When minutes pass and Kate fails to return, Castle gets restless. He begins to re-explore her apartment, comparing the current space to the one in his memories. Not much has changed.
Her kitchen continues to look untouched and underused, her living room an equal to its past appearances as well, the coffee table littered with case files and an empty mug. He plucks it from the surface, deposits it in the sink out of what was briefly a habit.
He lingers at her bookshelf, noticing the gathering dust and an empty space at the end of the row where his novels reside. He recalls the image of her standing at his doorstep with Heat Rises clutched to her chest.
I went to the signing. Paula said I just missed you.
He tries to imagine her standing in line with the rest of his fans, but he can't manage to picture her blending in with the crowds. Had he seen her there, she would have caught his eye, devastated his concentration right away.
What would he have written in her book if she would have made it to his table unnoticed? What would he have said to her in the first place?
What right do you have showing up here now when you couldn't even say a word to me for three months?
Where did you go? Were you okay? Does it hurt where the bullet pierced your chest before I could stop it? I'm so sorry I couldn't stop it.
I missed you. I loved you. Still love you.
Can I just have you back?
Rick scrapes a hand through his hair and drops his forehead to the bookshelf. The only thing he needs back is his damn scarf.
He takes a deep breath and turns towards the hall that leads to her bedroom.
"Kate?"
She tenses at the call of her name and drops his scarf to the floor. She lost track of time, hiding in her closet, pretending to rummage through boxes in the back of her wardrobe that she otherwise rarely touches throughout the year.
His footsteps echo through her bedroom and her heart stutters. She's being ridiculous; she's never been one to shy away from her problems, always preferring to face them head on. So why is this so different, so difficult? Why is it suddenly so hard to face the person she cares about the most?
Kate hears him check the bathroom before he approaches the closet, maneuvering past a tower of shoeboxes in the doorway to get inside.
"I'm looking," she assures him, digging into a box of ski gear that she won't be using anytime soon. But he's assessing the shoes he just eased past.
"Are these all of your heels?" he asks, peeking into the box balanced on the top and lifting a black stiletto from inside. "Why are you packing these up? You wear them all the time."
Kate swallows hard, but attempts a quirk of her lips for him when he glances her way. "Hurts too much to wear heels right now," she confesses, redirecting her attention to the box in front of her.
He's quiet for a long moment.
"The bullet scar?"
"Incision scar," she corrects softly. "It pulls too much."
He places the shoe back in its box. "Did your doctor say how long it might be until you stop feeling the after effects so strongly?"
"There's no way to know for sure," she shrugs, feeling both scars coming to life in acknowledgement, as if to remind her that they're here to stay. "But it'll be a while. I'm thinking about just getting rid of them," she adds, nodding to the boxes of heels she's collected and adored over the years. "Keep a few favorites and-"
"Don't do that," he murmurs, abandoning the shoes for her. "No use getting rid of something you love when you'll wear them again."
"Not a big fan of the height difference?" she inquires, realizing too late the implication of what she's said. How it doesn't apply anymore.
Kate bites her lip and returns her gaze to the gloves in her hand instead of witnessing whatever affronted look is probably claiming his face.
"I like you in your heels, but-" She lifts her head in time to see him shrug, not looking at her, but his ears are turning red and the corner of his mouth is threatening to quiver. "I'd never mind the height difference."
He never minded before, seemed to enjoy it actually - coming up behind her in the mornings while she was getting ready and kissing the top of her head so easily, cupping her face and drawing her up on her bare toes on quiet nights in her apartment, holding her with her head tucked perfectly beneath his chin that first night in LA when a piece of her heart broke off for Royce. She fit even better in his arms, against his chest, when she was in flats or on her bare feet.
"I was never trying to forget," she says, knowingly ruining the tentative peace that settled over them in the closet. "I never wanted to destroy us, what we had."
"What did we have, Kate?" he questions, his gaze snapping back to her with an intensity that spears through her, makes her scars tighten up again. "Because at this point, it just feels like a fling gone wrong."
"A fling?" The anger begins to boil in her stomach. "Castle, if you were a fling, you never would have heard from me again after that first night."
"Well, never heard from you after the first month, so-"
"I came back," she growls, abandoning her fruitless search and stepping towards him in the cramped space of her closet. "I was always coming back. But Montgomery was dead and I had a bullet hole in my chest, excuse me for not being in tip top shape to talk about us."
"You were never in the mood to talk about us," he raises his voice at her, his chest puffing beneath the rich blue fabric of his shirt while he glares at her. "We kissed, that first time to fool the guard, and we never talked about it. We nearly died frozen in each other's arms and instead of talking about it, we just ended up sleeping together, which we also failed to talk about."
"Just sleeping together?" she scoffs, the fire lit and burning through her now. "We slept together and we kept sleeping together. You asked me to stay afterwards and I was there every morning."
"Yeah, but outside of bedrooms, what were we then, Kate? Anytime I brought it up, you would change the subject. And I probably could have accepted that, lived with it a while longer, but when you got shot-" His voice falters, cracks, and he clenches his jaw. "Watching the life drain out of the woman I loved was the worst thing I've ever experienced and I just - I needed you and you were gone. No explanation, no phone call, not even a warning.
"Rick," she whispers, but he's scrubbing a hand over his eyes, refusing to look at her again.
"We were just glorified friends with benefits," he mutters and her heart finally gives in, collapses.
She bends to snag the scarf still hidden at her feet, snatching it up and shoving it into his chest as she strides past.
"Just take it and go," she rasps, cursing the tears stinging in her eyes because she swore she wouldn't cry.
He stares down at the scarf in his hands, blue and striped and soft with age. He thoughtlessly lifts it to his noses, catches cherries in his throat.
She knew where it was all along, purposefully pretended she couldn't find it.
Damn her.
"Kate."
He turns on his heel, scarf in his fist, and hurries to catch up with her before she can slam her bathroom door shut. But she's not escaping to the easy hideaway of the en suite, she's striding through the living room, straight for her front door.
Oh hell no. She doesn't get to literally run away from him again.
"Kate."
He grabs her by the wrist just as she makes it into the foyer, tugging her to a staggering halt. She groans through grit teeth, her spine shuddering, and - oh, oh no, she's in pain. He hurt her.
Rick immediately lets her go. "Shit, I'm sorry. I'm sorry-"
"Castle, you got your scarf. I'm sorry I took it," she grinds out, gingerly wrapping an arm around her midsection, pressing a palm to the spot below her ribs. "You can have your damn shirt back too once I'm able to move my arms. But you said you needed time, I've been giving it to you. What more do you want from me?"
"I don't-" He pauses, searches through the remains of his scattered mind to find an answer, the right response to such a broad question. But he doesn't have to think long, realizes that it isn't so complicated. "I want to know where we would have ended up. What would have happened if you were never shot, if - if you would have stayed."
He watches the elegant line of her throat work through a swallow, her hand curling into a fist against her ribs as she tries to straighten up.
"Was it - was there ever a chance?" he asks, hating how his voice wavers, hating the idea of her just using him with no intention of anything more for crossing his mind. "Was I always just a rebound or-"
She scoffs, her head shaking incredulously. "Castle, you were never a rebound. Do you - god, do you know how big of a sore spot you were in my relationship with Josh?" Her lips twitch ruefully. "I liked him, really liked him, but you… there was always you."
Kate leans her shoulder into the door, wincing at the brace of movement.
"When we nearly died in the freezer, nearly got blown up a few hours later… it all felt a lot clearer to me that we aren't granted a lot of time in life, that it can be over in just a second," she murmurs, biting down on her bottom lip in that maddening habit that ruined him even before he knew what it was like to steal her lip from between her teeth with his own. "I know it sounds hypocritical when I left after getting shot, but that was different. It - it didn't make me want to live, it broke me and I couldn't handle it."
He drifts closer to her without meaning to, always drawn in like a magnet to its partner.
"I couldn't be with you through that, I couldn't be with anyone," she rasps, dropping her temple to the frame of the front door. "The last three months were nothing but pain. Physical therapy and panic attacks every night-" The picture of her alone in her father's cabin, in physical agony and mental anguish, widens the cracks instilled throughout his heart. "I would've hurt you."
"I would have been there," he murmurs, reaching for her again, softer this time. He layers his palm to the harsh juncture between her neck and collarbone, feeling the angry slash of her clavicle beneath the worn plaid of his shirt. "I get it, Kate. Some things you have to go through alone, but I want you to know that you didn't have to."
Her eyes rise to meet his, hazel and searching. "Because you loved me."
His heart stumbles to hear her say it, but he nods, might as well.
"Because I love you."
Some of the aching drains from her gaze.
"Castle, you know I love you back." His heart stops, but she isn't fazed, just blurting the words out casually as if they really are common knowledge. "But every time my mother's case-"
"Wait," he breathes, fisting his fingers in the collar of his shirt at her neck. "You do?"
Her brow furrows before her cheeks start to blush with color and her lip falls victim to her teeth again.
"Sometimes I forget I never said it out loud."
Out loud?
"I do love you," she murmurs, lifting tentative hands to his chest. She always used to do that in their time together, fingertips tracing the structure of his sternum, palms spanning the muscle and bone protecting his heart. How cliché would it be for him to admit how defenseless it all is against her? "Almost said it to you in the freezer before I passed out."
She's going to give him a heart attack with all of this. So much brand new information that he should have known about months ago.
"But in answer to your question," she picks up, trailing her hands up to his throat, ascending to cradle his jaw, thumbs at his cheeks. "I don't know what would have happened if I'd stayed, if I was never shot, if none of that would have ever happened. But it did, and it could again."
"No." He clutches at her hip with one hand. Hell no. He is not letting her get shot again. "It's not happening again."
"I meant with my mother's case," she murmurs, tracing her thumb to the curving frown line bracketing his mouth. "It could come up again and I - I told you from the start that it takes over my life and you've seen that firsthand now. I don't know how to... you can't love me when that happens because I just close myself off, barricade myself behind a wall that's been inside me since she died."
"Kate Beckett, I can love you through anything," he growls, tilting into her, feeling her breath catch as their bodies align for the first time in months. "You just have to let me."
Her hands slip from his face to thread through his hair, her arms collapsing into a fold around his neck. She hugs him hard and crushing, a tight embrace that he's afraid to return. If he hugs her back, he may not let her go, may hurt her with the force of his arms closing in a vise around her.
"This is why," she whispers, burying her nose in his throat. "Every time I end up drowning in her case and drowning everyone else with me and I just couldn't - everyone was gone but I still had you and I was so close to ruining that too. I can't have the kind of relationship I want until I get this done, Castle."
He shakes his head and gives in, snaking his arms around her until he has her gathered up firmly against him.
"It may not be how you want it, but I'm not going anywhere," he murmurs, his words slightly muffled by her hair. "If you want me, whether you think the timing's right or wrong, I've got you and I'm not letting you go again."
His phone buzzes in his pocket and he catches a glance of his watch on his wrist, the time.
"Shit, except for maybe right now," he sighs, loosening his grip with an apologetic smile. "I have a date." She blinks, her arms falling slack around his neck, and he huffs. "With Alexis."
The tension in her spine loosens, but doesn't dissipate. Ah, so she must have guessed how his daughter must feel about her.
"The scarf," she murmurs belatedly, forgoing a glance to the empty hands splayed across her back and looking to the floor at their feet. "That's why you needed it back so badly."
"If it wasn't a gift from my daughter, you could have kept it." He flicks his gaze down to the shirt she's wearing. He shouldn't be surprised that she took it when she left after that last fight. It was the button down she would always slip on in the middle of the night, the one he purposely began to leave draped across the armchair near his bed.
The shirt on her body hasn't been his for a while now.
"You can keep the shirt too."
"I wasn't planning on giving it back," she murmurs, her lips curving into a smirk for him.
He wants to kiss her, always wants to kiss her whether it's in awe or in anger.
His phone chirps again from the pocket of his jeans, a quiet vibration that buzzes loudly against his thigh, through her apartment.
"Go, Castle." Kate brushes her thumb to the line of his mouth, a reverent touch that has the flesh of his lips tingling, yearning for more. "Don't want you to be late, especially because of me."
He stays her hand at his chin, pressing his lips to her fingertips and watching her eyes ripple with want, drenching gold in desire. She may have broken his heart over these past few months, may have still managed to keep the shards of it in the palm of her hand this whole time, but he still has her just as certainly.
He can still undo Kate Beckett in a heartbeat.
She hooks her thumb through his, reels their hands down and away from the dangerous heat of his mouth.
"Rick," she sighs, listing into him, turning her nose into his cheek. "Take the time you need," she whispers, lips rasping along his jaw, searing, branding, all consuming. "Come back to me when it feels right, when you're ready to dive back in with me."
All he can manage is a nod, the time and coherency he needs to respond properly slipping away, but she has no idea how ready he is.
Damn the waiting, damn her walls - he's going to dinner with his daughter and then he's coming back to remind her exactly what she gave up three months ago.