"Are you sure you'll be alright, Katie?" Her father finally asks as he rides the brake through the thick traffic. "I know I say this a lot, but I'm worried about you."
"Why, Dad?" She asks on a chuckle. "I'm not a cop anymore."
He nods, "Yes, which means you don't have any income." He tells her as the traffic comes to a halt.
"I have enough in savings, Dad." She defends.
Jim sighs as he inches forward in the traffic. "Just promise me you'll call me if you need help?" He tells her with an upward inflection.
"Dad," She starts with a worried tone of her own, "I'm not going to tear you away from your job just because I'm lonely."
"Katie," Jim chuckles again, seeming to shake off her concern, "I may have a law degree, but I'm mostly a paper pusher these days. One of the partners told me I should take early retirement and enjoy life while I can."
"You'd retire this early?" She asks him with a surprised, taken aback, smile. For a moment, she's happy conversing with her dad about menial things. "What would you do?"
Jim shrugs as he turns down onto a less crowded, one-way street. "Well, your mother and I always talked about moving out of the city, buying a little place upstate somewhere in the suburbs. Your mother always wanted to open up some sort of shop."
Kate laughs to herself at the idea and looks out the passenger window. "We're here." She tells him as he double-parks outside of a brick building with a glass door. "I'll just be a minute." She says quickly as she climbs out of the car and goes inside.
After showing the clerk the proper paperwork, she's handed a key and is pointed in the direction of her storage unit. Near the end of the first floor, she arrives at the sliding yellow door that marks her unit. She opens the unit and quickly takes survey of her things, seeing most of it intact, and luckily, most of the things she needs are right in front, mostly the drawers taken out of her dresser.
Save for one.
When she sees it, her throat closes. She's never opened up that drawer. She doesn't even know if he ever kept anything in it. She's sure that he has an article of clothing or two left behind in his laundry after a night of unwinding at his loft. But it was his drawer. Maybe a simple cotton t-shirt he wore underneath a flannel, a scorecard from Twister maybe. Ignoring everything else she needs to pick up for her trip, she moves toward the drawer with shaky legs and a cold sweat rushing over her skin, making even her scalp tighten with nervousness.
She slowly tugs on the knob and feels her eyes burn.
Sitting inside is just a single piece of clothing, a grey flannel with darker colored stripes he wore when he dressed casually. She doesn't hesitate in reaching in and snatching the shirt up in between her fingers, just to feel the fabric. When she caresses the soft fabric of his shirt, she feels a part of her relax, petting the shirt with her thumb. After a moment, she lets her eyes drift shut and pulls the shirt out, leaning back to sit against the arm of her couch that sits against the side of the storage unit.
Holding his shirt tenderly in her hands, she flattens it out on her palms and gazes in reverence at it, a sad, emotional smile appearing on her face. She misses him so much.
As Castle sits in the passenger seat, he looks between his daughter's feet and her intense stare at the dashboard.
"Okay, sweetie, one more time." He encourages her. "You'll get it, I promise."
Alexis takes in a long breath and blows it out in cold air, wringing both hands on the steering wheel. "Okay..." she sighs nervously.
The engine purrs softly as Alexis moves one hand down to the shifter. He watches carefully as her left leg starts to pull up off the floor, then looks quickly up to her. He has confidence in her, but knowing how quickly his little girl tackled things in the past, he's surprised she hasn't gotten it down yet. As the engine revs down when she eases up on the clutch, he decides to stay silent, thinking that shouting orders at her won't help. But as the car jerks forward and Alexis guns the gas, the car rocks to a dead halt, the engine cutting off.
"Ah!" Alexis shouts and slams her palm down onto the Ferrari's steering wheel.
"No," Castle starts with a smile quickly getting the better of him, "it's okay, pumpkin. You'll get it. Don't worry."
"No, I won't, Dad!" She cries angrily. "This is stupid! Why can't they just make things work like they're supposed to!"
"Hey, calm down, sweetie. You'll get it." He says to her reassuringly. "You said you wanted to learn how to drive the Ferrari. Well, I'm teaching you. And besides, this car is a family heirloom, you're going to inherit this thing someday. You're going to want to know how to drive it, aren't you?"
"Family heirloom?" She cracks, rolling her eyes as she looks over to him, an honest emotional frustration shining in her eyes. "Dad, it's a sports car."
"We don't have much history in this family, okay?" He laughs. "Unless you had your heart set on inheriting your grandmother's wardrobe?" He lifts his brow to her. Alexis' shoulders slump heavily and she looks over to him, her hands falling into her lap. "Let's try one more time, okay? Now, foot down on the clutch." He tells her and waits for her to press down on the third pedal. "Okay, start it up."
The Ferrari's engine roars and Alexis slowly puts her hands back up on the wheel, looking frightened and nervous.
"Okay," Castle says reassuringly, "now remember, as you slowly let up off the clutch, slowly ease onto the gas as you feel the car pull."
She breathes out another shaky breath and wrings her hands on the steering wheel nervously. She takes a long moment of pause before looking out onto the mostly empty parking lot of the grocery store. Castle watches intently as she slowly lets up off the clutch, easing her foot off the ground. But just as before, when she engine starts to give out, Alexis panics and guns the engine to try and save herself, stalling out for the tenth time.
"Aaahhhh!" She seethes as the car rocks to a stop.
"Calm..." Castle tries over his laughter, "calm down, sweetie." He laughs.
"Why are you laughing?!" Alexis whines. "This isn't funny, Dad! Why are you laughing at me?!"
"I'm not laughing at you, Alexis. I promise." He puts his hand up. "It's just that you were always so good at everything growing up, I never got to really have this kind of moment with you. It's not you, I swear."
"Well, this isn't funny!" She whines, seeming honestly distraught at her inability to get this right. "I'm not feeling it pull, okay? What pull am I supposed to be feeling? Do you want me to get out and hook a horse up to the front fender or something? I don't feel any pull!"
"Okay, okay," Castle calms himself down. "It's okay, Alexis. I had the racing clutch taken out because I don't hate you. So here's what I want you to try. Start it up again." He says and gives her a moment to start to Ferrari up again. "Okay, now... ease down on the gas just a little bit." He says. Alexis slowly presses down on the gas, enough to get the RPMs up just a tad, "Okay, good!" He encourages, "now, slowly let off the clutch."
She lets out a shaky breath and slowly eases off the clutch and the car begins to move smoothly. "Ha..." she laughs in a sigh of relief as the car finally begins to move.
"See? I told you you'd get it!" He says with a smile.
After a few more times repeating the same process, Alexis quickly gets the hang of taking off and is soon easing into the gas like she copied the information into her brain straight out of a textbook. Once she regains her confidence, Alexis is confidently making circles in the parking lot of the grocery store.
"Okay, think you can handle driving home while I pick up stuff for dinner tonight?" He asks her when she pulls to a stop.
"Yeah, I think I can handle it." She tells him with a smile. "But Dad, it's almost five miles home. You sure you want to walk?"
"Yeah, why not?" He tells her with a smile and climbs out of the Ferrari, closing the door and giving her a wave and a smile as she pulls off and out of the driveway.
This is where she drove him to?
She can tell why he decided to retreat here. The town is almost picturesque of small-town America. The houses are all well kept with furnished patios and groomed lawns and tended gardens. People are walking their dogs down the sidewalk with smiles on their faces, even waving at her, a complete stranger, as she drives by them. The weather is nice and temperate, especially for early March. It's a bit windy outside, but it's nowhere near as cold and wet as New York was.
She never considered herself one to live out in the suburbs like this, but maybe she could understand how a place like this would grow on a person. It's late afternoon and the place smells of husbands getting home from work and hoisting their kids up in their arms and asking about their day at school.
But she's here to find Castle. As small as this town my seem, it's still relatively large. She knows he lives by a lake, but has no clue as to where that lake would be, or which house would even be his.
After driving through the streets of the quaint suburban town of Crestfield, passing by single-story homes on a temperate spring day with the sun shining, she can't help but feel a twinge of hopelessness. How's she ever going to find him.
But serendipity seems to grace her when she looks down the street to see a very familiar cherry red Ferrari come down the opposite side of the road. "Castle?" She asks, a hopeful lift in her tightly wound voice.
As the Ferrari passes her, she notices it's Alexis in the driver seat alone, looking overly concentrated on driving. Beckett looks over her shoulder to follow the car. Since when does Alexis know how to drive stick?
She looks down the road to see a town center of sorts come into view ahead of her and on the left of her, a medium-sized parking lot that only has upwards of ten to fifteen cars parked in it in front of a grocery store. Maybe if she's lucky, she can ask around inside and find out where Alexis was heading. She can't bank on Alexis not spotting her and leading her away from their house. It's probably just paranoia, still thinking like she was trained to working for the AG's office, maybe.
She pulls her rental car to a stop at the far end of the parking lot, whipping off her seatbelt and climbing out on nervous legs. With a breath out to test the air, she brushes her hair behind her ear as it whips with the breeze and closes the car door. When she rounds the front of the car, she starts to stride quickly toward the entrance and makes it a few long strides before looking up.
And when she does, she spots him.
Oh my god... she thinks to herself.
She's stopped dead when she sees him a distance of ten feet away from her, seeming to have spotted her the same time she spotted him and stopped.
He looks... she tries to think as her heart flutters almost painfully inside of her chest and her mouth turns to a desert. He looks incredible. With a reusable grocery bag hanging from one hand, in a tan flannel shirt with the sleeves rolled up his forearms, he has on a black t-shirt underneath it and a pair of dark blue jeans with a pair of sunglasses over his eyes. His hair seems lighter and less gelled and styled, but works so well for him. He looks so much thinner, leaner, healthier, more toned and defined. With the wind flowing against him as he stands dead still a distance away from her, she can see the clear definition of his lean muscles underneath the thin fabric of the black t-shirt.
But for all of this admiration of his well-toned physique, it quickly comes at an almost crippling, gut wrenching price when a thought occurs to her.
Was she bad for him?
"Ha..." she tries on an almost inaudible voice. "Hi..." She says with an open, almost shy smile.
She watches as he slowly starts to approach her, and it isn't until now that she sees the pinch in his brow and the clench in the more defined line of his jaw. Not even a hint of a smile. He looks just as furious as he sounded on that voicemail.
But nonetheless, she can't help but sigh quickly and smile again, waving her hand out to him slightly. "You look great." She tries as he continues to slowly pace toward her.
He gets another step toward her before he simply looks off in another direction toward the corner of the parking lot that leads out to an open field behind the houses and starts to walk off as if she wasn't even there.
"Wait, Castle," she tries, stepping out to try and intercept him. But he stays stone silent as he marches away from her. "Castle, just hear me out, please." She pleads with him as she walks behind him for a few steps.
"Hear you out?" He parrots back at her and stops to turn around. "I'm not even gonna bother telling you to give me a good reason why I should." He spits at her and turns back around and continues to walk off.
"Castle, please!" She practically begs. "I came all this way just to find you. The least you can do is give me a few seconds."
Castle slows his stride and hands his head for a moment. After a pause, he drops the bag to the pavement and turns back around, moving his sunglasses to his head as he looks up at her with a set of stern, almost vacant eyes.
They're just as blue as she remembers them.
"I uh..." she attempts and has to look away from him. "I quit the AG's office."
She doesn't know why she thought in her head that that would be enough to get him to crack, because he doesn't even flinch.
"They weren't really interested in fighting for justice the way I saw it, so... I quit a couple of days ago." She nods, still afraid that he'll think of her as weak and frail for giving up. "And," she chuckles darkly to herself, "the NYPD's going through a bit of a budgetary freeze right now and I can't get my job as a detective back unless someone decides to retire or quits, so... here I am." She shrugs.
It only takes a moment for him to give her a stern nod, look away from her toward the store, and turn back away from her and start to march out of the parking lot again.
"Wait, Castle," she tries again, almost floored at his reaction. "I just told you that I quit my job for you."
He stops dead, but only to spin back around with fire shooting from his eyes. "You didn't quit anything for me!" He spits, pointing at the ground. "You quit your job for you." He points his finger at her. "Don't try that on my, Beckett." He says in a low, dark tone, almost as if it's a warning and turns back around.
"Castle, I'm here for you. Doesn't that count for anything?" She fires back, throwing her arms out.
"No!" He returns, spinning around to continue the fight. For him, he's had this interaction a thousand times in his head, has the scene and the dialogue written and well-versed and has had it stowed away for months. "And you want to know why?" He asks her, narrowing his eyes. "You didn't quit because you missed me, or because it was just too painful for you to be away from me. No, you quit the job you left me for because it wasn't what you thought it was. And not only that," he angrily shakes his head, tossing his arms out as he shouts, "you tell me that you tried to get your old job with the Twelfth back and they wouldn't give it to you and now you're here? What the hell am I to you, Beckett? Your last resort?"
Her eyes burning, she shakes her head. "No, that's-"
"No," he smiles evilly, almost satisfied with tearing her down even further. "No, of course, I am. Because that's the way it's always been, so I guess it's nice to see that nothing's changed with you. I've always been your last option, haven't I? I'm the guy you go to when you've exhausted all your other options because you know that I'll just throw my arms open to you no matter what you put me through, right?"
"No, Castle, that's not-" She tries on a trembling voice.
"Well, I'm going to take a lesson from you," he continues on without her, "and I'm going to leave you grasping for what I leave behind."
As he turns away from her, quicker than he had before and starts to march away from her, she tries one last time. "But, Castle, I love you!"
Not shaken in the least, he just stops again and turns around, pointing at the ground again with fire in his eyes. "If that were true, you wouldn't have left." He tells her in a dark voice, staring right through her. "Because I felt the same way about you and I never would have left you. So don't try and tell me that after this long."
When he turns back around, her heart lodged in her throat, she finally gets her voice back. "Give me a break here, Castle!" She calls, which doesn't get him to turn around. "I mean, you were going to break up with me anyway!"
That makes him stop dead, stopping mid-stride as he moves to pick up his groceries. He looks at her over his shoulder with narrowed eyes. "Break up with you?" He asks in a tight voice.
She looks at him with watery eyes, holding her head as high as she can manage. "What, do you think I just started packing after you walked out of my apartment that night?" She challenges as he slowly starts to pace his way toward her, his features seeming to get more etched as he approaches her. "You think I never heard your voicemail, how dark and angry and serious you sounded when you asked me to meet you. You think I didn't know that you were going to break up with me? You can't blame me for not wanting to face that after everything we went through, Castle."
Castle slowly paces closer to her than he has before, raising his brow but lowering his gaze as he seems to try and use every fiber of himself to pull back his anger. "You want to know why I asked you to meet me in person?" He challenges her, almost speaking through clenched teeth.
All she can do is watch in horrifying silence as he reaches silently into his back pocket and pulls out his wallet. When he looks away from her and opens up his wallet and pulls out a small piece of dark cloth, she feels everything inside of her splinter apart. He surprises her by simply tossing the small trinket at her, not caring if she catches it or not. When she catches it between her chest and her hands, she looks up with her heart choking her and sees him striding away from her with his grocery bag in his hand.
Her hands are shaking as she takes the small piece of thick cloth in her palm and pulls out the engagement ring with her thumb and forefinger. "Oh my god..." she says in a trembling voice.
He was never planning on break up with her. She ran away from his proposal.
"I would have said yes." She says to herself as hot tears cloud her vision. When she looks back up toward him and sees him already half way through the open field, she calls back after him in a sob. "I would have said yes!"
Tucked underneath the layers of bedding in her motel room, she sobs loudly in the darkness of her room, staring at photos of them she's saved to break down over until now.
Just one day ago, she never thought she could get any more broken. She never thought she could lose any more after losing her job. She didn't think the world had any more bones of hers to break, didn't think she could be torn down any further. God, she wishes she was right. She's never felt this broken before.
Another wave of sobs rocks through her as she swipes to another picture of them in bed, his soft and caring smirk complimenting his soft and loving eyes as he holds a strand of her hair over his upper lip while she walks her fingers across his chest. She takes in a congested breath when tears flood her eyes again, looking at how happy they were.
She screwed up everything. She'll never get him back now. She's lost the only future she had left. And what kills her is that he was right about everything. She has no hope of ever getting him back. The idea that seemed valid just a few hours ago of him at least agreeing to work things out seems like a fool's hope now.
She swipes over to the next photo and she knows it's one of the last ones of them. This one is of their first real coffee date they met for after getting together. Her in a tan raincoat and blue top with him in a dark purple shirt. She can't help but smile over her emotions because she remembers thinking that a coffee date as a couple would be normal for them. But it was just so awkward. Neither of them could think of anything to converse over and they just ended up sitting there poking at their coffee cups.
But suddenly, she looks at the photo more closely and springs upright in the bed.
She pinches her fingers on the screen and zooms into their hands at the bottom of the picture, where they're each holding a cup of coffee.
And it's then that his words ring in her mind. For four years, I've been right here. Four years just waiting for you to open your eyes and see that I'm right here.
On a relaxing breath, she smiles.
Every morning, I bring you a cup of coffee just to see a smile on your face... and I love you, Kate.
She smiles softly as she gazes at the two cups in the picture.
He never mentioned anything to Alexis, but she could tell that something had shifted drastically when he got home. But a quiet night spent with his daughter on the couch as she did classwork, Sasha sleeping in a large ball in between them, was enough to at least keep the anger out of the air until she left for class. OSU is still about a forty-five-minute drive from the house so she's usually gone by the time he gets back from his morning run.
He slows to a stop as the path ends and the treeline cuts off a distance of twenty yards or so away from the house. Panting, he shakes his arms out and wipes the sweat from his brow with the back of his hand.
When he comes out of the woods, he sees a dark blue sedan parked in front of his house. He would be curious, but he knows the woman leaning against the driver side of the hood in the same denim jacket he saw her in yesterday, a pair of light blue jeans and a dark top, her arms crossed.
On a hard sigh, he feels himself ice over when he sees her but quickly makes his way across the yard to meet her.
When she sees him approach her in a grey tank top and black gym pants, his body still sleek with sweat, she swallows thickly and shoves off the hood, turning around to grab the two cups of coffee that sit behind her.
"What do you want, Beckett?" He demands, tossing his arms out as he slows his approach toward her.
She blinks calmly and holds the two cups of coffee in front of her. "You."
Castle stares at her for a moment before smirking and nodding at her dismissively. "Nice try, Beckett. I already fell for that once."
She nods, knowing he has a lot of vitriol to spew out at her. "Okay, I know I deserve that." She says mostly to herself.
"What are you really doing here, Kate?" He demands, shifting his weight.
Her heart skips just as it always does when he uses her first name. "You spent four years getting me to realize that we belonged together, Rick." She says in a soft voice. "I guess you can call this returning the favor."
He lets out a hard breath and shakes his head for a moment, looking away from her. "You left me for a job, Beckett. How much more open can my eyes be at this point?"
"That doesn't mean I ever stopped loving you, Rick."
"Clearly, it does." He retorts. "You clearly moved on with your life without me eight months ago when you left me for a job, Kate. If you're here to blame me for doing the same, you're wasting your time because I've already moved on. Let's just say I learned from the best." He eyes her darkly and turns back around, moving toward his two-story lake house.
"I'll be back tomorrow." She calls out to him.
He stops and looks over his shoulder at her. "Tomorrow?"
"Mmhmm," She nods to him with a soft smile, approaching him with the two cups of coffee. "And the next day," she says, pacing toward him, "and the day after that, and the day after that. Every morning, I'll be right here... waiting for you, with two cups of coffee, just like you did for me."
She stops just a foot away from him as he looks over to her with ice in his veins. "And how long is that gonna last?"
She smiles softly, "Until you realize that you were right about us."
With a soft smile, she moves one of the cups toward him. When he looks down at the cup with the same vacant, stern look, she lifts her brow and smiles. After a moment, he only glances back up to her before turning around and making for his front door, leaving her holding two cups of coffee.
Unphased, she watches him as he goes inside.
A/N: Sorry if this chapter ran a little long, but I really didn't want to break it up. I told you she'd be chasing after him. Did I deliver? ;)
Also, it was pointed out a few chapters ago by a reviewer. If you need to, picture 2019 Nathan Fillion as opposed to 2015 Nathan Fillion.
