd been by his cavalier attitude.

He looked over at her with a strange look, and she realized how her words must have sounded to him now, so she stopped walking and pulled on his hand so he would turn toward her. "Hey, those thoughts were from right after you started shadowing me, when you did excessively annoy me on a regular basis. It's not you now, and it hasn't been you for a while. Now you only annoy me a little bit," she finished with a small smile as she wrapped her arms lightly around him.

He looked thoughtful before he spoke. "You're probably at least somewhat right, which is kind of hard to admit. It wasn't 'real' to me. I lived in such a superficial world, with everyone catering to me. It's pretty cool at first, but it does get boring after a while, unless you combine it with drugs to make it seem interesting, and I was never into that scene. But I think it took me a while to realize that there was another real world out there, with real problems and real tragedies. You're right, I wasn't serious at first. But I eventually started seeing what you did, what you all did. It wasn't just cops-and-robbers. I got a new respect for that, and I think maybe I developed a new respect for myself because I could actually be helpful to you. So I guess I just started to treat it more as a job, and maybe somewhere along the line I did start shaving more. I never really realized it at the time, but you're right...I do shave more now. Well, except for these last two weeks."

"I wondered if it had something to do with that."

"You're the detective, after all." He smiled down at her, before exclaiming "Hey! That explains it!"

"That explains what?"

"I used to have this electric razor...had it like, forever. It was the best thing. It was old, but I liked it, you know? But then it just died several months ago so I had to get a new one. Now I wonder if it died because I started using it more?" He grinned at her. "Oh, my gosh. The homicide team caused a death. The death of my razor."

She rolled her eyes. "Maybe it died because it was old?"

"Nah. There you go again-ruining a perfectly good theory with logic. I like my story better. And you're the detective, you can investigate it!"

"Fine. But ultimately, you just confessed to murdering it by overuse, regardless of the cause of the overuse. So I'd have to arrest you."

"With handcuffs?" he asked, raising an eyebrow.

"You wish," she told him. Then she turned and grabbed his hand and resumed their walk back to the house. "Come on, stubble king, we have a vacation to finish."

o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o

She sat on the beach chair a while later, just watching the waves and the birds that were running around and picking at the tiny little shells that washed up with each wave. She and Rick had pulled the chairs right up to the edge of the water and then he had gone up to the house to 'get something', with instructions for her to stay where she was.

She leaned back in the chair and closed her eyes against the sun, and she started to wonder what he was doing when he didn't come back after a few minutes. But she wasn't going to worry about it. His delay could mean any one of a number of things: he'd checked email or his phone messages, he tripped over a couch, or maybe he even got attacked by a hoarde of the tiny lizards that lived in the bushes down here. Who knew? The rest of her life was certainly going to be interesting with him in it, that was for sure.

Then her eyes flew open again when she realized that she'd just thought, automatically, in terms of 'the rest of her life'...with Rick Castle in it. That thought right there made her heart start beating a little faster. Sure, she had that gorgeous engagement ring in her room, but even Rick, himself, had said that he knew she wasn't ready yet when he gave it to her. And she totally knew she wasn't ready for that committment yet. So why did her mind keep having these thoughts, like it was a done deal? They were still getting used to the relationship thing with each other. And they had to see if they could make this work in the 'real world', back in New York, that what they had down here wouldn't fade like some dream within the traffic and the crowds of the city. But wait a minute...didn't she just have this conversation with herself just a little while ago? If she didn't watch it, that rogue little voice inside of her head was going to start spewing nonsense again. Boy, she really was losing it. This wasn't good. Frustrated with the direction that her thoughts kept heading, she scrunched her eyes shut and used the heels of her hands to bang on her forehead in an attempt to knock some sense into herself.

"Beckett, why are you hitting yourself on the head?"

She jumped and screamed a little at the sound of Rick's voice as she whipped her head around toward the sound. Where had he come from? "So now you're sneaking up on me?" she accused with a little bit of a frantic tone to her voice. And then, noting the tray that held two tall glasses and a box, she asked, "What's that?"

He decided to answer the first question first. "I didn't try to sneak up on you. Maybe you would have noticed me coming if you hadn't been hitting yourself on the head. And exactly why were you hitting yourself on the head anyway? That couldn't have been pleasant. And trust me, it doesn't work anyway. I've tried it before when I've had writer's block and it's never helped. I just end up with a headache."

She listened to his monologue, thinking there was no way in hell she was going to tell him exactly what she was thinking about. She was sure he'd be all too happy to hear about her rogue thoughts regarding potential nuptual bliss. So instead, she just said again, "What's that?", grateful beyond belief that she could have something to think about besides her own errant thoughts or her own childish head-banging antics.

"I made strawberry margaritas. And this is some of the chocolate cake that I bought at the bakery. We can't take it all home, so we really need to eat some."

"You brought me alcohol? And chocolate?" He nodded, and she held up a hand and replied simply, "Gimme. Now."

Rick looked at her quizzically as she grabbed one of the glasses and took a big, long slurp from the straw. "Uh, Kate? Are you all right?"

"I'm fine, Rick. I just...needed something to drink and this looked good."

"Sure, Kate. You were thirsty. That's why you practically attacked the tray."

Slurp. Swallow. "Uh huh. Thanks."

He didn't buy it for a minute. All of a sudden, something was bothering her, enough to make her dive at a girly drink and get giddy at the mention of chocolate. Yeah, she was stressed about something. But he wasn't gone all that long...what could have happened? Well, he could find out, but a little reinforcement wouldn't hurt, he thought, as he cut a generously-sized piece of cake and held it up as if examining it. "The cake actually has a mocha buttercream frosting, I'm told, so you even get a little coffee. Well, at least the flavoring."

She tried to take the plate but he held it out of her reach. "Castle, hand over the chocolate," she said with a warning tone in her voice.

"Nuh-uh-uh," he said. "Not until you tell me what's stressing you out so much all of a sudden that you're chugging the margarita like it's a slush puppy and you're practically diving at the chocolate cake."

"Nothing." She glared at him.

"With all due respect, my love, that is load of hooey so big that it wouldn't even fit in the pool up there."

She glared at him, but he glared back. She tried the raised eyebrow trick, which he also matched. She then said "Castle..." using a tone that was more than slightly menacing.

He just continued the glare and said "Beckett..." once again matching her tone. "You want cake, you spill. We have this honesty thing going now, right? Full communication?"

She knew he was right. And it burned. So she took a long sip of the margarita before heaving a big sigh. "I'm just wondering how this whole...thing...between us is going to play out when we get back to New York."

Ah. That was it. The time had come. He'd already figured out that at some point, she'd start freaking out, Beckett-style, about going home and dealing with the new facets of their relationship there. Frankly, he thought it would happen on the plane going home, when the reality of leaving would have really set in. Well, it was time to set her straight.

"Kate, first of all let me say that we do not have a 'thing'. We have a relationship. And someday, I'm confident that we're going to put another name on what we have, a word that starts with the letter 'M' and is eight letters long."

Marriage. There was that word again. At least he didn't say it out loud. She knew how she'd said in the hot tub the same night that he'd given her the ring that they should just call it what it was, but she was kind of glad right now that he hadn't.

"Sure, we have a...relationship...here, but this is far from the real world. We can sleep in until all hours. We go out on private yachts. We have sex on the beach..."

"No, actually, we didn't. We had sex in the ocean, but not on the beach, which I'm very happy about. That sand tends to get in places where you definitely don't want it."

She rolled her eyes. "You know what I mean. Things won't be the same when we get back."

"No, the location won't be the same, and regretfully, the weather won't either. But I love you down here, and I'll love you back in New York, and I'll continue to love you whenever or whereever." He paused to let his words sink in a little bit. "And if you also remember, we watched movies and TV shows down here, we cooked together down here and we even did the dishes together. Those are all things that we'll do back in New York too. They're part of real life, no matter where you are. And we can't have sex in the ocean, but we can certainly use the bathtub. And I have a nice, roomy shower too. With seats." He gave her a sexy grin as he raised an eyebrow suggestively.

"And you also have a daughter and a mother that you live with," she told him, to bring him back down to earth again.

"Who both like you quite a bit," he countered, without missing a beat. "And if you remember, one of them has already requested that you go formal dress shopping with her. Remember that?"

Oh, yeah. Alexis did ask Rick that, and that was a while ago. Relatively speaking, of course.

Rick continued. "The daughter and the mother are not the problem. Sex on the beach is not the problem. So what is the problem?"

Without thinking, she blurted out, "It's too fast."

He looked at her, really looked. "No, that may be part of it, but that's not all. We've already discussed the speed with which everything has happened. We've talked about how we got a lot of the traditional dating or getting-to-know-you stuff out of the way before this trip, before we were even officially together."

She was still silent. Finally, he reiterated what he told her earlier. "Kate, the location may change, but I will love you and you'll love me, no matter where we happen to go. Just because we admitted things in Florida doesn't mean that we didn't build most of that relationship in New York before we ever came down here. All of the groundwork happened there, when we didn't even realize it. We just needed a change of scenery to make it all click into place for us, I guess."

"What if it clicks out of place when we get back?"

"It won't. That bell has been run already. We can't unring it. And I don't want to. Do you?"

She looked at him for a few long moments. Deep down, she knew the answer that he wanted to hear, the answer that he expected to hear, which was the answer that was true. They'd be okay, now and when they got back. "No. I don't want to unring that bell." After she said it, she was visibly more calm, as if just by saying it, she knew everything would be okay.

"That's what I thought. And if we both want the same thing, then there's a pretty good chance that together, we can make sure it happens."

"If you knew what I was going to say, then why didn't you tell me to shut up and stop obsessing?"

"Would that have helped?"

Begrudgingly, she told him, "No."

"Kate?"

"Yeah?"

"Promise me something?"

She regarded him cautiously. "I don't know," she told him honestly. "I'll try. What?"

"Promise me that if you ever get freaked out, talk to me? Okay? I'm here for you. And even if I'm part of the problem, there's no way we can fix it unless you clue me in first."

She thought about it, and then she nodded. "I can do that."

"Good," he told her.

Then she continued. "Rick?" she asked.

Cautiously, he answered, "What?"

"Can I have my cake now? Before the frosting melts?"

With a smile, he handed her the slice of cake and then turned back to the box and cut one for himself.

"Thanks, Rick. And I'm sorry I freaked out."

"You're welcome, I know, and don't worry, I was expecting it."

She almost choked on her cake when she realized what he'd said. "What?" she said, trying to make sure the cake didn't fall out of her mouth.

"Kate, give me some credit. I've been shadowing you, watching you, studying you for years. I know you. And I know you a lot better after these last two weeks. Do you realize how much talking we've done? Lots. So no matter how you felt about me, no matter if you knew you loved me or whatever, I knew that at some point you'd freak out about some aspect of our new relationship. I actually thought it would be on the plane going home tomorrow, but I can admit I was a little off in that."

"So you've been biding your time, waiting for me to freak out?" she prompted.

"Basically, yes."

"That sounds so pathetic. Not you. It makes me sound pathetic...that you knew I would have some...issues...and you were right. Ugh."

"It stands to reason. Kate, remember, I've been married twice already. I'm not terribly proud of two failed marriages, but at least they taught me a couple of things: what's wrong with a relationship and what I don't want, and then, what's right and what I really do want in a relationship. But you don't have that particular wealth of experience. So it only stood to reason that you would freak out a little bit. Anyone in the same situation would. And it's not pathetic. Because then I'd have to be a little bit pathetic for loving you. And I am not pathetic."

She smiled and him and shook her head. Only Castle. But even though it was a bit unnerving that he seemed to know her so well, it also gave her belly a little jolt. Because nobody had ever known her like he did, like he really, genuinely wanted to. Other guys might have picked a fight...he made her talk it out and reassured her. And then he gave her chocolate. What a guy.

"Rick?"

He looked up from his cake. "Yeah?"

"I love you."

He grinned at her and winked. "Back at ya, Dollface," he told her in a tough voice, like he was trying to do a comic book super-cop imitation.

She rolled her eyes and smiled, taking some frosting from her cake and wiping it on his nose. Things were back to normal.


I'm not entirely sure if I like this chapter, so please don't flog me too badly if you don't like it. At least it's long, for those of you who like longer chapters. I just thought that the Kate in my story wouldn't be herself if she didn't freak out at least a little bit at some point when she really thought about going home and how things would change...that they now had this relationship to work through on their home turf. And of course, combined with the whole going home thing, it would only stand to reason that the whole ring/proposal thing would happen to invade her mind at random times. So even though Rick wasn't pressuring her himself, just the mere fact that she couldn't really forget the ring was there was enough to add a little bit to her stress level.

I took some liberties with the shaving/stubble discussion, but it's something that I did indeed notice. I'd see all of the episodes, but when I got the DVDs of seasons 1 and 2 for Christmas, I watched them again with my kids. And the stubble that was there-that isn't there now-is one thing that I noticed right away. It was never really addressed, but I think it was one of those little signs that the writers use so well, this one telling us (showing us?) that Castle was growing up and getting a little more serious. He was being a 'big boy'...shaving and going to a job. Don't know if that's accurate or not, but was just my take on the whole thing.

So...anyway...thoughts? Like I said, if you thought it sucked, please be kind.