Kate bundles herself up against a chill the air seems to have as it whips her in the face. She curls arm around her stomach with her hand in the pocket of her leather jacket and moves her hand from gently running her nails down the top of Sasha's head to putting her hand in the thick fur just below her ears. Sasha lets out a deep groan as she sighs with her head laying dead on Kate's thigh. She smiles at the dog and goes about gently and slowly running her thumb down her snout just below her eye.

When the trees rustle loudly with the wind, she looks up and her eye catches sight of Harold out on the lake, who they quickly learned was a regular at the shop, just sitting in his boat thirty or so yards away from the shore. Harold looks up, puts his hand over his brow, then lifts his hand up in the air to her. Kate smiles and pulls her hand out of her pocket to wave back.

She reaches over and grabs onto her coffee cup that's resting on top of something else she brought, taking a sip that she lets sit inside of her mouth for a moment before swallowing. She'd completely forgotten that she'd ordered it those few days ago until it was sitting on the counter when she got home when her dad was making dinner for them. They had talked about it last night, but it never went beyond the point of 'she'll think about it'.

Her throat locks up, physically feeling like its choking her, as she reaches up to her neck and pulls on the chain.

She pulls at her necklace and then takes the two rings up in her palm, the single clear stone of her mother's ring sitting on the left and the bright, vibrant beautiful setting of the engagement ring on the right.

She has a chance.

She has a shot to end it. Claire runs one of the most powerful and prestigious law firms in the country. She'd have an army backing her if she went after Bracken. She wouldn't have to go about it the rogue cloak and dagger way she has been. She could use her position to drag him out into the light and expose him, make him face justice for murdering her mother. She could make her mother proud of her. Who knows who else she could help, what she could change, what difference she could make?

It hurts to swallow past the lump in her throat.

Her eyes well up with tears when all she can look at is the ring on the left. If she doesn't follow through with that, what has the first decade and more of her adult life meant?

Kate takes in a hard breath in one long draw and looks up, closing her fist on the rings. When she sees him coming out of the woods, dressed in a grey sleeveless hoodie, swinging his arms in wide motions to shake them out, she pulls at the collar of her work shirt and drops the rings back down her shirt. She tries to harden herself, knowing it's the only way she knows how to get rid of the emotions, and lifts up her cup to her lips again, looking nervously at the object sitting in the middle of the table just a few inches away from his cup.

When he gets close enough for Sasha to notice, she lifts her head off Kate's thigh, hitting her on the knee with the hair from her tail when she turns to welcome her master back home.

Rick reaches down with one hand and ruffles Sasha's ear while Kate tucks her hand back into the pocket of her jacket, looking up to him and waiting for him to notice the present sitting on the table.

It's when Rick moves to sit down next to her with the same heavy expression that his eyes catch the sight of the silver wrapping paper. It's medium sized, an inch and a half thick or so.

Kate feels her heart warm throughout her entire body when she sees the hint of that boyish, excited smile tease the corners of his lips and that excited, childlike wonderment sparkle come into his blue eyes. "Happy Birthday," she says softly.

Rick laughs to himself, a full smile forcing its way onto his face as he lets his neck crane and for a moment, it's as if this past year never happened. For just a split second, it's like nothing had been upended. He pulls back as much of his surprised smile as he can, managing a soft smirk as he moves to sit down. "I forgot that was today."

Kate smiles as she watches him intently, grabbing his coffee to take the first sip in front of her. Her heart flutters wildly when she sees it, at first because he doesn't seem to fight it, and lastly because of the way his jawline and the muscles on his neck tightened when he lifted the cup. With her throat locked up in a new way, she looks away slightly and brushes her hair back behind her ear. "Honestly," she starts, looking down to her cup that now sits resting in her lap in her hands, "I forgot about it too."

Rick looks over to her with a quirk in his brow, letting the cup down.

She smiles that smile she gives him when she wants to fight it but also knows it's a pointless fight before shaking her head. "I got that for you a few days ago and with everything going on lately, it slipped my mind until it came in the mail yesterday."

Rick nods, looks down to the present still sitting on the table, hesitating to ask. "I didn't think a bait and tackle shop would be that stressful of a job that you'd let things slip your mind."

She looks back over to him, pulling back the swell in her heart that she feels, realizing he seems honestly interested in talking to her. But when she locks eyes with him, she feels that swell crater heavily, making everything sink... and she knows that in that moment, he noticed. "Something came up, that's all."

"Oh?" He says, trying to be as mutual sounding as he can, shifting and adjusting his posture in his chair. "And... what's that?"

Kate shakes her head and smiles heavily, waving her hand at the present on the table. "Later, I promise. Go ahead and open it."

Rick looks over to her, taking her in for a moment before setting his cup back down to the table and reaching over to the present. He grabs onto it and feels that it has weight to it. He pulls it up and takes it in both hands, letting it fall into the other and letting his fingers test out the material under the wrapping paper. He'd know the feel of a hardcover anywhere. Feeling neutral to the situation, he pulls at the top of the wrapping paper and rips open the seem, pulling out the large blue hardcovered book.

When he has the wrapping paper off all the way, the first thing he notices is that it's an antique, judging from the slight well taken care of wear around the edges of the top and bottom, the gold inlay of the crest on the front cover having and E and an A designed into it. Curious, he turns the book to look at the spine. And when he reads the words Poe's Works in all golden capital letters at the top, followed by a Vol. 1 at the bottom, he feels the ice around his vanish.

Kate watches him closely as his expression softens in an instant, the hard line in his brow falling, his eyes lighting up with surprise and the stoic purse of his lips vanishing. "I figured," she flicks her hand, looking down to her lap, "you know, since you named yourself after him and all, he might be one of your favorites."

Rick lets out a short breath, feeling amazed as a smile sneaks back onto his face. "He is..." he says softly, turning the book back around gently to look at the front cover. "Beckett," he starts, looking up to her, "this looks like an antique."

Kate smiles to herself and gives him a nod, still looking down to her lap as she feels a cough rise in her throat. "First edition." She says right before covering her mouth with her sleeve and coughing a few times. She looks back over to him, seeing he's eyeing her with a surprised, a happily surprised, look. A look that tells her no one has ever bothered to do something like this for him before. "I would have gotten you all four volumes but someone sniped me out of the other three."

"Beckett, this has to run a couple hundred bucks." He says, raising the book.

"Hey," she says, changing her attitude, "you said you didn't care what I used that royalty money for." She says, jokingly challenging him. She meets his eyes again, seeing that another smile has snuck onto his face... the smile he'd always have when they'd gaze into each other's eyes, knowingly or not.

After a serenity falls over them, he's the first to end it by clearing his throat to himself and looking back down to the book. "Well um..." he starts, nervously shifting himself around again, "thank you, Beckett."

She nods to herself and looks down.

She has to tell him. Because this is her shot.

"Rick, I..." she trails off when she looks back over and sees him starting to crack open the front cover of the book. "No no no no, that's..."

When Rick opens the front of the hardcover as gently as he can, he feels everything in him lock up when a picture falls from the book's spine.

The picture's corner lands on his forearm and when he sees the picture, he's thrown around in a whiplash of memories at what he sees. The picture is of them at his birthday party the year before. She has the brightest, face splitting smile on and her hazel eyes are sparkling so bright as he's leaning in from the right of the frame with his lips pressed gingerly to her cheek. He's clearly struggling to kiss her fully with how much he's smiling.

His heart turns to a heavy rock in his chest and his brow arches and his throat closes. With one hand, he closes the book and slowly sets it down on the table, his emotional eyes never leaving the picture.

Kate sighs heavily and slumps forward a bit, brushing her hair behind her ear as she feels another small cough rise in her throat. "You weren't supposed to find that while I was here." She tells him and looks back over.

He's still staring at the picture, leaned forward on his forearms. He can't take his eyes off them. "No one had ever done anything like that for me before." He thinks out loud.

When she notices, she knows that she can't just throw this chance off. "It's funny," she starts, "the whole plan hinged on knowing how much you loved me."

He clenches his jaw at that, but doesn't look away.

"Just..." she starts after a moment, "knowing that you cared about me so much that you'd come running after me to rescue me and you'd..." her heart feels so heavy, a pull she's only ever felt toward him tugging at her, "hobble your way into the face of danger for me," she emotionally chuckles, "with nothing but the clothes on your back just because you loved me."

Rick's thumb reaches over and starts to absentmindedly pet the left side of the photo that shows her smile. He lets out a long breath to try and wrangle himself in, but he feels something on the back of the photo with his finger and turns it over. In black in, in the very center of the back of the photo, she has written 'Always, my love'.

Kate watches his eyes find what she had written and feels her heart soften. She knows why she wrote that when she did. She'd found that picture among her things when they were moved here from New York and slipped inside, but that picture she'd printed out just a few days after his birthday. "I wrote that a couple days after your party when I printed out the picture."

He slowly looks over to her with an emotional vulnerability shining in his eyes.

And she smiles softly, looking back down to her lap. "I'd known for a while that I loved you, Rick, but..." she chuckles, "that night... it was the first time in my life that I'd ever felt in love with someone. That I felt that no one in the world could make me happier than you did on that night."

When she feels the words on her tongue, her decision is made.

"Well," Kate says, looking over to him with a smile, "I'd better get going." She stands, quickly, finally getting him to tear his eyes away from the picture. "My dad is probably wondering where I am by now."

Rick blinks rapidly, giving her a few stiff nods as he holds the picture gently, sitting upright in the chair with Sasha asleep at his feet. He can't say anything. His heart, his mind... she's left him more than speechless. She's left him thoughtless.

Kate smiles again and gives him a quick wave, "See you tomorrow?" She says as she starts making her way back to her car.

Rick just nods softly as she quickly makes her way back to the car.

As Kate slips down into the driver side of her Impala and starts the engine and pulls away down the street, she knows her decision is made, that her mind is made up.

Because she remembers how she felt that night. The smile in that picture wasn't just for her snapping a quick selfie of them. It was real. She was the happiest she'd ever been than ever before then on that night. And she wasn't after anything then. She didn't plot out the entire murder, get people to plant evidence and act out entire scenes, give him an entire case to solve because of anything she wanted out of it. She wasn't looking to get something out of doing all of that for him.

She did it because she wanted to see him happy, because she loved him.


It's just another ten minutes or so for her to make the trip around to the other side of the lake to the store.

Having finished the last of her coffee, she gets out of her car, her throat scratching a bit as she leans into her shoulder to cough a few more times, and drops the cup into the trashcan on the right side of the entrance. She pulls open the door and sees her dad checking out a customer of bait. "Thanks again."

"You too," the man says, grabs the container, and smiles at her when he turns.

Smiling in return, she pulls off her jacket and drapes it over her arm, quickly moving through the store to put it in the office. "Hey, Dad."

"Hey, sweetie," Jim says, closing the register. As Kate quickly moves into the office only a step to drop her jacket on top of the desk, Jim leans against the counter to talk to her as she quickly rushes out to the floor. "So," Jim starts casually, "how'd it go with Rick this morning?" He asks, knowing the situation. "Did you tell him about the job offer from Claire?"

Kate smiles knowingly and grabs a box from the stack that came in late last night that she didn't feel like unpacking in her mental state. "No."

She can feel her dad's eyes on her as he leans forward against the counter, staring her down from across the store.

She looks up as she grabs the box and hoists it over to the aisle closest to him, setting the box on the ground and pulling it open. "What?"

"Katie, I thought you said you weren't going to lie to him anymore."

"I'm not lying to him, Dad." She points out, almost annoyed.

"Well, have you at least made a decision?" Jim says, knowing she was conflicted about being conflicted the night before.

"Yes," Kate answers obviously, continuing to stock the shelf from her position of being knelt on the floor. "I'm staying." Jim raises his brow, happily surprised at his daughter. "I came out here to get Castle back and that's what I'm going to do."

"When did you make this decision, Katie? Last night, you were asking me if I knew about San Francisco's Bar exam."

Kate looks up to her father from the floor, giving him an obvious smile. "When I was talking to Castle this morning." She says quickly. She's thought about it on her way here. She can't tell him. He never once did that to her, she can't either.

"Well, Katie," Jim starts again, "if you made the decision while you two were talking this morning, why haven't you told him?"

"Because," she says as she stands up, taking the empty box with her in one hand, "he never did that to me. So I'm not going to either." She points out as if it's obvious, or as if it's obvious she doesn't want to get into it, and moves back to the corner of the store to get another box.

"What are you talking about? Shouldn't Rick know about this? Do you think he'll be mad at you?"

"Dad," she starts seriously and tosses the empty box on the ground, slumping her shoulders and turning to face him as he moves out from around the counter, "do you know how many things Castle has done for me over the years?" She asks him seriously. "From pulling me out of a burning building to... to paying a hundred thousand dollars of his own money at a chance of catching the person who murdered Mom to... to all of the times he's yanked me out of the way of bullets or any of the countless things he's done for me?" She eyes her father, wanting him to know how much Castle has done for her, with the point she's about to make. "And do you know how many times he held it over my head?"

All Jim can do is sigh and nod his head.

Kate lets out a breath to relax herself, still feeling that slight tickle in the back of her throat. "He never held anything he did for me over my head to try and guilt me into being with him and I'm not either." She says, grabbing another box to stock. "I want him to realize that he still loves me on his own and I'm not going to hold anything like me turning down a job offer over his head."

Jim nods again as he moves back behind the counter. "I'm proud of you, Katie."

Kate stops as she's knelt back down on the floor again. "For what?"

When she looks up to her dad, he's looking at her with his soft, humble smile. "I'm just proud of you, that's all."


A/N: What'd ya think? Lemme know, as always. :]