"I know it's been a while..but um could you do it..one last time?"

Walking over to the bed, Castle dropped to his hands and knees to look underneath. "No monsters," he announced to his daughter. His little girl who he was dropping off at college for crying out loud.

"You sure?"

"Yeah, and if there are, I'll come running." Dropping one last kiss, he left the room and his daughter, letting her get settled, trying to stop the tears from flowing. She was all grown up now, his little bundle of red hair and blue eyes was becoming a woman, one who moved away from home and didn't need her dad so much anymore.

It had been nearly two weeks since they'd left New York for California, and they'd flown up from LA to Stanford this morning to drop Alexis off, with Castle having a couple of hours to kill before his flight back home.

Home. It felt weird calling his new apartment overlooking the beach 'home', in reality, he still thought of his loft as home but just as Alexis was going to college, things were changing for him too. His new place was nice enough, spacious and inviting, especially with all the lovely new furniture he'd ordered. Alexis had put some of her stuff in another bedroom for when she came back on an occasion they weren't going back to New York, leaving Castle with the master bedroom and another as a guest room.

It had taken some getting used to having all new things in somewhere completely different but they were getting there, of course, the view of the pacific from the balcony helped immensely, as well as the warm weather. They'd managed to get down to the beach a few times, paddling out to sea like they did at the Hamptons in the summer and cooling down with ice creams, sometimes just taking an early evening stroll along the promenade, it really was a lovely city.

But now he was alone, his little girl had left and gone to college and when he got back to the apartment, it would be quiet and empty with only his thoughts to fill the void. And his thoughts were not somewhere he wanted to be right now..

He thought that with all the commotion of moving to another state, unpacking his things only to have to help Alexis repack for college, flying up there with her and dropping her off, he wouldn't have much time to think about Beckett, but he was wrong, he just couldn't forget about her. Every police officer he saw reminded him, every coffee shop and shoe store, even the cherries he'd seen in the supermarket the other day had flooded him with memories of how sweet her hair smelt, it was ridiculous.

He tried to not think about her when he could help it, diverting his thoughts to his writing (ha, what writing?), or to calling his mother to check she was okay, he'd even called Gina to make some mindless conversation about book sales simply to get his mind off of Beckett for a whole five minutes. But that's all it was, a quick five minute break and then back to thinking about her.

Moving to California had been a last ditch attempt to move on and so far it was failing miserably. Being on the other side of the country was supposed to help, give him new things to focus on and start afresh but that wasn't happening so far.

His writing had taken a huge hit, it had been three months since the last book was released and Gina was threatening to fly over here herself if she didn't have the first three chapters of the next novel in two weeks time. But how could he continue with Nikki and Rook when he'd moved in order to get over his muse? Lying awake one night, he'd even contemplated heading over to the LAPD to see if they could help, let him observe one of their detectives, but he wasn't friends with the mayor of this city and he doubted they'd let him in otherwise.

Not to mention the fact that no other detective, hell, no other woman on this planet could match up to Kate Beckett, not ever.

One of the worst things was that he had spent the past two weeks turning his life upside down in order to forget her and she probably hadn't spared him a second thought, heading back to Josh when Castle wouldn't give her the time of day and moving on a hell of a lot better than he had so far. The phone calls and texts had soon dried up, she'd obviously given up and moved on.

He'd been wandering around aimlessly since leaving Alexis to settle in, but he couldn't put off going back to his empty home now, he'd miss his flight if he wasted anymore time. Hailing a cab, he asked the driver to take him to the airport and settled back, watching the city blur by outside his window.

Alexis was lucky, she had her whole life ahead of her and it was only just starting. She still had plenty of time to learn new things and fall in love, get her heart broken and break some hearts of her own, but Castle had just about had enough. Two failed marriages didn't help, coupled with the failed almost-relationship he'd had with Beckett and let's be fair, that had been like a marriage from day one with all her whinging and nagging, not even Meredith had shown that much interest in him.

But when he thought about it, his relationship with Beckett had pretty much been a marriage without sex. They fought and argued, they got over it and moved on..she'd hated him at first, or so she told herself - he still wasn't convinced but she'd let him in piece by piece until he went and ruined everything by telling her he loved her.

As much as he didn't regret telling her, he hated what it had done to them. If he'd just kept his mouth shut and not said anything, she might not have shut him out for three months and he could have helped her through her recovery after her shooting and they'd still be close. Dr Motorcycle Boy would still have been a problem but he thought he was finally getting through to her, his comment about her hiding in relationships with men she didn't love had seemed to hit home and he couldn't help but think that if he had kept quiet when she was shot, they might be giving it a go now, falling into it together.

Arriving at the airport he checked in and passed through security with no problems, the guard only flicking his eyes three or four times from Castle's passport to the man himself, obviously recognising the name. Settling back in his seat on the plane, he ordered a whisky, needing something to shake him up a bit, get him out of this funk he was in.

Little did he know that just five minutes after his plane departed San Jose, flight EY8321 from JFK international was due to land there.

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