Chapter Fifteen
Castle had arrived home a little after three in the morning and climbed into bed, but wasn't surprised when he hadn't been able to sleep. Throwing the covers off, dejectedly, he padded out to the living room and stared out the window for a long time. He allowed his mind to wander as his unseeing gaze moved over the New York skyline, twinkling in the night. He felt his palms itching the more he thought about his night with her and moved away from the window.
He'd spent the rest of the early morning hours in his study writing things that would never end up in a book and thinking over the situation from every angle he could manage, trying to figure out how badly he had screwed everything up. No matter how he looked at the situation, no matter what positive thoughts swirled in his head, his mind always came back to the sight of tears in her eyes. He'd never seen her look so small and vulnerable as she had in that moment. Regret, shame, maybe even guilt burning him with those tears and he felt the weight of it bearing down on him for his hand in causing her that pain.
Looking at the clock on his laptop and noting that it was after eight, he wondered if she was still sleeping or if she was awake. He wondered what she was thinking as she woke, wondered if she would be angry with him for last night, or just blame herself for betraying the man in her life. A small selfish part of him hoped she was so upset over the entire thing that she told Josh and that ended things before they could move forward.
Consciously he wanted to slap himself for the thought, because he didn't want her to think of their time as a burden. He knew that she did, but that didn't stop him from hoping she'd be able to look at some part of it positively, perhaps in time. He didn't want to think of her distraught or upset with herself, he'd almost rather she was pissed off at him than have her tuck in on herself. After all, he was the one who had pushed her. He was the one who couldn't accept things the way they were. He was the selfish one.
By midmorning, he was confused, exhausted and more than a little damaged.
Staring at the blinking cursor on his computer, he fell asleep against his desk. Castle woke a couple hours later from a vivid dream, painfully hard with her name on his lips. With a groan he headed for a cold shower, wondering exactly how much money he was bound to save on hot water while he worked through the night they had shared.
He forced himself from the shower to bed, but it was a long time before he finally fell asleep. His dreams were torture and before he'd gotten more than two hours, he was up again looking for something, anything, that he could do to distract himself. He couldn't write, that would all too easily invoke things he didn't want to think about right now. He couldn't watch a movie, because he knew he lacked the attention span for even a slapstick comedy.
He casually wandered into his study and found his trusty friend in an old leather-bound collection of short stories by Edgar Allan Poe. Nothing snared his focus as well as the lyrical prose of an insightful or macabre tale told by a master. Twenty minutes later he was slamming the book closed with a disgruntled sigh.
Castle had been less than thrilled as he tried to read through the works of Poe and continued to be distracted by thoughts of her. Thoughts of the past, thoughts of the night before, how they'd first met, what she was doing just then. At one point he even found himself wondering if she was thinking about him at all and then laughing it off as ridiculous.
By late afternoon he'd decided that he had enough of moping around the house trying to figure out another person, especially one as complicated and guarded as Kate Beckett. He'd had enough stress and strain and angst for a lifetime and it had been less than a day.
He decided that instead of worrying about what was going to happen when he walked into the precinct on Monday, he was going to do something. It was time to stop focusing on last night and start putting this day behind him. With the only reliable distraction he has ever known in his life fresh in his mind, he made a single phone call.
Castle was awash in negative thoughts still, ones that twisted his gut and made him feel just a bit nauseous, but he was feeling better than he had in the last day and a half. His feet were moving before he had even gotten off the phone as he headed to his room to pack a bag.
Twenty minutes later he was on the road and for the first time since Kate fell asleep against him with tears in her eyes, he felt himself smiling. It wasn't the most dazzling smile, he wasn't over her, he probably never would be, but destination set in the GPS and he was already feeling a little of the weight rising off his shoulders. Sometimes, there was nothing like getting out of the city.
Mind full of anticipation, feeling the unrestricted freedom of hitting the open road and allowing his subconscious to puzzle things out as he drove, gave his conscious mind time to enjoy the music playing through the car speakers. He was glad for the it as he sang along softly and allowed his focus to finally shift to something other than overanalyzing and agonizing about what Monday might bring.
Unlike the previous night when he acted without a plan on the whims of a single thought of living in the moment, this time, he was determined to make living in the moment a wholly positive memory by doing something that wouldn't haunt him later.
x.x.x
As Kate curled up in her bed that night, she found her mind drawn back to their time together. Not for the first time, she cursed her experiences as a detective that had honed her attention to detail and ability to mentally catalogue. She had been tormented nearly all day and for the life of her, she couldn't stop wondering if there was something really there.
She cursed her naivety every time that thought popped into her head. If Castle had meant any of the words he'd said then he wouldn't have run scared because of what she said. If he had meant those things he would have embraced it.
She knew she wasn't blameless. She knew there was something going on beneath the surface that she couldn't puzzle out, but above all, she knew that she had scared him off. She felt like a fool as the realization had hit her around ten that morning. The reason she had been so pissed at him and so easily jumped to the conclusion that he hadn't wanted more with her. He probably thought that he did, probably thought that there was something else there and damn, the chemistry they had almost burned the building down. But in the cold cruel light of revelations, he had balked.
The way he spoke she had felt confident laying herself out there with him, of course it had taken their time together and a nearly catatonic partial sleep state to induce it, but she had a very clear recollection of waking up. She didn't open her eyes, worried what she might find if she did, but she knew he was there, from the subtle sounds of him breathing, the brush of gentle fingers across the skin of her cheek.
She had followed him into the rabbit hole and it ended like a bad episode of Bugs Bunny. Following a rabbit into a hole was a sure sign that something was about to blow up in her face, but she had ignored the voice in her head and allowed her heart to take the wheel. She had told him how she felt, used those three words she hadn't even said to Josh who was freaking asking her to marry him. She had said it and it was finally out there. She remembered feeling suddenly at peace with the knowledge being vocalized and the feeling of his fingers against her cheek had lulled her back to sleep.
He hadn't reciprocated, but from the way he talked earlier in the night, she had a pretty good idea that they were on the same page. That was until she woke up to find herself alone, woke up to find that despite his words and her own, he had fled in the night like a bandit. It was as if her vocalizing it had made things real and he suddenly realized that he doesn't do real. He does fake. Fake smile, fake words, fake boobs on his next conquest.
She almost screamed as she realized what had happened. He was like a damn child. He was so enamored with the idea of her she was like a new bike. He had to have the new bike, the exact one that he wanted even though it was another kid's bike. Probably because it was another kid's bike. Some kind of natural male competitive spirit, but that wasn't enough. Because just like a child, once he got the other kid's toy or treat or bike or whatever the hell her analogy was, he didn't want it anymore. The reality set in. Things looked different on the other side. She was different on the other side.
Where before he had probably seen her through rose colored glass, suddenly she was human, probably less than, she was 'his' he'd had her and that was it. Once the novelty had worn off she was discarded like that bike in the back of the house getting rained on until the chain rusted and the seat tore from the changes in temperature and humidity. She was surprised how quickly the novelty that was her had worn away, but perhaps it was all the time they had spent together.
She had finally found logic in what had seemed so illogical this morning. She was still upset, still certain that it had been a mistake, but finally able to look at it as one night that showed her how things could be, how they were supposed to be. With new perspective the ring box went back onto the dresser and she stared at the picture of her parents atop her jewelry box.
By midmorning she had calmed considerably, but the occasional flash of memory from the previous night had her flushing with desire all over again and then hating the effect even thoughts of him had on her. She was pulled from a particularly vivid recollection of how he had felt against her as his hand rubbed her in a way that had sent tingles through her body from her toes to her scalp, by a call from Josh. He had been calling to remind her that they had plans for brunch, but she pushed it back to lunch claiming she wasn't feeling well and spent the rest of the morning trying to make sure she didn't look like she had been so thoroughly screwed and screwed over the previous night and this morning.
She was tempted to bring the ring, but fought the urge to act impulsively on her emotions, because acting on impulse is what had gotten her so riled up and confused in the first place. She had a long couple of hours to really think things through and while she was still conflicted, she hadn't let herself forget the way Josh's proposal had initially made her feel, though she was examining that perspective as well. That examination needed to stay in the privacy of her thoughts until she was able to get a little more unbiased perspective.
She headed out of her apartment, glad to be meeting him at a diner down the road a ways. She had cleaned up and changed the sheets, but she still felt Castle's presence in her apartment and didn't want or need Josh in that space at the moment. She also didn't think she could handle being in his apartment at the moment and what he might expect of her that she wasn't willing to give while she felt so emotionally raw.
He was already at a table when she arrived and he rose to meet her. She turned her head at the last second and his greeting kiss landed on her cheek instead. She wasn't sure why she had done it, but grabbed hold of her earlier excuse, "Sorry, don't want to get you sick."
He smiled at her, "Yeah, probably be pretty awful to show up there to help heal the sick only to infect them."
Kate nodded, actually glad to hear that his proposal hadn't changed his plans for the weeks to come. She felt selfish for being glad that he was leaving, but she didn't think she'd be able to deal with having him around until she could get her thoughts straightened out.
The waiter arrived and took their drink orders, leaving them to decide on lunch as he retrieved their beverages.
She watched Josh's eyes fall to her left hand and then meet hers again. She knew before he spoke what he was going to say and fought to keep a pleasant expression on her face.
"Haven't decided to wear the ring yet?" he asked, sounding casual, but she knew him too well to buy the tone.
"About that," she started, a small reassuring smile on her face as she fought to formulate all her thoughts into a single coherent statement.
Before she could say anything, he was cutting right through her with that charming smile of his, "Don't worry about it, Kate." That damn smile was the first thing she had noticed about him and it really was breathtaking, but she found herself thinking of another man's smile, one that was more full of mischief and accompanied by a teasing glint in the eyes, "We can talk about all of this when I get back."
Suddenly, she felt the weight of everything that had gone so terribly wrong over the last day, the way everything had been derailed and the feelings of loss and regret swarmed to new heights. "No," she said finally, "We can talk about it now."
She shook off her thoughts about her lunch with Josh as Castle floated through her mind again and she gave up on sleeping in her own bed. She grabbed her comforter and pillow and headed out to the living room where, eventually, the nothing that was on TV lulled her to sleep.
x.x.x
A/N: Sorry, for the super long delay and the Very Long author's note, feel free to skip it at any point. Wow, there were a lot of negative reviews for last chapter. That being said, I don't mind negative reviews as long as they are story based, have some kind of constructive criticism, or make me laugh. Geez, you'd think I killed one of them off or put Kate on a plane with Josh to Vegas. Some of my favorite reviews since I started posting here have not been positive reviews, because I can grow from them, but something that's just mean is not helping me grow as an author and just shakes my faith in writing the next chapter.
I found it difficult to stay motivated, which is new for me. My husband convinced me that I shouldn't quit and post a final chapter of: "A jet suddenly flew over the city, dropping a hydrogen bomb and obliterating them all into radioactive dust. The End."
You can also thank the messages and reviews I got that told me not to let the negativity get to me, because without them I probably would have. Thank you; you know who you all are. I'm not going to apologize for the last two chapters or anything in this one or even what's coming down the road, and I'm going to keep trying to get the plot out of my head and on the paper, even if I'm a little more gun shy about it now.
There are always options for readers if this is upsetting them:
1) Stop reading, either entirely or until it's finished so you can skip ahead to the parts you want to read.
2) Consider chapter 12 the end and forget about reading the rest.
3) Write your own ending starting from whatever chapter you think I screwed this story over in.
4) Sit back and enjoy the ride because I'm not crazy or cruel and we'll get there.
I hope everyone goes with option 4, but I'll leave it up to each of you. This is posted under Angst, not rainbows and butterflies in case anyone was confused. It is going exactly how I thought it would. It's actually going better, because I had very little faith in my ability to write a story without a villain and a crime and this chap puts me over 40,000 words, so not bad.
The main point that bothered me was the repeated references to either of the last two chapters being out of character, so to that point I say "Are we watching the same show?" If anyone needs a detailed breakdown on the inner workings of their psyches in this particular situation, or doesn't understand what each of them is thinking, feel free to message me and I'd be happy to discuss it with you in more detail.
Spoiler for those who are so freaked out you can't just wait a little while (don't read if you don't want to be spoiled on my story, though anyone who has read my stories knows where I stand on Castle and Beckett): Kate's not going to marry Josh. Oh, who is shocked by that? Raise your hands. Anybody?
Sorry to have rambled like crazy, I'm not being bitchy, but I'm just so frustrated to have seen my creative energy completely squelched. It was a shock, let me tell you, I haven't sat down to write and not produced a chapter since I started in September unless I was sick. Future nastiness will be ignored and we'll not have this talk again, because it's a waste of all of our time. I won't even delete the anonymous ones, that's how little time I'll be putting into caring about negativity that's not constructive.
Review that made my day: daphnebeauty, who did it the right way and cursed me with an eternity of Justin Beiber's Baby Baby Baby stuck in my head. It took me two days of listening to my favorite songs from 10 years ago to flush that 'gem' out of there, but I laughed like crazy reading your review.
Thanks to everyone for reading.