DISCLAIMER: The characters of the show CASTLE do not belong to me, they belong to ABC.

Author's Note: Thank you guys for reading this story and putting it on your alerts. Thank you to CastleandBeckett-always, xfcastle, MoonlightGardenias and nourgelitnius for reviewing the last chapter. I hope you all enjoy the next one and PLEASE take the time to review at the end. I love hearing what you think.

Chapter Four

Josh's face was like a thundercloud, dark and dangerous. Castle knew the instant that he had looked up that he was in trouble. But Castle did what he did best, put on a smile and pretended that everything was alright.

"Hi there Josh," he greeted warmly. "Fancy seeing you here."

"This is where I work," Josh answered coldly. "You know that."

Castle nodded. "Yes. Yes I do."

"I want you to know that it isn't going to work."

Castle furrowed his brow. "Huh?"

"You trying to take Kate away from me."

Castle felt his heart constrict but he wasn't about to give Josh the satisfaction of knowing how he really felt. "I think she's a big girl," he answered at last, trying to seem beyond the whole situation in the hopes that Josh would just leave hi alone. "Kate can make her own decisions."

"She's been through a trying experience," Josh snapped. "I don't want her running into the arms of the first man who she happens o see by her bedside."

Castle grinned despite himself. "Uh well, that was me."

Josh clenched his fists. "I want you to stay away from her."

"Are you kidding me?" Castle asked with a laugh, despite the fact that he knew that he should have been taking Josh's threat seriously.

"I'm not kidding," Josh said menacingly. "Stay away."

"I'm her partner," Castle defended. "We work together."

"You're a writer," Josh corrected. "She's your inspiration."

"She's also my friend," Castle interjected.

"Well I want you to stop being her friend."

Castle shook his head. "You don't have the right."

"I'm her boyfriend," Josh argued. "I have the right."

Castle opened his mouth to say something but in the end he realized that Josh was right. Josh was Kate's boyfriend, he wasn't. Josh was a Doctor out to save the world, he was just a writer trying to get his stories out into the world. Josh seemed heroic while Castle was... what had Kate called him? The funniest kid in school?

Was that all she really saw him as? A goof? A clown? Castle wanted to be so much more to Kate than that. He wasn't sure when he had first fallen in love with her but he knew that it had happened sometime after Heat Wave had been published. Kate was an enigma to him before that. He had learnt bits and pieces of his past but he felt that he hadn't really known her.

And then before he realized it everything had changed. They had changed. There was their usual banter but there was an underlying current that Castle worked hard to ignore, and in his self-aggrandizing moments he thought that Kate had been thinking the same thing. Castle was sure that he was going to make a move, to tell Kate how he was really feeling but then she had gotten a boyfriend and Castle had sought solace in the arms of a former wife.

Then came his stay in the Hamptons. Castle couldn't count how many times he had picked up the phone to call Kate, to see if there was anything that he could have done from his self-induced writing prison, but every time that he had picked up the phone a little voice in his head whispered that she was happy and that he had no right to get in the way of that.

And so he had stayed away.

Castle thought that it was for the best but when he returned and he saw how hurt she had been at being ignored for three months, he felt the first fluttering of hope that she felt an iota for him, what he felt for her.

Things really had changed in the last year. They had shared a heart-stopping, soul-wrenching kiss while undercover. They had faced potential radiation poisoning, freezing to death and a dirty bomb. The radiation and the bomb had been scary, heart wrenching moments but it had been in the freezer when Kate had showed her true vulnerability and Castle had been sure that she was going to tell him that she cared a lot for him.

But of course Kate didn't and then they were saved. Josh was there to keep them both alive and then they never spoke about it. Castle knew that he would follow Kate to the ends of the Earth to make her happy and to find her mother's killer but he wasn't sure if she would do the same for him.

But she said that it was a gift to find someone to stand by you in the battle of life, he thought to himself as Josh stared him down. She must know that I'm willing to stand with her...

"I see that the writer is without words," Josh smirked.

Castle shook his head. "You are her boyfriend in name only," he stated firmly, more sure of what he was saying than he really felt. "I have been standing beside Kate as she has fought all the battles she's needed to fight in the last three years and I'm not going anywhere..." Castle paused and took a deep breath. "I love her and nothing that you say or do can change that."

Josh took a deep, and clearly calming breath. Castle thought that the man was going to deck him or worse. But instead, the doctor merely nodded. "Kate is lucky to have two people who care for her so much."

"I'm glad that you feel that way."

"And I think that she should choose," Josh continued, a self-knowing, all-important smirk on his face as though he felt that Kate would choose a doctor over a writer. "Let her decide whether it'll be you or me."

Castle gritted his teeth for a moment trying to keep his feelings and emotions and anger reigned it. "That's what I've wanted from the very beginning," he stated being as honest as he could in front of the man who could potentially take Kate away from him forever. "I only want Kate to be happy..."

"She'll be happier with me."

"You don't know that," Castle argued. "You can't know that. It's not as though I'm a poor starving, struggling artists. I have millions of books sold. Heat Wave is being turned into a movie. If it was all about the money then we're about even, maybe I have an edge. But it's not about that. It's about how she feels about us. Which one of us she wants to stand with."

"It'll be me."

Castle shook his head. "Kate is nothing but unpredictable, and I wouldn't dare to presume what's in her heart..." Castle paused as he saw Kate's attending physician down the hall. "Now if you'll excuse me, I'm off to let her doctor know that she's awake."

And before Josh could get another word in edge wise, Castle was walking down the hall and had already called out to Kate's attending physician.

TBC