Nikki convulsed violently in Jamison's arms, her eyes looking up at him in terror.
"Mmm!" She groaned painfully, her body twitching as Jamie sits in the wet gravel, rocking her back and forth with angry tears flooding his eyes.
"No," he whispered, cupping her cheek, his voice optimistic and his smile heavy. "You're going to be fine, Nikki." He told her, petting her cheekbone. "You hear? You'll be fine. Then we can just..." he shook his head, pulling her twitching body into him, "we can go back to how it was. I'm fine with that. We don't have to rush things."
"MmmMMMmm!" Nikki groaned again, her flooding eyes rolling and blood starting to seep from the corners of her mouth.
Jamison felt her tap against his thigh with her fingers. He doesn't want to look away, knowing these are her last moments. But when he looked down to his leg, he saw she had drawn a heart on the inside of his pant leg in blood. His heart broke in that instant, knowing it will never be repaired. He only ever got to have her body. But only now, in her last moments, does he have her heart.
Jamie looks back up to her, a painful smile pushing onto his face. "I love you too, Nikki." He said, cupping her cheek again.
A tear fell from her eye and she smiled.
She convulsed in his arms once more before her eyes drifted shut and when her body goes limp, Rook feels her hand lay limply onto his leg.
And in that moment, he knew she was gone.
Rick pounds his finger down into the period and leans back in his office chair. He's going to save for the deeper inner monologues for later. He hasn't done any serious writing in a long time. His next book has been in the editing phase since he moved out here, sitting idly on his hard drive. It's hard writing this. To him, there is no Nikki Heat or Jamison Rook. There's him and there's Beckett. These are just his fantasies put into words. Sure, he challenges his characters, puts them through trials and tribulations, but still, he knows that in the end, since it's him in the stories, he usually ends up being the one to win.
Rick sighs and pushes against the front of his laptop as he stands up, making his way to the window.
It's late afternoon and he's bored. Before this morning, he was actually thinking of taking up fishing as a hobby. He always wanted to try that archery fishing he saw on Facebook, go up to the Willamette during a salmon spawn and try his luck and skill. That would be a fun day. But now, once again, something else of his has been poisoned by her. Now, every time he looks out this window and out onto the lake, seeing another elderly retiree or father and son out on the bank with two rods in the water, he'll think of her.
He'll wonder if the man in the rental boat he's looking at on the far end of the lake down there, disturbing the glass surface of the water, went into her shop and smiled at her, worked some sort of charm. He'll wonder if whatever he said to her will run through her head when she debates to herself on squashing his advances, wonder what she'll say to him. He'll wonder if she'll make it as difficult for any of them as she did for him. Maybe all it will take is a certain way of smiling he doesn't have, a career history he doesn't have, a personality trait he doesn't possess, or a certain type of wit and demeanor that he doesn't have to win her over in a matter of minutes or hours, as opposed to a matter of years as it did for him.
Rick crosses his arms in front of the window and lets out a heavy sigh. He doesn't know why it matters to him. Maybe it's just a way of keeping himself in check rather than thinking about her. But as he hears the door to Alexis's car close just below his office that is directly above the garage, he smiles. He hears Sasha lift her head up off the leather loveseat that sits perpendicular to his desk at the noise, and hears the sound of the door opening and Alexis making her way upstairs.
After another few moments, she cracks open the door to his office, poking her head in. "Dad?"
Rick looks over his shoulder with a smile, "Hey, pumpkin."
Alexis smiles and creases her brow. "You're dressed more nicely than usual." She says, noting his attire of a white button-up shirt with light blue pinstripes with the sleeves rolled up and a pair of dark blue jeans.
Rick shrugs his shoulders as he moves away from the window. "I had a few errands to run." He explains. "I was looking at supplies to finally build that dock."
Alexis smiles as she moves over to sit down next to Sasha. "You're finally doing that?" She asks him, glancing down at the screen of his laptop. He smirks and reaches down to scratch Sasha's chin when she awkwardly lifts her head up behind her to look at him.
"Mmhmm," he hums, looking back over to his daughter after a moment, catching her looking away from his laptop. "It's going to take a while, but I think I can manage it. And after it's done," he says as Alexis slowly turns around and sits down next to Sasha on the loveseat, "we can finally get that boat."
Alexis's smile seems heavy when she looks back up to her father, her hand finding Sasha's neck. "That'll be nice."
Rick smiles and looks over at the clock. "You're home kinda late for today."
"Well," Alexis blushes and runs her finger behind her ear, "I had another date. Ethan brought me a late lunch after he got off work."
Rick smiles and leans against the edge of his desk. "You mean Mr. gas station?" He jokes, crossing his arms.
"Dad," Alexis feigns a frustrated groan. "I really like him, can you not call him that?"
"Oh," Rick nods, "so you really like him, huh?" He asks her with a smirk. When Alexis just smiles and looks away bashfully. "Okay then..." he starts, crossing his arms again. "What are... his top likes?"
Alexis smiles. "Greek philosophy," she starts, looking up at the ceiling as she counts off, "historical documentaries, and metalworking."
"Okay," he nods again. This guy sounds kinda weird, but if Alexis likes him... "biggest dislikes?"
"Food with shells, scales, and or fur still on it, customized license plates, and people who dress up animals." She says with a smile.
Rick chuckles to himself. "Okay, there's no way you asked him this." He challenges as he pushes off the edge of his desk and paces across the room, quickly spinning around. "Favorite superhero."
Alexis smiles confidently. "Etrigan the-"
"Etrigan the demon?" Rick finishes excitedly. "Oh man, this guy has good taste." He breathes with a smile. "Gone, gone, the form of man," he starts in a low growl, "arise the demon... Etrigan." He recites, calling upon his inner nerd. "Okay, final question." He says, putting his hands together flat and rubbing his palms together greedily. "When do I get to meet him?" He wags his brow and grins evilly.
Alexis stands up and looks at her father with a worried gaze. "He's picking me up tonight, but Dad, please don't embarrass me."
"Hey," he says softly, putting his hands on his daughter's arms with a smile. "I will be a picture-perfect father." He assures her. "And by that, I mean, I will certainly won't threaten him in any way if he makes a move on you."
"Dad," Alexis shakes her head, "you'll just be giving him what he wants."
Rick blinks. "What?" He asks in a small voice.
Alexis smiles and blushes. "Yeah, I asked him about it. I remember exactly what he said. He said... I'd actually prefer he not like me because then I'll know that you're not looking to get something from me that you didn't get from him." Rick just blinks and rolls his shoulders back, letting his hands fall off her arms. "He wants me to like him for him and I..." she blushes again with a smile, "I thought it was sweet."
"Well..." Rick says, "I can understand that." He's still worried. Alexis has never had a real serious relationship before. He doesn't want her to feel as if she's getting in over her head by anything. "Sweetie, I just want you to know," he starts more seriously, "to be careful, okay? I don't want you to be afraid to come to me if he starts pressuring you."
"Dad," She practically rolls her eyes at him, "he's not like that, I promise. I mean..." she shrugs, "he's a bit of a stoic... mysterious type but he's also the kind to let you know what's on his mind."
"Well, I'm glad that you like Mr. gas station, pumpkin." He says with a smile.
Alexis shakes her head and steps into her father, wrapping her arms around his chest and squeezing him. "Me too."
Kate was worried about this. But Sasha is too adorable and likes her too much to be ignored just because she didn't want to get dog hair on her work t-shirt. She sat down and jumped herself into her lap and laid herself down across her chest, reaching up and putting her head on her shoulder. Now, Kate sits with her hand in the thick fur of Sasha's neck, with the dog laid pleasantly and awkwardly dead on Kate's lap.
She's eager to get started at the shop, but not as eager as her dad was the night before. They'd signed the lease and gotten all the utilities turned on before the night was up and sprang for takeout until they could go grocery shopping. She can't remember the last time she had some real home cooking. She's glad to be living with her father again. They've drifted apart over the years, starting even before her mom died. High school was a really rough patch for them during her wild-child phase, and her mom dying just made it worse. But she's glad to get back to a time when they could have a real father-daughter relationship, like when she was growing up.
It's one things she's always been a little envious of with Alexis. She hasn't let her growing up come in between how close she and her father are.
Kate reaches around and takes another drink of her coffee and sees Rick stride out of the treeline, stretching his left arm back and behind his head. As Sasha's instincts kick in and she climbs off of Kate's lap to go to the end of her lead to meet him, Kate is left with a tightening throat, a coiling stomach, and an electric shiver running up her spine. Her skin flushes hotly with a flash of cold sweat as she sees the outline of his abs press against his shirt when he pulls both his arms back behind him to stretch, putting all his muscles on display for her.
God, she wants him.
There are moments of guilty pleasure like now, where he catches her off her guard with the sharp bulge of his bicep as he curls his arm back or the muscles in his neck as he rolls his neck out, that she forgets herself. She's seen guys that are built like that before, but seeing him built like this, seeing the man she fell for, not the body but the heart, the will, the intuition and charm and childish sense of wonderment and sense of humor and dedication to the people he loves, built like this... she knows who he truly is underneath all of this stoicism and stone-faced expressions.
"Morning," she says with a smile as he plops down in the chair across from her, making no motion for the coffee that sits waiting for him.
Like always, he doesn't make the first move, instead inviting Sasha over by spreading his legs and putting his hands out in the shape of her head, where she quickly pushes through and jumps on his lap.
"You know, Castle..." she starts with an aching heart, craning her neck as she slumps in the chair, "I thought that my telling you that I'm settling down here would get you to start working things out."
Rick's expression hardens. "There's nothing to work out, Beckett."
"Castle," she shakes her head, "if you've been pretending like we never had the relationship we had together, you can't honestly tell me you're happy out here."
"I haven't been pretending anything, Beckett." He argues. "I've just moved on."
Still slamming her head fruitlessly against that same wall. She grits her teeth and looks over to him. "You know, I've been thinking a lot lately... about what you said."
When she doesn't continue, he peaks over to her. "What do you mean?"
She's ready with her response, firing it out just as soon as he pulls the trigger. "You said that I assumed I believed it when Tyson tried to frame you for murder, when he tried to make it seem like you had cheated on me." Rick looks out ahead of him with a dull, lidded gaze. "Rick..." she demands in a shaky, harsh tone, waiting for him to look over. When he does, she's staring right into his eyes. "I was the only one that believed you. While everyone else thought you were guilty, I stood by you." She tells him pointedly, starting to get furious with him that he's forgotten. "Doesn't that count for anything?"
Rick breathes a relaxing sigh and shakes his head to himself. "Then tell me how you felt when they showed you the emails." He demands right back, looking over to her.
Her throat closes and she doesn't have a response that makes her argument stand any better. "What does it matter? I didn't believe them."
Rick stands up slowly and shakes his head again, throwing off her answer. "That's not what I said." He says, looking down to her. "I know you, Beckett, you follow evidence and the evidence pointed to me having an affair, so if you're pushing so hard that you believed me when no one else did, tell me you didn't believe those emails when you read them."
She springs to her feet at him, but isn't as quick to respond as she'd like. She can't lie to him because she knows her answer is painted on her face. "Okay," she says in a tiny, barely audible voice. When he clenches his jaw and his eyes harden, she continues. "When Ryan and Esposito showed me the emails and said that you were having an affair, I..." she tries, her heart feeling like it's turning into sharpened shards inside of her chest, "Rick, reading those emails broke my heart."
All he can do is nod and start toward the house.
But she's going after him, reaching over and putting her hand on his bicep, his chilled sweat making her skin tingle when she touches him. "It broke my heart," she stops him, "because I couldn't believe the man I waited to get it right with would do that to me."
He stops and turns to face her directly. "You're supposed to know me better than that, Kate."
"Rick, it's just..." she says in a tight voice, shaking her head, "imagining you two together... imagining you kissing her the way you kissed me, thinking I was stupid for thinking you would kiss me in some special way but getting shown emails that told me that you did it for her. Thinking that all of the times we'd made love and all of the times I thought about how magical and special it was between us meant nothing... can you at least understand why that hurt?"
She can see him clench his jaw, crane his neck and give her a stern nod. "Thinking about me with someone else hurt?" He asks her.
She sighs a sigh that drains her lungs of air. "Like you couldn't imagine."
"The thought of..." he starts to approach her, "me with someone else poisoning every thought you have of us, the thought that every time I kissed you how I could have been thinking or even wishing it was someone else."
She breathes as best she can again to answer. "Yes."
"The thought of how small and helpless you felt imagining it all, thinking that maybe something you'd said or something you did made me feel the need to go out and find someone else, just as a backhanded way of hurting you to get back at you." He's had this floating around his head for too long. It's about time it got a voice of its own. "The thought that if maybe you had just done something differently, I wouldn't have felt the need to find someone else, or maybe the complete heartbreak it is to be forced to face the fact that maybe as hard as you tried to get it right with me, that maybe you just weren't enough for me and that nothing you could do could change that? Something like that?"
Her burning eyes look up to him and she feels small and broken. "Yes."
He hardens back up and gives her another stern nod before leaning back. "Well, at least you knew what it felt like for me when you were with Vaughn."
He doesn't even give her a chance to argue back and just strides over to the stairs of his patio in as large a strides as he can manage, jumping up two steps at once, leaving her reeling and stunned. "Wait, Castle!" She demands, going over him, grabbing onto his wrist. He looks down to her in the same stern glare as before. "Vaughn?" She asks, her voice on the verge of breaking. "You're upset about that?"
His eyes narrow. "Upset?!" He repeats back.
She clearly just set him off.
Rick stomps back down the stairs to stand directly in front of her. "You kissed another man behind my back, Beckett."
"No, Rick, I-"
"You try to tell me that you were hurt reading those emails?" He fights with her, not even giving her a chance to fight back. "Kate, I was terrified..." he says pointedly, "that something would happen between you two." When she looks into his eyes, she can see something behind the angry bravado that she's not used to seeing in him.
Fear.
"You think it wasn't painful for me having to imagine the two of you together? You think I wasn't scared to death that I'd lose you to him?" He edges toward her imposingly. "After the four years I tried to get you to give me a chance and after all the trust I had to win to get you to be with me, you think I wasn't the least bit hurt when he comes in and gets that same amount of trust without any effort at all?"
"Rick, I didn't-" she pathetically tries to grovel.
"Or did you not think that about any of that and you just wanted to see me get hurt and didn't care if you stepped on my heart in the process?"
"Castle, I didn't kiss Vaughn. I tried to tell you that."
Rick just pinches his brow, narrows his eyes, and shakes his head, as if he can't believe what he just heard. "Even after all that, that's all you have to say?" He demands.
"Castle, I'm just trying to work this out for us, but I don't know what you want from me."
"You're not trying to work out anything, Beckett." He says in a low, growling tone, stepping up to her imposingly again with the same, angry clench in his jaw. "What you're trying to do is just find someone that will take you in."
"That's not true!" She finally finds her fight, jabbing him in his firm chest with the sharp point of her finger. "I love you and I'm trying to get you to see that."
"Beckett, you've been coming by for two weeks now and in that time, the only thing you've done," he practically spits at her, "is defend yourself. You've been coming by trying to get me to understand why you left, saying you don't care that I've moved on. You've been so busy trying to get me to see things through your eyes that you haven't taken a single second of that time to try it the other way around because maybe if you had, you would've realized that you haven't even apologized yet!"
His words leave her completely stunned, a stark and world-stopping realization hitting her like an oncoming train. It leaves her broken inside, speechless, and feeling just as small and helpless as... as he did when she was with Vaughn.
When he cranes his neck and looks back up to her, his flare of anger has subsided. "Which tells me..." he continues in a hushed, more under control voice, "that you don't even regret what you did to us... do you? You don't regret putting me through what you did with Vaughn, you don't regret lying to me about your job in DC, you don't regret leaving me without a single word for that job, you probably don't even regret lying to me at all because I know you lied to me about going back to the NYPD."
She tries her voice, tries to defend herself, but can't find it. All that happens is a small scratch coming from the back of her closed throat.
"So, no, Beckett, we can't work this out, because I'm tired of coming in last in people's lives and still be expected to be happy with it just because I get a prize at the end of the race." He takes one last shot at her before turning to start up the stairs again. "I'm done, Beckett."
When he slams the door behind him, she lets her breath go and it shakes with an intense sob. She squeezes her lips together and shakes her head, trying hard to wrangle in her emotions.
With her heart stomped on, she turns and goes back to her car.
A/N: Would have gotten this out yesterday, but I pressed the wrong button on my keyboard and lost the last 2k words and felt depressed and angry. It's over now though. :)
A/N2: I wasn't really going to say anything because I don't want to give away too much of the plot, especially not before the next chapter (which is a really important one), but I've kind of gotten my hand forced. I've been getting an awful lot of reviews saying "I don't see a happy ending, so I'm not reading anymore!"
The only thing I can really say is Reaching, or Can't Go Home Again. Go back and read those stories. There were times in those that seemed hopeless too. Challenging expectations for the characters and subverting them is kind of what I do. I like hearing things like "it sounds so hopeless!" because that's the tone I'm going for. But what I don't like hearing is that it looks so hopeless that people aren't willing to stick around. I don't want to say much, but things will shift greatly in the next chapter.
So please, give me a bit of a break here. Of course I'm not going to go through all this just to have Kate bat her eyes and fall into Rick's arms. I told you from the beginning that it was Kate chasing after Rick. I can't make it be too easy, while at the same time keeping it rewarding for the reader in the end.
Sorry for the schpeel, it's just a bit aggravating to hear "this story that isn't even done yet isn't going how I wanted, so I'm done."
