Disclaimer: If only...I would buy myself a cherry red golf cart and drive it around the Raleigh Studios lot.

What If…?

Chapter 11: Tell Me No Secrets, I'll Tell You No Lies

Kate gets up from the couch to clear their mugs onto the tray, ferrying the whole lot to the kitchen, and then leaving them in the sink, too exhausted and too preoccupied with the man in the next room to thinking about washing so much as a teaspoon right now.

He's at her back before she can blink, strong arms wrapping around her waist, his broad chest and hips pressing her into the edge of the counter, holding her captive. Though even she knows she is done running from him now.

"Kate," he whispers, nudging her hair aside and kissing her neck. "Kate, can we talk about this please?"

He sounds hurt all over again and…enough. Just enough now.

She turns around in his arms to face him.

"Come lie down and we can talk," she promises, nudging him backwards with her hip when he glances at their dirty dishes.

Kate leads him to her bedroom by the hand in a repeat of her brave move the night before. When they get inside he hovers near the foot of the bed watching her turn down the comforter, and then leave to go into the bathroom. He waits on the bottom corner of her bed; fingers laced together, head bowed over his knees until he hears the toilet flush and the water running.

She comes out rubbing lotion onto her hands and arms, rolling her head on tired neck muscles to find him just sitting there.

"Something wrong? You not getting in?" she asks, frowning when she realizes that he's still fully clothed, staring pensively at her bedroom floor.

"Waiting for you," he explains quietly, holding his hand out to her.

She comes over to him and stands between his legs, resting her hands on his shoulders while he laces his behind her back, the air around him filling up with the sweet scent of Jo Malone's orange blossom lotion.

"Kate," he begins hesitantly, looking at the floor, pressing the crown of his head into her stomach, and she can't resist running her fingers through his hair, his beautifully dark, baby soft hair.

"Whatever we talk about next…it won't change anything for me," he tells her cryptically, trying to reassure her that if she reveals her secret - her lies - to him, it won't damage them irreparably anymore, like it almost did just a few weeks ago, before she found the courage to fix them in the most definite way possible.

He knows what she has done. He just wants a chance to understand why.

"I know," she says, swallowing nervously, her eyes flitting to his face and away again. "Come on. Get into bed. Don't think I can stay standing for much longer," she confesses, leaving his arms to go round to her side of the bed.

He watches her peel off her leggings and then lift her sweatshirt over her head, until she is standing in just a thin white camisole and her underwear. He will never get tired of seeing those long legs and that body as long as he lives, he thinks, hoping that he never has to give her up, now that he finally has her.

She tosses a couple of decorative throw pillows onto the chair by the bed and gets in under the covers, lifting questioning eyes to him in the process.

"Castle, what's wrong?" she asks, patting the space beside her and then throwing back the covers, if any more of an invitation to join her in her bed was needed.

He wants to know, has wanted to know, so badly and for so long. But now that this discussion is getting close, now that he is peering over the precipice, he thinks he might be terrified and that actually being with her might be all that matters to him now; that maybe that is enough.

"We don't have to do this right now," he says, making a complete one-eighty from his request in her kitchen not five minutes ago.

"If you're too tired, or your head hurts…yes, we can wait," she says, rolling onto her side as he settles in next to her, in her bed for the very first time.

Her bed linen smells of the vanilla and lavender dryer sheets he spotted in her kitchen, and his head swims with this fragrant assault on his poor abused senses. He has stripped down to his boxer shorts and t-shirt, and a shiver runs through him as his legs slide down over the cool sheet, his aching body finally starting to relax against the firmness of the mattress.

"How is your head?" asks Kate, gently touching the two Steri-strips the EMT fixed over the laceration to his temple, the dark purple contusion spreading out in a radius around it.

"Pills are working. I'll take a couple more later," he tells her, kissing her fingertips for caring.

Kate settles further down in bed, laying her head on his shoulder, letting her hand come to rest on his stomach underneath the covers. She slides one leg over one of his to get closer to him, while she fights to keep her thoughts PG with his hard, muscled…everything underneath her.

"Is this okay?" she asks, glancing up at him, still so careful with one another. "I'm not too heavy on top of you?"

Castle laughs. He actually laughs out loud, shaking her whole body in the process, since nothing could be further from the truth, both literally and figuratively.

"Kate, you're light as a feather," he tells her, toying with the thin strap on her camisole, then trailing his fingers down her bare arm.

What he doesn't tell her is that whatever burden she may have been to him at one time, he has never been able to let go, could never give up, will never ever let her fall if he can do something to prevent it.

She takes a few calming breaths, letting her fingers swirl in an intricate pattern over his heart while she decides at which point she should pick up this tale of theirs.

"So…the day I came to visit you in the hospital?" prompts Castle, breaking the warm, comforting silence of her bedroom.

And so her decision is made for her; taken out of her hands. This is where he wants her to start.

"You sure you want to do this now?" she asks, shifting to look up at him.

"Kate, you said it yourself when you were…when we were sitting on your bathroom floor. You said you needed to talk. Well, I need you to talk too. This is…there are some things I need to understand. I'm sure you can already guess most of them. But…how about if I listen, and if there are blanks…"

He trails off, kissing the crown of her head as an affectionate encouragement, her curls dried now, looser than her usual sculpted style, and they tickle his nose.

"Okay," she says carefully. "If you're sure."

"I am. We need to do this," he tells her, easing them both upright until they're sitting propped up against her headboard.

"So the day you came to visit me…" she begins, turning slightly towards him.

"When Josh was by your bedside," he adds, forking his own heart once more with the memory of the two of them chatting in what seemed like such an intimate way, recalling the kiss Josh pressed to her forehead that he only gets to do now, all these months later.

"I thought you said you were going to listen?" she scolds lightly, before recommencing.

"Sorry, shutting up now."

"When I came round, I felt like hell. Physically and emotionally, I was at the lowest point since my mom was murdered. My body ached all over. Even breathing hurt. I could barely move for sutures and wires and…and I hated it, Castle. Being that weak, that vulnerable, unable to look after myself. I hated every single second of it."

"You'd just been shot, Kate," he reminds her. "Anyone would feel the same."

"Yes, at my mentor's funeral," she points out, her voice rising passionately. "Montgomery was dead because of me. You and I…we…" she halts, biting her lip before continuing.

"When you came to my apartment that night, and we argued, I was so angry at you for presuming to know what was best for me. Despite all of the evidence staring me in the face," she admits for the first time. "But I was pushing you that night too. Because you were right, we never talked about any of the things that mattered."

"I was trying to get you to stop because everyone connected with the case wound up dead, and you…you were going to be next."

"But it was my life," she argues, not for the first time. "To do with as I pleased."

"Then you tell me why I had your dad come visit me to ask me to get you to stop? Or…or why Montgomery seemed to think that I was the only one you would listen to, Kate? Because you might have thought that it was your life and yours alone. But that wasn't what everyone else seemed to think. Everyone we know had the pair of us bound up in this…this complicated partnership situation that somehow made me as responsible for you as I was for myself. And it terrified me."

His voice is shaking, going over all of this again, dredging it up and trying to make her understand without forcing on her at this point the simple fact that he was in love with her, so he'd have done almost anything to get her to stop.

"What are you talking about?" she asks, drawing her knees up in front of her, sounding wary and suspicious. "My dad? Montgomery? What…? You're talking in riddles, Castle. Is that why you came to see me that night?"

"I came to see you because I cared about what happened to you and I believed that your life was in danger. I still believe that everything I told you that night was the truth, Kate. You were hiding, you were scared to live…at least fully."

"What does my dad have to do with any of that?"

"This isn't supposed to be my confession," he says, getting uncomfortable that this is rapidly going off track, and they've barely even begun.

"You brought it up, Castle. Full disclosure. We agreed we'd be honest with each other. So I need to know."

He rubs a hand over his face, feels him mouth going dry, anxious that sharing this with her is going to push her away somehow.

"He…he showed up at the loft the night before I came to see you," he confesses, raising his eyes to read her reaction to this piece of news.

"What, so, out of the blue, he just shows up at your door? He'd never even met you."

"Exactly. Threw me too," he admits. "But what was I going to do? He's your dad, Kate. I could hardly turn him away."

"So, what did he say?" she asks warily.

"He wanted to know how dangerous was the guy that you were after, and then…" Castle sighs, not really wanting to relive her dad's visit for Kate's sake.

"Then what? Please, just tell me. I knew none of this."

"It was hard to hear, Kate. To witness. How hurt he was, how worried about you."

When Castle pauses to regroup, Kate lifts one of the pillows from behind her and hugs it to her body like a shield, no longer touching him anymore.

"Do you want me to go on?" he asks, eyes searching hers.

"Please. I need to hear this."

"He said that he had already lost his wife, but that he had…and I have no idea how you even begin to do this, but he said he'd made his peace with that. He came to see me because he wanted me to persuade you that your life was worth more than your mother's death, because he didn't want to lose you too," he confesses, waiting for her reaction to see just how hard this truth will hit her.

"How could he even think…? He didn't even know you. He'd never even met you, and now he was dumping this at your…" she says angrily.

"Kate!" interrupts Castle sharply, to get her to stop and listen.

"What?"

"He seemed to know quite a bit about me…from you, he said."

She flushes pink at being exposed by her own father.

"He said that you cared about me and he could see that I cared about you. He told me…hell, he practically ordered me not to let you throw your life away, Kate. How could I not do that for him? How could I not at least try to get you to listen, to see sense? I already knew he was right, and then Montgomery…"

"Montgomery what?" she asks sharply, stiffening.

"I tried to talk to you at the precinct the next day. I was going to suggest that we went away for a bit. But then the boys and the case got in the way, as usual. So, I went to see Roy. Asked him to take you off the case," he confesses, waiting for the door to hit him in the ass, only she keeps deathly quiet this time.

"But he laid the exact same thing on me. How I was the only one you would listen to," and he laughs bitterly. "All these people," he says, looking scared and exasperated. "All these people were putting their faith in me to…to protect you, to get you to stand down. Not Josh. Not your boyfriend. Me, Kate! And I was useless. When it came down to it, I held too much back. I should have tried harder to make you understand…to make you see…"

"You tried pretty hard, as I recall. I just wasn't ready to listen."

"Yeah, seems there's been a lot of that," he mutters bitterly, and Kate feels her chest getting tight.

It's her turn now to confess and explain, and even though they are together now and this is in the past, it somehow doesn't make saying any of this any easier.

"The day you came to the hospital," she tries again, changing tack, full disclosure, "I felt so faded, so weakened, in a way I never had before. My whole persona, my identity, my ability to do my job, who I was, all of that was built around my physical strength, my stamina, my independence. It's what made me feel safe, and…and powerful. Without that I was nothing. I felt diminished, less…I felt ugly."

"Kate…"

"No. Please let me finish. You showed up looking…oh god, you were a sight for sore eyes, let me tell you. Dressed in black, sexy, and so very alive, Castle. It was all I could do to let you look at me at all. I wasn't the Kate Beckett you knew anymore. I was a cripple, an invalid. A victim."

Maybe, but you were still the Kate Beckett I was in love with, he has to fight not to say out loud.

"I was this broken thing; an animal that had been hunted to the point of near death. And when you started to ask what I'd remembered about the day of the shooting…"

"You said that there are some things that are better not being remembered," he says coolly, the words echoing round his brain once more, just as they had every night in the dark, as he lay awake wondering just where she was, if she was safe, if she was happy, and if she even thought of him anymore.

"I know. I know I did," she says, sounding contrite, lowering her gaze to the soft, dark expanse of her comforter when she can no longer bear to look at him.

"You looked me in the eye and you said that you remembered being on that podium and then everything went black. That that was all you could remember, Kate."

"Please?" she whimpers, shaking her head, ashamed at her cowardice now, mortified by her own lies.

Because wounded or not, there was never any excuse for lying to this man. Not after everything he had tried to do for her, including throwing himself in the path of the bullet that was meant for her, his own family be damned.

"But you remembered everything, didn't you?" he states simply, coldly.

The tears shining in her eyes and then spilling down her cheeks say it all. She has no need to answer.

They are sitting in her bed, emotional and exhausted, and he doesn't want this to turn into a fight, but he still needs to know.

"Didn't you?" he repeats insistently, pushing hard, exorcising his own demons, and grabbing a second chance to do this better this time round.

"Yes!" she finally wails, thumping the pillow she's clinging onto.

"Why?" he asks quietly, back to containing his anger.

When she doesn't reply, he carries on with his own memories of that day, trying to make her see how badly her decisions affected them both.

"You sent me away, Kate. Knowing how I felt about you. You said you needed some time. You said that you would call. But you never called. I waited. I made myself sick and dizzy staring a my phone so often that one day…one day it got to be too much and I threw the damn thing against a wall. Then…then I find myself scrambling around on my hands and knees in an alley trying to put the pieces back together again…just in case you ever did call," he confesses, as the tears drip down her chin.

"But…you never did."

"Castle, I wanted to," she says, choking back a sob, reaching for his hand.

"Then why didn't you?" he asks, hurt and anger spilling out in a way he can't help, raising his voice to bounce of her peaceful while walls and then catch in his throat.

"Every day, once I got out of that hospital, every day was a struggle from beginning to end."

"Josh help you with that?" he asks bitterly, regretting his self-pitying words the instant they are out of his mouth.

Kate stares at him, realizing this is another thing he doesn't yet know. He has the bare facts but not the detail.

"We broke up. I told you."

"When?"

She looks into his eyes, wiping away a tear, and then bites her lip before confessing.

"The same day you came to visit me," she says in a tiny voice, doubling over to cling to her stomach, tears falling freely onto the pillowcase.

"Why?" asks Castle calmly, trying to keep the tremor out of his voice, fighting not to reach for her until they're out the other side of this.

She grabs a Kleenex from her nightstand and blows her nose.

"Why, Kate?" repeats Castle, pushing her like he feels he should have done a year ago. "Why that day, hmm? Why then?"

She dabs at her eyes and then she looks right at him, no flinching.

"Because I had to," she bites back angrily, raising her own voice this time. "…because I was in love with you too," she finally gets out, exhausted, sucking in a shocked sob of a breath at the end.

Silence falls over the bedroom again, aside from the occasional sniff from Kate and the click of her heating. But she calms a little, enough to explain.

"When I saw you that day, god you took my breath away, Castle, and I just knew. Things hadn't been right between Josh and I from the beginning. I was sharing things with you…things about my past, my mom, the case…just, lots of little things, including my time, that I wasn't willing to share with the guy who was supposed to be my boyfriend. I tried, but I couldn't get you out of my head. And it wasn't fair on any of us anymore. Least of all him."

"How'd he take it?" growls Castle, anger and jealousy still surging through him, making his hands curl into fists at the very though of Josh Davidson.

"He," she shakes her head. "He wasn't surprised. Maybe by the timing, since I was so sick. We fought over it, had words, and he threw something out there about me going running to you. Ironic, isn't it. All that time you thought I was with Josh and he thought I was with you."

"So, why didn't you come to me, Kate? I could have helped you, looked after you. I was miserable without you. Going out of my mind."

She shakes her head at him, a fresh wave of tears coursing silently down her face.

"I watched you die that day. But I clung onto the fact that you'd heard me tell you that I loved you. That at least there was that. To find out you hadn't…it was as if you'd been shot all over again."

She covers her mouth with her hand to hold back a sob, her eyes wide and watery as they move over his poor, bruised face, absorbing just what she did to him.

"I was made to feel pretty unwelcome after that fight with Josh in front of your dad. He blamed me for you, for Roy, just as much as I blamed myself. So, when you asked to see me…god, I was so nervous," he confesses, smiling in spite of everything. "I feared that part of my life was over, that you were gone for good. And then suddenly there you were…"

He smiles softly at the memory of seeing her for the first time after her surgery: pale, haunted, fail, but still undeniably beautiful; still undeniably Kate.

"Looking like death warmed over," she says wryly, trying to raise a smile to match his.

"No. Looking like my Kate," he says, briefly touching her cheek.

She leans into his hand, letting more tears fall, the grief of all the loss and loneliness of that time flooding out in front of the one man who would gladly have shared the load with her all those months ago.

"I had to heal myself," she tries to explain, embarrassed that it sounds selfish and cowardly now, but trying to cling on to this explanation for her own ends too, lest self-doubt creep in.

"I'm so sorry that I hurt you in the process. But I wanted to be better…for myself and for you. It's what I thought you deserved, Castle. It was the only way I thought we stood a chance; if I could fix myself and close that case once and for all."

"You're too proud, Kate. I could have helped. You know you only had to ask…anything. I would have done anything."

"Maybe. It seems like so much lost time now. I actually don't know how I went three months without seeing this face," she says, smiling faintly, reaching out to run her fingers along his jaw, skirting the dark crescent beneath his right eye with her thumb.

"I just knew that if I called you I would have been dragging myself into everything I was trying to get some space from."

"Me included?"

"When you put it like that it sounds so bad, I know. But in a way, yes. Someone killed my Captain, Castle. My friend. And then they tried to kill me. We were…so complicated," she sighs, running a hand through her hair. "And then out of the blue you tell me that you love me…just as I think I'm dying. I had to wonder if you even meant it, if it wasn't just some knee-jerk reaction to the hell we were in."

"Out of the blue?" he repeats, as if she's insane. "How could you not have known by then?" he asks, sounding close to devastated. "How could you not have known how I felt about you, Kate?"

"Because you said it yourself at my apartment that night. We never talked about any of that…about us, what any of it meant. We hid away from our feelings for so long, and then it got to be too hard to deal with, to shift gears, after a while."

Kate looks up at him again, her face a mixture of shame and apology.

"I was ready to start something with you the summer you invited me out to the Hamptons. The summer you left with Gina," she admits quietly, watching his face fall in shock. "After that, when you disappeared until the fall, I tried to cut myself off from wanting you all together," she tells him quite matter-of-factly.

"How can we possibly have made this big a mess of everything? That was over two years ago, Kate."

He looks about ready to cry, while she is the dry-eyed one now.

"I think maybe we needed this time. Look at everything we've been through since then. Do you honestly think we would have survived all of that if we'd jumped into this two years ago?"

"I'd like to hope."

"Yeah, well, hope isn't always enough, Rick," she tells him, her pragmatic side coming to the fore even in this moment of high emotion.

"Did it help? Being alone while you were recovering?" He needs new images to replace the black hole of despair that this time occupies in his memory.

"You know what? I am so tired right now," she says, turning to place the pillow she's been hugging behind her again. Why don't we sleep for a bit, and then we can talk some more?"

He looks crestfallen for a second, until he gives himself over to the sheer exhaustion that has been waiting in the wings, calling to him for the last few hours.

"I meant what I said earlier," he tells her, as she settles in against her own pillow. "None of this changes anything for me, Kate. I just want to understand what happened back then, if it helps us with where we are now."

"I know," she sighs, reaching behind her to find the curve of his hip and draw him closer.

He's so relieved when she touches him that he immediately gathers her in his arms, pressing his chest to her back, his body molding around hers in the middle of her bed.

He kisses her bare shoulder, as she closes her eyes, letting out one long, exhausted, shuddering sigh.

"Sleep," she murmurs, sliding her hand along his forearm, until her fingers wrap around his elbow, flexing to indicate that he should hold her tighter.

They've made a good start, he thinks, his mind spooling back over snatches of their conversation; her openness, all the long kept secrets being revealed one by one, more than he would have imagined possible just twenty-four hours ago. Warmth spread through him when he recalls that she confessed to being in love with him.

And then his eyes get heavy when his breathing falls in step with Kate's, her warm, pliant body nestled in the protection of his. And finally sleep drags him under to dream of the beach, of shells tinkling in the surf, the whispering hush of long, dune grasses swaying in the sea breeze, and Kate, running along the sand, her laughter playing in the salty air.

All that might have been. And all he hopes is yet to come.

A/N: Bit heavy on the angst in this talk, but sadly, no way round it. I still think there is more to explore here from the time they spent apart, if you'll indulge me a little longer? And please also tell me if you think this story is wearing thin. It's easy to get sucked in and lose perspective at times. Liv