Chapter 11

It was Friday evening. Everything had gone wrong. Castle was perched at his loft window which afforded one of the most expensive views that New York could, as he stared unseeingly at everything and nothing. Packed and ready to leave soon after breakfast tomorrow morning, there was nothing more for him to do.

Alexis had kindly, sympathetically offered to stay with him rather than going out to enjoy the movie she and her friends had decided to watch, in a bid to raise his spirits. With a smile, he declined the offer, saying that she'd be joining him at the Hamptons soon anyway, so she might as well enjoy her time with her friends her while she could, before all of them took off for their vacations.

Martha was out and about town, doing things he's rather not think about, with people he'd rather pretend were imaginary. He didn't mind at all. In fact, he was often quite impressed with her ability to enjoy life to its fullest.

Besides, he wanted to be alone right now, because Kate… He sighed. Everything had gone wrong.

Thursday

They'd finally solved the damn case. With everyone's full efforts focused on the case, the twelfth precinct's star team had managed to wrap up one of the most convoluted cases that had come their way recently. Murray number 1 was the killer. The story ran deep.

Stu was a class A bad dude. A con artist all his life, he had chanced upon the Murray brothers' small, yet successful business. Turns out he convinced Murray-one's wife that he was in love with her. He charmed her, bought her jewelry, pulled out all stops and ultimately had Mrs. Murray-one eating from the palm of his hand. Soon enough, Mrs. Murray-one was helping him gain access to the Murray brothers' business accounts to "help set our future together". All the while, Stu had come up with the brilliant and evil idea of "saving" his son to gain his confidence. Stu had been the one to first push the young boy so he stumbled into oncoming traffic – and then pulled him out with some well acted drama to come out the hero. The boy was too small to understand what was going on – but he did one day spill the beans to his father. Murray-one, by no means a stupid man, figured out that there had to be something fishy going on, which is when he stumbled onto the whole truth and decided on revenge.

All in all, it looked very much like something out of an older Castle book, and they'd joked about it. They were all in high spirits, not even once grumbling about the paperwork that had followed – and there was a good amount of it given the number of people involved and the crazy circumstances.

Castle took his chances again because things had been going so well between him and Kate. He asked her to the Hamptons and when she still looked uncertain is when things started going downhill.

He half joked about how if she didn't take his offer, someone else might. That had been, it seems, the absolute worst thing to say to her.

"So you plan on asking the next woman you can find, Castle?"

"What?" Castle defended, "No, Kate. Of course not, that's not what I meant. I was just joking."

Really, he'd have to screen his jokes because this was the second one that had gotten him in trouble with her.

"But it is, isn't it, Castle? That's exactly what you meant. If I say no, you'll just take someone else. Maybe you should go and invite Gina again."

His second mistake, he soon figured out, was defending Gina.

"Look, I don't get why you're upset, or why you're dragging Gina into this."

"I'm not the one who dragged her into anything, Castle, you are."

He threw his hands up in exasperation. "I don't know what you're talking about!"

They were in one of the conference rooms, and though the blinds were drawn and the door was closed, everyone outside tried to awkwardly pretend that they weren't witnessing Armageddon.

"I'm talking about Gina being all over you, and being all up in my face about it."

"The day I left for the Hamptons?" he asked, nonplussed.

She rolled her eyes. "No, I meant the other day when I bumped into both of you on the street. Obviously, I'm talking about that."

"No need to bite my head off. I'm trying to figure out what's going on with you."

"What's going on, is that you keep asking me to go to the Hamptons with you, to consider this relationship because finally, finally I started believing that you'd grown up. You asked me to go to the Hamptons with you, and then you went with Gina."

"Because you were with Demming!"

"I'd broken up with Demming!" she yelled back.

"What?" he said, clearly surprised. She'd told him that she wasn't seeing him anymore, but she hadn't said that she'd already broken up with Demming when he'd asked her to the Hamptons.

"You heard me," she said, crossing her arms over her chest in what she knew was a defensive posture, but she couldn't help it. She needed her defenses to be up.

He started towards her, but she took a step back, and it hurt. "Kate, I didn't know…"

"Yeah, well. Now you do."

"Gina and I – she really just came to make sure I stuck to writing, Kate. Nothing happened, I promise."

"But I believed that it happened, Rick. The way she was falling all over you; and you with your arm around her making goo eyes at her. The things she said, the way she said it – I believed that I was just…"

"Just what?"

"Another cat in the bag, another notch on your bedpost, another number in your little black book."

"How can you even think that? Kate, you are none of those things," he said softly. "I'm sorry, for the way it looked when she came by to the precinct. She was being territorial, and I was hurting so I let her be. There's only so much rejection a man can take before he starts getting the message, Kate. I thought I'd gotten your message, but that doesn't mean I just moved on. You're not a passing thought, Kate. You're every thought."

Her breath hitched, and he could see the tears that she kept from spilling over by sheer force of will.

He carried on. "You don't think it hurts me that you see me that way? That you buy into the 'play boy' image as much as the general public? You know it's an exaggeration, Kate. You know me. Or at least I thought you did."

"I do," she said after a beat. "The rational part of me knows that but when the whole thing went down –"

"Kate, I need every part of you to trust me. It won't work any other way."

She nodded. "Maybe – maybe you should go to the Hamptons. Maybe we should rethink this."

He gasped. "Kate –"

"Castle, I can't do this right now," she said, her voice breaking with the force of holding herself back.

He closed his eyes, in agony, defeat and without another word, he turned around to leave, leaving her alone to finally break down.

Friday, at the loft

Everything had gone wrong, and it was both their faults. His, for not having put his foot down; hers for not trust him.

But – but he realized that he hadn't really given her too much room to trust him completely. He had reopened her case when she told him not to – the most important thing in her life, and he had gone around messing with it. He had barged into her life – and though that had worked out in the long run, at the time it was something that he did against her wishes. Then this thing with Gina – something he had been blissfully oblivious about till she mentioned breaking up with Demming. When she did, it took him less than a second to figure out the implications of that. She had done it for him, obviously.

Yes, he wasn't the only one to blame – yes, she'd made her fair share of mistakes; but he realized that he was being unfair in asking her to trust him completely. Obviously they had to work on it, and that wouldn't come by letting the misunderstandings fester.

She was right in that it looked like he was just going off with the next person he could think of. He thought, feeling ashamed about it, that the jealous side of him wanted her to think exactly that when he'd been thinking that she was with Demming. It was a big bucket of confusion and misinterpretation and the one time that they weren't in sync – the one time that they really needed to be.

They'd both made mistakes, and it had gone horribly wrong. But what he was doing now, up and ready to go to the Hamptons? That was a mistake too, he decided. He shook himself out of it, and stood up, clenched his fist with a new determination – he would not give up. He didn't know how things would turn out, but for his part, he would not give up.

After figuring out from Esposito that Lanie had convinced Kate to drink away her sorrows at a bar near the precinct, Castle was headed there.

When he walked in, his heart nearly broke. She looked beautiful, and his heart nearly broke.

A tall, dark, handsome man had been chatting up Lanie who was sitting besides Kate. Kate was laughing, seemingly at a joke cracked by the man sitting next to her. She had hear head thrown back, letting a cascade of curls wind down her shoulders, shining golden in the glow cast by the overhead lights. The man who'd just made her laugh was handsome, Castle observed. His hair gelled back off his face, with dimples he laughed along with her.

He felt a surge of jealousy rip through him, and he gritted his teeth to keep from growling. And then she laughed again, and it broke his heart again. He took a deep breath to calm down – to keep from admitting defeat. He wouldn't give up.

He stood behind her, the man looking up at him with a peeved expression at being interrupted. Not caring in the slightest, he focused back on her. Clearing his throat, he softly spoke her name. "Kate?"

She gasped and turned around. "Castle? What are you doing here?"

"I – uh. Could we talk?" he asked, glancing at the man.

"Oh. Uh, sure, I guess," she said, getting up from her stool. "Would you mind keeping an eye on Lanie, Josh? I'm pretty sure she's already had too much to drink. I'll be right back."

"Sure, Kate. Not a problem. Is everything okay?" the man named Josh asked, sounding concerned.

She smiled, "Yeah. Everything's fine. I'll be right back," she repeated.

Castle noticed that she hadn't introduced them. She grabbed his arm gently and dragged him on to the floor, where a bunch of couples were dancing, and – other things. She wound her arms around his neck, and started swaying with him, and he instinctually held her waist, dragged her closer, breathing more easily than he had all day.

"Talk," she said.

"I'm headed back tomorrow."

"Hmm."

"And I didn't want to leave things like this. I don't know where we stand, and – that's not okay with me. If you chose not to come to the Hamptons with me, that's – I'll get it. That's your choice. But I'm not going to turn my back on something that has the chance of being so much more. Kate, I'm serious about you. Only you. I know I haven't given you the best impression of that – "

She chuckled and his heart soared at the sound. "Not the first word I'd associate with you."

"No, that would be "ass"," he joked back.

"Hmm. But it wouldn't be jackass. Just wiseass."

"Wow, compliments. I must be doing this right," he joked before switching back to serious mode after taking a deep breath of courage. "I think that we have a lot of things to work on, but if you're willing to give it a try, we can do this."

He pulled back to look her in the eyes, "I'm sorry, Kate, for letting you believe that you were just another statistic. You're not."

"I'm sorry, too, Castle. I do trust you. I guess I wasn't over it," she ended with a smile.

He decided to take the chance and tease her, lighten the mood. "Eh. It's okay. Jealous Beckett is totally hot Beckett."

She punched him on the shoulder, causing him to chuckle at her. He was just about to pull her back into his embrace when he saw Josh behind Kate. Kate turned around, with her hands now sitting on his waist.

"Everything okay, Kate?" Josh asked again.

"Yeah, fine, why?" she looked confused.

He looked uncomfortable. Good. "Oh, just, you punched him, so I thought…"

She laughed then. "Oh, he's used to it by now. Josh, this is Rick Castle – my partner. Rick, this is Josh. He was keeping me company while Lanie distracted with tall and hunky over there."

He shook Josh's hand with a little more force than necessary. "Nice to meet you," he said, "Haven't seen you around here much. New in town?"

Josh shook his head. "Uh, not new in town, no. But around here, yes. I just started working at the hospital across from here. Kate was very kindly telling me about the good places to hang out in the area," he said with a smile to Kate which she returned.

Castle's hands tightened on her waist, and he saw her smirk at him. But instead of punching him again, she surprised him by turning once more to Josh.

"Well, Josh. I'm sorry to cut our conversation short, but I'm going to head off. Lanie looks like she's in safe hands, though I'll just go make sure before leaving."

"Leaving?" Castle asked her dumbly.

"Yeah. I need to get started on packing if you're planning on leaving early tomorrow. You gonna take me home or what?"

Castle beamed. "Yeah! Let's go," he said and started tugging her towards the exit.

She laughed again. "Hold on, writer boy, there's no fire."

"Speak for yourself," he said, casting a leer her way, causing her to blush and bite her lip.

"I'm going to say bye to Lanie, make sure she's okay, and then we can go."

He nodded, but instead of waiting, he said goodbye to Josh, turned Kate around, and started pushing her gently towards Lanie. "I should go say hi," he explained. "It would be rude to steal away one's best friend without at least saying hi. Don't want her worried."

"How gallant of you," she said, laughing.

"You bet your pretty little – ow – " she pinched his thigh "face. I was going to say face."

"Sure you were."

"Anyway, you bet your pretty little face that it's gallant. Do you know how many nightmares I have that Lanie or the boys, or Lanie and the boys will come at me with axes, or guns, or knives, or ropes –"

"Castle…"

"Or samurai swords, or lethal poison darts, or light sabers, or ice picks, or baseball bats –"

"Castle…"

"Or – yaaaaaeeeey, woman!" he growled as he finally stopped pushing her and rubbed his arm where she pinched it hard.

"The point, Castle?"

"I was getting there," he said indignantly.

"Uhuh."

"They'd kill me to protect you. And I'd want nothing less. Anyone who breaks your heart deserves to be mutilated."

She reached up to kiss him then. "You say the sweetest things," she said, drawing back with a smile. "Now, stay here a sec. I won't be long."

"But –"

She pecked him quickly again, and started walking off on her own. "Stay."

"Woof," he replied, earning a full laugh from her.

A/N: Okay. How many of you were worried? Fess up!

I was going to leave it as a cliffhanger, but I just couldn't do that to you. (Also, I don't know when I'll be able to write and post next, so I didn't want ya'll coming at me with axes, or guns, or knives, or ropes… )

P.S. I don't know whether to end it here or not. Maybe have an epilogue after this. Seems like a good place.

Either way, thank you - each and every one of you who've followed this story, have left me reviews - anonymous or otherwise, and those who've been recommending it to others. The response to this story has blown me away, I am touched and honored to have such fantastic readers. Thank you, again. Much love.