This is far, far from being the last chapter.

Chapter 37

Kate finally convinced her father to let her drive. He poked along a few miles under the speed limit and she had no patience with his driving on normal days.

They were halfway there when Kate's cell rang and she handed it to her dad saying 'Answer it and tell whoever it is that I'm really busy and don't care what they want. It can wait'.

Jim answered the phone more diplomatically than his daughter had demanded and listened carefully to the caller and then put the phone on speaker.

"Beckett, Parish. I watched the video again. I recorded it and I've watched it four more times. He did seem to move both his arms independently but Kate, it could have been a response to the scapulae being manipulated by debris on the road surface."

"Fine, Parish. I'll take that as a 'he might be alive' and follow my original plan. Thank you." She pushed the END button and sped up a bit. "He's not dead, Dad. Castle's a rock of a man and he wouldn't go down without fighting. He was unconscious, yes, but not dead. I know it."

"What are we going to do when we get there?"

"YOU are going to drive up to Castle's beach house and check it out and wait for me. I'm going to walk north from the Quick Stop and look for tracks, signs of a body falling, anything."

"Katie, what if he's…what if the tide – "

"No! He's not dead. I can't feel his absence. I know it doesn't make any sense but I can still feel our connection even after all I've done – I still feel him."

Kate told her dad what to look for and how to find Castle's place and to be careful on the sandy track through the saw grass and dunes to his place.

Hugging him for luck, she took off running into the wooded thicket and started her search. Kate pulled off her impractical shoes once she hit the beach and wriggled her toes in the sun-warmed sand. 'Move it, Beckett. He might be just over the next dune.'

She was methodical and meticulous but didn't find any signs until she'd moved up the beach a few hundred yards.

She found a disturbance in the damp sand uncovered by the retreating tide. A man had dropped onto his hands and knees. If there was any blood spoor, the moisture in the sand had diluted it to invisibility. Still it was the first sign she'd seen and so she jogged slowly up the beach towards the beach house looking for signs.

About 100 yards closer to Castle's place and farther up the strand from the tide line, she found another spot where he'd collapsed on hands and knees. This time there was a dried pool of blood about the size of a saucer. From the impressions of his hands and knees, he'd vomited up the dark mass.

Kate felt a wave of terror pass through her and she picked up her pace, watching yards ahead for another sign he'd passed by this spot or that spot and praying she wouldn't see a body sprawled on the sand.

She could finally see the beach house around the spit of sand dunes and sprinted the rest of the way, terrified that she was too late.

She stopped to put on her sandals and then ran up the 5 plank steps to the wrap-around porch and opened the door. She sensed the warble of sirens in the distance but her entire focus is on finding Castle.

"Dad? Dad, where are you?"

July 3

The hospital was very quiet at 4am. Kate leaned back in the recliner and watched Rick sleep. She wished she could sleep but every time she closed her eyes she saw his body lying in a pool of blood and she remembered feeling the world go dark as it spun around her.

Her father's hands were coated in whatever had been clogging his airway and she could still feel his sticky hands on her as she fell apart, dropping to her knees and crying as she said his name over and over. He'd held her against him and rocked her while the paramedics worked their magic on him.

Not her brightest hour but understandable. Forgivable.

Her eyes widened and darted to his face when his breathing seemed to hitch but then resumed its steady and soothing rhythm.

Rick knew she was here with him. He'd had one or two lucid moments. When he first saw her sitting beside him, clutching his hand, he'd frowned and her heart sank but then…a glorious smile and she felt…reborn.

Whatever had been wrong with him had been patched up. Thankfully, being in a 'rich man's hospital' meant the best of everything and so there was no hideous scar across his abdomen where they'd repaired something that had been bleeding, Laparoscopic surgery. No incision scars for the rich and shameless using this minimally invasive procedure.

His face was a mess but nothing was broken. His left eye was swelled shut and there were 12 perfect stitches below his eyebrow where the bitch's boot had torn it open. Thank God it wasn't his eye. His nose had seen better days but wasn't an issue.

The doctor had been blunt: if you have to have your head bashed by a tire iron, then where Castle had been struck was the ideal spot. The skull was thickest, the least critical areas of the brain would be affected; a contra coup concussion was a small price to pay for intact thought processes.

Kate had spent a great deal of time on her cell phone. First, she called Alexis and explained exactly what had happened to her father, his condition, and his prognosis. She'd taken it well, considering she'd just lost her grandmother. The west coast media had been surprisingly silent on the Castle Affair. They'd lucked out.

Meredith had come on the line and been very cordial and supportive. Apparently Alexis had filled her in on what had happened between her father and his ex-fiance and she was pleasantly surprised to find that Meredith was 'in her corner'.

"Kate, you have to work at your relationship with Ricky. He's complex. There's the public Rick and the private one. Ignore the public and work on getting back with the private guy, the one who feels the hurt and bears the scars."

"I'm surprised to hear you say that especially since Lexie has probably filled you in on all the Kate-Rick drama that I brought into their lives."

"Alexis says you two are 'special' and she's almost to the point of forgiving you and that says a lot. She's her father's daughter more than mine. I see him in her always."

Meredith and Alexis were flying in on the 5th and would be staying at the beach house and that meant she would have to bunk with her dad.

"Bull! You'll stay at the beach house in the master bedroom. Alexis has her room and I'll take…I'll take Martha's."

There was a moment of silence before Meredith continued.

"Why didn't you come to the funeral, Kate? Rick needed you. He never cried, not one single tear, until someone from the police station asked if you'd been by and then he walked away and sat off by himself. He was 'unapproachable' but Gina, bless her evil and poisonous black heart, took him by the hand and led him back to us. It broke him, Kate, your absence, I mean."

"I couldn't. I got dressed, had my keys and purse in hand and I just froze. My therapist really kicked my ass for it but I just couldn't. I loved that woman but I was afraid of her son and his daughter and their reaction…their rejection of me…so I went to work instead. It's what I did back then, buried myself in work. I'm trying to learn how to deal with things but it's hard, Meredith."

They talked about other things, things that were more 'housekeeping' than anything else and then Alexis got back on the phone.

"Kate, you better not screw him over again. If you're going to go through some darned teenage angst fest like on TV, just do us all a favor and leave us alone. I'm all he has left. I'll share him with you but I will not let you hurt him again. I'll make him choose, Kate, between you and me. I'll make him choose and I'll win. So if you're still there when I get there, you better be there for good."

She hung up before Kate could respond. Sometimes she wondered which of them was 28 and which was 15. There was more than an implied threat. There was a promise or two. She would share but she would win if Kate messed up.

She called the Captain and requested time off and got it. Then she called the boys and updated them on his condition and then she called Lanie.

"Hey, it's Kate. I'm looking at Rick sleeping. He's out of the OR and in 'good condition'. His doctor repaired whatever was bleeding. He has cracked ribs, a bunch of boot-shaped bruises and 12 stitches above one eye. He's alive and that's enough for me now."

"Is it? Knowing he's alive? Are you going to crawl back to your plastic surgeon guy or the bartender at the club or the cab driver or…"

"Enough, Lanie. I made a mistake. This whole relationship thing is foreign territory to me. What you all just live with is all new to me. I've got my head on straight now. I have my priorities straight. I'm…I'm going to take a leave of absence from the department if I can swing it otherwise, I'm going to quit."

"Why?" Blunt almost surly and very disbelieving.

"I'm going to win back my boyfriend and when we're ready, I'm going to marry him."

"What about your mom's case?"

"What about it? I've been through a lot lately. The attack, losing Rick, going through therapy, talking a lot with my dad about him and my mom. I'm not going to be like her. I'm not going to sacrifice the people I love on the altar of Justice like she did. Maybe I'll solve the case, maybe I won't. She's dead and although I miss her, it won't bring her back, will it?"

"Wow, Beckett, that's…a lot of shit coming outta you. I can't believe…you're right about one thing though. You're going to have to win him back because you certainly lost him."

And now she waited patiently, for her anyhow, for him to wake up and then they'd have The Talk…she would talk, he would, hopefully, listen. She had a lot to tell him about the old and the new Kate Beckett. If only he will listen.

She was terrified of The Talk because she was really afraid it would end in The Walk…her leaving because he'd turned away from her, because he'd had enough, because he didn't love her any more, because she'd betrayed him through her actions, because…because…because...

She looked at her…at Castle lying so peacefully. She wiped a tear away and gathered up her things and slipped out into the darkened corridor and the hot summer night.

She stood outside the hospital lobby entrance and looked for her car. Shit! Her dad had it.

"You look lost. Someone inside in trouble?" Kate turned and looked at the woman who was leaning against the wall outside the lobby smoking a cigarette. She must have looked at it because the nurse smiled.

"I know. It's bad for me on so many levels but I can't quit. I've tried the patches, the pills, hypnotism, support groups, everything. I guess…I guess I don't want to quit. Not really. It's like…something I do that rewards me somehow, even if the reward is a little less life, a little harder time breathing…y'know, the commercials on TV."

"I – I wasn't judging. I was just…lost in thought, I guess."

"Someone close to you in trouble in there? I think I use the butts as a crutch to get me through each day. I work in Oncology. Not many happy endings. A lot of happy days but rarely happy endings. It wears you down after a while."

"I'm a cop. I can relate." Kate really didn't want to have this conversation right now. She was trying to figure out how to do what she did best, deny and retreat.

"So who is he?" the nurse asked. She was on her lunch break at 4am. Another reason to smoke. Who eats lunch at 4am.

"I'm sorry?" Beckett hadn't been listening, not really.

"The guy who's got you so upset? Is he in trouble…medical trouble, I mean? It does help to talk about it sometimes. Consider it…free therapy." The girl laughed and stubbed out her cigarette and lit another, noticing Kate's reluctance to answer but her interest in her cigarette..

"Got another 30 minutes to kill before I have to go back. At least it's not January. Weather here in January is a bitch."

"He's my ex-fiance. We broke up. Okay, I broke it off. I thought I loved someone else. I was afraid, had too damned many personal issues, okay, personal problems, and he caught the brunt of my crap. I ran him off, made mistakes. He got messed up in a carjacking and I had to see him. He's all I have left and I'm not sure I even have him. I'm so afraid he won't take me back. I'm afraid of so many things…"

"So you're leaving him again? It's easier to run than to stand and fight. It's easier to get the hell outta Dodge than face up to things. It's easy to run. The problem is, Kate, when do you stop?"

"Yeah. Wait, how do you know my name? Have we met?"

"Nope. I'm a news junkie and a Castle fan girl. I know all about you two. You're such a dumbass, Kate. But I can relate. Think you could get me an autograph?"

"Y'know, I'll bet I can do better than that. C'mon. Put out the killer weed and let's go wake my boyfriend up. Just…just don't ask him to sign your boobs. You might not like what'll happen."