A/N: For those who are uncertain of the timeline - in this universe, Castle and Beckett were together throughout the end of season two (post still our hands match). The breakup occurs in the early portion of the summer that follows. This story picks up after they spend the summer apart.

"Want to catch the comfort food truck with me?"

His eyes lit up like a little boy's, so excited by her simple invitation, and he quickly nodded, snatching his coat from his chair and trotting after her.

"Macaroni and cheese, warm biscuits, hot chocolate? How could I say no?"

"Pretty undeniable request," she agreed, grinning like an idiot as they walked side by side to the elevators.

"Plus, the added bonus of you," he threw in for good measure and despite the reprimanding glare she shot him, she knew her eyes were still beaming, just like his.

He had been down lately, especially after watching Ryan propose to Jenny in the bullpen the other day. They had both been elated for their friends, but afterwards, once the cheering and happy applause had died down, he had turned to her and she had seen the memory strike him, reminding him of how his last proposal hadn't gone so well, and his face had fallen, his smile had faded.

And then there had been another case a few weeks before, the bird case, where he had watched her walk hand in hand with the recovered little boy, Tyler, at her side. After they had returned the kidnapped boy to his father, Castle had stared at her with an unfamiliar yearning she had never seen on him before, a fierce longing that had made her knees weak. She had realized too late why.

The scene of her with a young boy, it had sparked something in him that they had never even considered talking about.

He had tried to cover his feelings up with sarcasm and humor, his normal line of defenses, but the repressed sense of melancholy had seeped through when he wasn't careful and she had the sinking feeling it was all because of her - knew it was because of her - and the little progression made in their tentative relationship. He had said he loved her, not even a day after he had come strutting back into her life a near four months ago now, and he hadn't said the words since then, not unless she counted the dire situation with 3XK, but he showed them with ease.

Castle was a patient man, but in times like these, it felt wrong to make him wait for her.

The case they had just closed on Zalman Drake – the master magician – had mystified him, the world of magic astounding to him, and she knew it wasn't much, but once they were in the elevator, she recalled that old trick her grandfather had taught her when she was ten, pulled the fake flowers from her sleeve with a flourish.

Castle looked in awe of her, accepting the flowers with a dopey smile that she wanted her lips against, but she merely smiled back coyly, hoping he got the subtle message she wanted to send.

I can still surprise you.

He captured her hand and she squeezed.

Don't give up on me yet.

They were sitting on a bench in the park, sharing a variety of mouthwatering food choices from the truck still parked on the sidewalk; she was stealing pieces of his steaming biscuits and he kept taking sips of her hot chocolate because he had downed his own too quickly, and eventually she wasn't even sure what was whose because she was having a bite of everything. It was too domestic, it was nice. Until the cloudy overcast started to leak.

"Shit," she muttered, placing lids on everything splayed across her lap and his.

They worked together quickly, easily, depositing each container of food into the brown paper bags they had received their orders in, and then they dashed for her car.

Beckett cranked the heat on to full blast right after the engine, shivering from the chilly January air as she maneuvered out of her slick leather trench coat. Castle attempted to do the same, slamming his shoulder into the window and hissing as she smothered a laugh. But when he glanced up at her, raindrops hanging from his bangs, skidding down his face, she wasn't laughing anymore.

"What?"

"Nothing. You just…" She reached over, gently slid her fingers over the droplets clinging to his skin, wiping them away.

He was looking at her in that dangerous way, his eyes darkening like the sky, and she self-consciously tried to smooth a hand through her own damp hair. Castle's hand suddenly rose though, knocked hers away and cradled her skull. His thumb skated along her cheekbone, underneath her eye and over the delicate skin there, and she tilted towards him, unable to help it.

He stretched over the console to meet her, guided her mouth to his, and she sighed into the kiss, tasted the rain on his lips and slid her tongue into the warm cove of his mouth. Her hands reached for him, one curling around the lapel of his jacket while the other mirrored his, cupped the side of his face. She wanted him closer, sealed against her. She wanted to crawl over to him, straddle his hips and-

They were parked on the street. A very public street. Kate jerked away from him before someone came across her making out with a civilian in her police issued vehicle.

"Kate," he panted, his hand falling from her face to her thigh, squeezing desperately. "I know we don't talk about it, any of it, but for once, can we just break that rule?"

She sighed, covered his hand and clenched his fingers uncertainly, but nodded.

"Might as well finish eating too," she murmured, her voice still a little unsteady, and lifted the bag of food she had placed in the backseat.

The rain didn't stop, pitter-pattering over her Crown Vic, drowning out the sounds of the city. He found it peaceful, in her car with her and the sheets of rain blocking away everything else for just a little while.

Kate mindlessly circled her fork in her small cup of macaroni and glanced at him sideways, waiting.

They'd had such a rough couple of weeks. Natalie Rhodes, the Nikki Heat wannabe, had shaken them up by kissing him in the elevator. He knew Kate had seen the unexpected lip lock and he knew it had affected her, upset her. So instead of making calls to her that would go unanswered, he had shown up unannounced at her apartment, pleaded his explanation before she could slam the door in his face, and then he had kissed her, shown her just as he had in the past that there was no one else he could want. She had still been less than pleased, but he had strode into her bedroom, retrieved the leather cuffs she kept in her nightstand, and they had worked through the issue in her bed.

And then there had been Ryan's proposal – Ryan's perfect, intimate, tear-jerking proposal. Castle had always believed that such an important event needed extravagance, flair and dramatics; he had always wondered if his quiet approach of asking Kate in the setting of their bedroom at his home in the Hamptons had played a role in her rejection, but he saw it couldn't have. Not when she had tears in her eyes over Ryan's.

He had asked her after a long, but perfect day on the beach. They had just finished dinner with his mother and daughter and had decided to share a bottle of wine on the balcony just outside his room. He had brought the ring with him to the beach home just in case, not actually intending to propose, but it had felt right that evening and so he had taken a chance.

And it had been the wrong move.

But there had been a moment, just a fraction of a second when he was down on one knee and had the diamond ring held out to her, when her eyes had lit up like the stars behind her. For that single moment, he had believed she wanted to say yes. Logic or fear or something more had stolen that idea away though, and her face had become consumed by reluctance, and then denial.

"I didn't listen to you that night, to your side of things, and I never heard your reasons."

Kate chewed on the inside of her cheek, another bad habit, and stared down at her food, already knowing what night he was referring to.

"I was in love with you, I really was," she confessed without looking at him, her eyes trained on her plastic fork. "And I know we'd known each other for nearly two years, but we had only been dating for nine months, and when you asked me to…" She swallowed roughly, her brow creasing into a jagged line of unease. "When you asked me to marry you," she started again. "I just panicked. I wasn't ready for that yet."

Castle nodded, forcing his hands to remain in his lap, not to touch her. She didn't like to be touched when they were having serious conversations.

"Would you have stayed, had I listened?"

"If you'd wanted me to," she murmured, placing the lid back on her macaroni, appetite apparently gone, and shoving it back in the bag of their mixed meals.

"But I stormed off like a… what age was it?"

"Twelve year old," she filled in without missing a beat and he hid a smirk.

"That. And I wish I wouldn't have. I really wish I hadn't let you go, Beckett."

She pushed her fingers though her hair, clasped her hands in a bridge at the back of her neck.

"You just walked away," she said with a hint of accusation in her voice that he couldn't fight. "You shut me out and I thought I was the one with that problem."

It wasn't an attempt at humor and he didn't think his lips would have the energy to lift even if it was. He had destroyed a vast majority of the trust he had spent so long gaining from her, but at the time he had felt so hurt and betrayed, he hadn't even realized the permanent damage he was doing by walking away.

"It was wrong of me, I won't deny that," he concurred with an understanding nod. "But I just felt - it felt like you were rejecting more than the proposal, like you were rejecting me, and I thought it was over. That it had to be the end for us."

"Just because I wasn't ready to marry you?" she asked incredulously, finally looking to him with that vicious hurt in her eyes, always hiding but now front and center.

"Well, it sounds stupid now-"

"It was stupid," she muttered.

"Well, it was also pretty stupid for you to ignore my calls when I tried to apologize for it," he decided to throw back and her nostrils flared for a second before her eyes guiltily flickered away from his to focus on the windshield instead.

"When you walked away, that felt like the end for me," she began to explain softly, dropping her gaze to her lap where her fingers fidgeted. "It - it hurt me, and I guess my logic was that talking to you again, attempting to hash it out, would just hurt even more. It felt easier to just ignore it, ignore you, and move on."

Castle knew her almost as well as he knew himself and he had worked out her reasoning for shutting him out long before her admission, but it was like ripping stitches from a healing wound to hear her describe it herself.

"Well, moving on hasn't worked so well for either one of us obviously."

She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear as she reluctantly nodded in agreement.

"But I want to make up for it, Kate, for everything that went wrong between us. I want to fix this."

"What if it isn't fixable?" she sighed tiredly, scrubbing at her eyes with her fingertips, smearing her mascara. "Maybe we imploded for a reason."

He shook his head even though her eyes were back on her hands. Because she sounded like she was giving up on the tentative hope he had seen in her face when he kissed her on the cheek after dinner at Remy's or held her hand in the car on the way to a crime scene. And she couldn't give up on them, on their second chance.

"You know I'm still in love with you, right? That I never stopped?"

She squeezed her eyes shut. He was overwhelming her, but he didn't know how to stop, how to let this go without losing her.

"I don't think I can ever stop."

"Castle, please. Please, just - I can't do this right now."

Irritation flared in his chest, but he swallowed it down.

"Okay," he said instead, feeling all of their progress crumbling.

"I'm not saying… We can still work together."

Castle pinched the bridge of his nose between his fingers in something between defeat and frustration, but Beckett surprised him, reached for his tense fingers and clasped them in her own.

"I just need time, Castle. You've been very good to me about it lately," she murmured softly, glancing from his eyes to their hands. "And I know it doesn't make things any easier, but I'm not ready to just dive back in with you."

It felt like a conversation they'd had once before, in her apartment after a fight at his book launch party, back when she had given him her body but little else. She had offered him hope and he had promised to wait.

If he'd done it before he could do it again.

"I can wait."

The firm grip on his hand loosened just slightly, but she still gave it another gentle squeeze.

"After my mother was killed, I built up a lot of walls inside, you know that." He nodded, a slow up and down acknowledgement of gentle understanding. She had opened up about her mother and all the repercussions of her death not long after she had shot Dick Coonan to save him. He knew what the loss of someone so close had done to her, how the grief had consumed everything, how she had barely survived it. "After we broke up, I built more."

The crack in his chest splintered deeper. "Kate-"

Her hand squeezed harder.

"But I think you've always remained inside them."

His eyes snapped up to her, met the warm hazel of her irises. Her lips curved in a timid, but reassuring hint of a smile and he noticed the rain had stopped.

He longed to kiss her, but settled for lifting the back of her hand to his mouth for a brief press of his lips before releasing her. Kate Beckett was it for him, he had doubted it in the past, even hoped against it for the sake of his sanity, but she was his… well, one and done wasn't necessarily appropriate from his position. Maybe she would be the charm that came with the third time. The last time.

And he would wait as long as she needed, but deep down, with the way she was looking at him with gratitude and a spectacular brightness in her gorgeous eyes, he had a feeling he wouldn't have to wait very long.