Chapter 11
Considering it was a Friday afternoon of a summer weekend and what that usually meant for traffic in and out of the city, Kate's cab ride from the airport to Rick's place was a surprisingly speedy one, and she arrived just as a thunderstorm settled in over the city, its rain falling in sheets.
She'd never been one to believe in omens, to attach ominous significance to such common phenomenon as the weather, but if she had been, the timing of it might well have had the hair on the back of her neck standing at attention.
With her backpack hung over her shoulder, she jumped out of the cab and took off across the sidewalk, ducking and dodging the umbrellas of those who heeded the morning news's warning and marched into the day prepared. In the entry of his building, she shook off a layer of drops, engaged in a round of small talk with the familiar concierge, and then climbed into the elevator for the loft.
She pulled out her phone when she landed at his door, used it as a makeshift mirror to check her look one last time. Her look was weary and wet, not the winningest combination she thought, but at that point there was little to be done about it, so she did little.
With an anticipatory breath, she knocked and waited. And knocked again. And waited.
It wasn't until she'd all but resigned herself to the idea that she'd have to call and give her surprise away in far less entertaining fashion than planned that the door opened.
"Katherine." Confusion elicited a rapid shift in the woman's expression. "Katherine?"
Martha stood before her robed, the blush of her skin observably fading against the fire of her hair.
"I don't understand. I thought I just woke from a nap. Is this a dream? Am I dreaming?" she said almost convinced of it. Nearing a step, she poked her head out the doorway into the hall. "Where is Richard?"
"Castle's not here?" Kate asked, but quickly adjusted her focus to what seemed the more pressing matter. "Martha, are you okay?"
Martha cupped her hands around her nose and mouth as the reality of the situation hit her.
"Oh, darling, come in, come in. You might want to be sitting for this. I know I do." Taking Kate by the arm, she ushered her inside. "You're dripping. Let me get you a towel before I-"
"Martha, I'm fine. Can you just please tell me what's going on? I'm getting a little freaked out here."
Part of her wanted to laugh, because she'd had a nagging feeling her son's plan wasn't a great one, had shared as much. But mostly she found herself heartsick over having to deliver the news that the plane Rick was on had probably flown right by hers.
"I hate that I have to be the one to tell you this, Katherine, especially after you traveled all this way, and you probably won't believe it when you hear it, but while you're now here in New York, Richard is right now in Washington. In fact, he's likely at your office, learning the very same thing as we sit here together."
Kate's lips parted but nothing came out.
"Bless your restless and romantic hearts. You poor kids," Martha commiserated. "Well, if anything ever called for a drink, I'd say this is it, hmm? Wine for two, coming up."
She rose from the sofa, set off for the kitchen, and just seconds later Kate's phone rang. "Bet I know who that is," she supposed, and continued on in her correctness.
"Castle," Kate answered, that single word delivered in that tone expressing more than a hundred could.
"I'm in D.C. and you're not."
Kate's eyes slid shut. "I'm in New York and you're not."
Martha looked on from a distance, her ears open, her hand over her heart.
Suddenly, Kate began to giggle.
"I love you," she told him, because there were moments it was truer than anything else and she couldn't help herself.
"I can't wait to show you how much I love you for this," Rick echoed and then some. "You, stay right where you are. Don't move. I'm walking out of Agent Shaw's office right now and getting a cab back to the airport. I'll find a flight on the way. There are, like, a hundred of them a day between here and New York. There's no way I won't be able to get on something tonight."
Get on something, she thought. Yeah, that'd been the plan.
"No, Castle, I'll change my flight home and come to you." She twisted her body, so it faced away from the kitchen, lowered her voice. "Then I can have you all to myself for the weekend and you can show me how much as much as you want. Can you go find someplace to park yourself for a few hours without getting into any trouble?"
"Me? Trouble? Please."
Kate's eyebrow popped entirely on its own. He couldn't see it, but he knew.
"Okay, fine, wise guy," he scoffed. "But if we're doing it this way, I'm paying for the ticket. Give them whatever the hell they want. They can have it all."
"But I only want you for your money, Castle," Kate smirked. "Where will that leave me then?"
Martha couldn't contain her amusement, and it floated across the room.
"You know what I'll do? I'll ask my girlfriend, Jordan, where I can kill some time. She missed me a lot, by the way. She practically jumped me in her office."
Kate shook her head. "I warned her you'd probably just show up one day. It took me an hour to convince her not to quit on the spot."
"FYI: Your jealousy is such a turn-on. Always has been. We'll talk more about that later. And naked. Right now, go find a way to get yourself back here as fast as humanly possible. Send me the details when you have them."
With two glasses of wine in hand, Martha came up behind Kate, who'd already begun a search on her phone for a flight.
"I'm happy to drink both, darling, don't you worry. You just go on and do your thing." She enjoyed a sip from each. "You two really are terribly sweet, you know. I'm glad you can both laugh about this. It makes me feel not so bad about doing it myself."
Kate knew Martha was talking, but she didn't hear a word she said.
xxxx
Having convinced a young man far tipsier than he to allow him to sneak in behind an hour before, Rick was already sitting in the lobby of Kate's apartment building when she finally arrived home after midnight, and though evened out from the aftereffects of the several rounds he kicked back during his wait, her appearance catapulted him to a whole new level of intoxication.
Neither the lip-lock the two shared in that lobby nor the one the stairwell played host to compared in appetite, duration, or consolation to the yielding the secluded world of her apartment afforded them.
Their bodies came for one another hard and fast, revenge of the sweetest kind against the cruel existence of time and miles, the want carried by each into the day heightened to a pinnacle across the hours and events that led to their reunion.
"You taste good," Kate whispered against his lips. "You had scotch."
"I had much scotch, but you don't have to worry." He dipped to her neck, teased it with just enough attention that she felt it everywhere. "I'm sober enough to understand exactly who and where I am, and you have my consent to do whatever it is you'd planned to do to me in New York."
She dropped one such plan into his ear and he gasped playfully, winning a laugh.
"Well, I definitely think I'm up for the challenge," Rick grinned. "I don't know if my balance is fully on its game, but there's only one way to find out." He immediately took off down the hallway toward her bedroom, stopped, and pivoted around when he realized she wasn't with him. "Are you coming? That plan is definitely going to be more fun with two people," he said, somewhere between soft and sexy.
"I am, yeah." Kate took a couple of steps but that was all. "I'm so happy to see you, Castle," she told him and then looked away, as though voicing the sentiment brought her embarrassment. "I'm sorry. I know that must sound really simple to a writer. I wish I could think of prettier words to use right now."
He went back to her, took her hand.
"Hey, look at me." The same woman who just filled his ear with such delicious naughtiness suddenly seemed such an endearing shade of bashful. His heart could barely contain its delight in the paradox. "It doesn't matter how you say it. That you feel it means everything to me, and for it I'm the luckiest man in the world. Never mind writer."
"I love you," she followed, granting herself a smile with the compliment.
Rick matched the curl of her lips with his own, leaned in and kissed her sweetly.
"Now I'm the one who's sorry. Whenever I hear you say that, for a little while I forget every word I've ever known."
"That won't be a problem," she assured him, rising onto her tiptoes to meet his eye straight on. "My plan doesn't need your mouth for talking."
Without warning, he wrapped his arms around her waist and whisked her off to the bedroom.
xxxx
Whenever it was would've felt too soon, but Rick's flight home was scheduled for that Sunday afternoon, and he spent most of the hours of the night before lying awake beside Kate in the darkness, cursing every passing moment of the clock as they counted down to that dreaded eventuality.
It wasn't the first time his thoughts had ventured into the land of what-ifs: What if he'd told her how he felt about her sooner? What if he hadn't been standing outside the interrogation room that day? What if his reaction to what he'd heard her say in that room had driven her hundreds of miles away? They all still wandered in and lingered now and again, but never as they did that night, and he just couldn't manage to get rid of them.
Sometime just after the light of morning began to fill her bedroom, he got up and dressed, pocketed her keys, and went out for a walk, for a distraction. To breathe.
But the dawn air was heavy in his lungs, and it brought no relief. Instead, it was like a blanket he wished he could kick off rather than curl up in, a burden on top of a burden. It seemed it didn't matter where he tried to hide or how. Something was different. Something had changed.
For blocks and blocks Rick walked, moving in a straight line, never a turn, never a decision made, until eventually he came upon a 24-hour market and went inside. A short time later, he emerged again, toting the ingredients for breakfast in one hand and a modest bouquet of flowers in the other.
Kate was still in bed when he got back to the apartment, had barely stirred it appeared, so he set the coffee to brew and stripped out of his clothes, stepped into a shower to cool his skin and maybe finally tranquilize his mind.
"Hey. I didn't even feel you get up," she said through the glass just minutes after he closed himself inside.
Rick pushed the water from his eyes and the door open a sliver. "I couldn't sleep. That didn't mean you shouldn't. There's coffee if you want. I got some stuff to make breakfast, too."
She waited, but when the invitation didn't come, she asked. "Is it okay if I get in there with you, wake up a little bit first?"
He moved aside in silent reply, adjusted the temperature of the water from cool to warm for her while she undressed.
"You look tired." She drew tender fingers down his cheek. "And something. Sad, maybe. Castle, what's wrong?" she started to say when he wrapped her in his arms. There was urgency in his embrace and, because of it, concern in her voice, but sensing it was what he wanted, she left it, and then there were no more words, not from either.
In the kitchen afterward, at his insistence, Kate sat with her coffee and watched as he prepared their food on his own.
"Are those for me?" She flicked her head in the direction of the bouquet wrapped in protective plastic on the counter. She wanted so badly to break through whatever had him so far from being him. "Maybe they're for your girlfriend, Jordan."
Rick's eyes slowly traveled up from the pan of egg whites that had his hands busy. "No, they live here with you now. I wanted them to know what real beauty looks like. Can you grab me the pepper?"
She slid from her stool and came around, went into the cabinet for what he needed, kissed him softly in the handoff for the millionth reminder of why she loved him.
"You're quiet, Castle," she finally vocalized after considerable deliberation about whether to push.
He paused and then replied, succinctly and sincerely at that. "Sorry."
Kate nudged her fingers through the belt loops of his jeans and held him from behind at the hips, let her cheek find rest against the warmth of his back.
"I didn't say it wasn't a welcome change," she teased and felt his muscles contract with a flicker of laughter. "Will you tell me why?"
"I did already. I'm tired, that's all. I didn't get a lot of sleep last night."
That wasn't all, but he tried to help the fib pass with a caress of her arm.
It couldn't possibly work, not with a connection like theirs.
"Remember how we said we weren't going to do that? You don't think I know when you're upset, Castle?" She knew all too well. It pained her to remember. "Did I do something?"
Rick's chin dropped. "Of course not."
He spun the stove dial to kill the burner and turned to face her.
"You want to know why I'm upset? It's because I hate this. I hate that I had to get into bed next to you last night knowing that it was the last night. I hate that that was the last shower, and this is the last breakfast. That those are the last flowers. I hate that I waited so long for this, to have all of this with you, and I don't even really have it."
"But you do have it, Castle. We have it. We're here, together."
"We're here together right now. What about in three hours from now when I have to leave you again for who the hell knows how long? This is only the third time, and it's already killing me. I don't want it to keep being this way.
"Kate, I want to fall asleep with your cold toes against my skin every night and mess up your lipstick with a kiss before you leave for work every morning. I want our socks to roll around in the dryer together and for you to use my razor to shave your legs, for you to hand me the pepper when I'm cooking us omelets. And when you tell me you love me, I want you to be able to see with your own eyes the way it lights me up every single time."
In part because words wouldn't immediately come, Kate curled herself around him, held him firm and long. He wasn't alone in any of it. She wanted all those things, everything he'd waited and hoped for, but she also understood what it would mean to ask for them, what he'd have to give up for her in their realization, and harmonizing that wasn't something she knew yet how to do.
"We'll talk about it, okay?" she said when she finally eased her clasp. "We'll have breakfast and then we'll talk about it. I'm not going to let you leave like this." She brushed her lips against his. "I promise, Castle. We do have it. We do."
