Chapter 15

Castle sneaks a peek through the open bookshelves, and finds that Kate's head is cradled in her arms on his desk. Despite that, he can hear small sounds of misery escaping, though surely she'd imprison them if she knew that. He forces himself to sit tight. It'll work.

It so doesn't work. He lasts all of ten seconds before he's up and padding over to the study door. She doesn't notice. She doesn't notice when he arrives at the desk, or on her side of the desk, or stands right next to her.

She does notice when he plucks her out of his chair and simply holds her, tucked against his chest and this time not pushing him away. She feels…exhausted: limp against him, too tired for anger. He picks her up and drops them both into an armchair. He can't bear to let go of her: now that she's back in his arms where she ought to be. He can't see her face, and he can't hear anything but faint, attenuated breathing. If she's crying, he wouldn't know it.

He stays cuddling her, nose nuzzled into her hair: that same soft scent of cherries taking a sledgehammer to his calm. The last time he'd smelled it they'd been snuggled together in her bed.

"You never met her."

Huh? That came out of left field. "What?"

"You never met her and you said you didn't know till after so how could you know?"

"Know what?" Castle is completely confused. On the other hand, he is not dead. This is good. Surprising, but good.

"Know how it felt."

That doesn't really help. He waits, hoping that something will indicate what she's talking about, since he hasn't the slightest idea.

"You told all those lies so how could you ever tell the truth like that?" Pause. "How could you know how it felt?"

Ah. Oh. Mixed with terror of what might happen next is absolute delight that he'd totally got the deeper emotions of his lead character.

"I just listened," he rumbles quietly.

"I didn't say any of that," she whispers. "None."

"Not in words. Mostly not in words," he corrects. "Intonation, expressions, in your eyes…." He bites his tongue on your eyes say everything. She might realise she's still all tucked up against him: not that he can see her eyes.

"How could you understand that and not understand what you were doing?"

"I tried to apologise as soon as I found out and you wouldn't take a single one of my calls!"

"But you kept being Rick Rodgers. Why didn't he explain?"

Which is, of course, the whole rotten core of the whole rotten apple of this whole rotten mess.

"Because…" he starts, looks at the rest of that sentence and doesn't like it, rethinks it and loathes it, and then decides that matters really can't get any worse anyway, so… "Because I – Rick Rodgers – didn't want to lose you. But I did anyway, so what does it matter?"

His arms drop away as the silence stretches out and she doesn't seem to react at all.

"You won't talk, you won't listen, you don't care enough to fight about it. Whatever. I can't do anything about this."

He puts her off to one side and goes through to his bedroom. "Let yourself out. I won't bother you again." The door shuts behind him, and he slumps down on his bed until he can force himself into the bathroom to wash before sliding down past the pillows, a headache nagging at his temples for which he dry swallows two painkillers.

If reality is this painful, why did he ever think he'd like it? He should have stuck to his comfortable celebrity bubble where everyone always loved him and nothing ever went wrong. He was happy there.

Now he'll never be happy there again.

But he won't be happy here either.

Lose-lose.

Beckett stands, disconnected, for a moment: unable to think or move. Then she sits back down, turns back to the beginning, and starts again.

Her first read, maybe a quarter of the pages, had been fast. Really fast: the skim technique she uses for getting first impressions from any report. Even so, the emotion had sprung from the page, clawing at her: she'd flipped pages as fast as she could turn them over to escape it, and failed. He's caught the truth about how she felt about her mother. How she feels: the pain and the grief and the endless lack of answers.

She can't put it down. She has to know how he's done it. How can a proven liar hit the truth so point-perfectly, fatally accurately? She starts to read again.

In the morning, Castle staggers out of his bedroom unrefreshed and utterly miserable, stumbles through the study and out into the family room –

Where he stops, turns, stares and backtracks.

Asleep, head on his desk, mascara trailing down her cheeks and – he peers – dark, damp splotches on Gina's edits – is Kate.

She might be asleep, but she still looks more exhausted than rested; her eyes are still circled and shadowed.

It's not until he's emptied his first cup of triple-strength espresso that he realises that she didn't leave. She must have read for half the night. She's been reading the unedited (half-edited) draft, again. Oh God. Oh God oh God oh God. He hadn't noticed. She hadn't left and he hadn't noticed.

He makes himself another triple-strength espresso, downs that too, and then makes two lattes, padding back to the study and placing one near Kate's nose. Then he sits down and waits.

It doesn't take long. Coffee works just as well when she's asleep here as it would if she were asleep at home. Her eyes flutter, her nostrils twitch, and under Castle's interested eyes she stretches, winces, emits an ow, and finally opens her eyes fully. They focus on the coffee, which hits the back of her throat and kick-starts her brain.

"Ugh." She stretches again. "Ow." She looks around. "What? What am I doing here?" Her eyes reach Castle. "Why am I here?"

"You didn't leave," he says.

She attempts a glare, which doesn't quite work since she isn't fully awake.

"I thought you were going to leave," he adds. "You wouldn't talk, or yell, or even have a fight. So why are you here?" He doesn't say – crying all over my manuscript.

She looks at him through huge, dark, deep eyes: fancifully, he thinks he can see to the bottom of her soul.

"She's there."

For the first time, he follows.

"She's in there. In her memories." He even follows the confused pronouns. "You never met her and you put her in there." She gropes for a Kleenex. "I had to know. What you made of her. How you made her out of my memories and how you put them all in there." She gulps. "I didn't tell you any of it."

Castle says nothing, not moving.

"How could you see the truth like that? How could you find her? How could you write reality when nothing you did was real?"

"I told you: I listened." He gulps in his turn. "Everything you said. It was real. Real like Storm wasn't." He swallows hard. "I could be real. I didn't have to be Richard Castle and I liked it. Yeah, sure, I was writing like I haven't in years, but I didn't want to lose the reality." He gulps. "You. You just wanted me and then I couldn't fix it when you hated him, but I only wanted to make sure you didn't think I was him and I tried to apologise once I knew what had happened."

His wide, agonised eyes lock on to hers. "I wouldn't have done it if I'd known what they meant to you but I didn't know. I wish I had…." He trails off. He hasn't moved from his armchair.

"How can you say you didn't know? You wrote it. You did know. How could you not?"

"After," he cries. "After you told me about it in Remy's."

Her mouth is already opening on rebuttal, but that snaps it closed.

"After?" she queries, very cautiously.

"After."

There is a long, tense silence. Kate's eyes are unfocused, thoughts running over her expression far too fast for Castle to follow.

Suddenly she stands.

"Excuse me," she mutters, and goes out and – oh. Up the stairs? Much becomes clear as faint noises of a door shutting reach him. Of course, she'd never been here…and she must have…er…. Yes. Unless she's a camel, which really does not seem likely. He shuts off that particularly dumb line of speculation. Otherwise she'd have gone through…his…bedroom…. This is a really unhelpful thought. Truly unhelpful.

Going after her will be even less helpful, though as her absence extends it becomes more likely.

He washes and dresses, sips his coffee, makes a horrible face because it's stone cold, and pads out to make yet more coffee. He'll be peeling himself off the ceiling if he has much more caffeine. It won't make the slightest difference to Kate, though: it never has before.

He's placidly – externally – brewing the coffee when Kate returns from upstairs.

Beckett had taken advantage of some cleanser – likely belonging to the daughter he'd mentioned – to remove the black streaks of mascara and the rest of yesterday's make-up: wash her hands and face and endeavour to finger comb her hair into relative tidiness. Nothing can be done about the creases in her dress or the uncomfortable knowledge that she would really like a shower and clean clothes.

Or, indeed, the uncomfortable knowledge that – however little she likes his lie – his words have brought her mother right back to her. She sits on the edge of the bath and tries not to cry any more. She should be past the tears. Remember the good times.

And yet, the emotions and pain of his fictional heroine had leapt from the page and brought back how she had felt then: how she still, sometimes, feels now – how she sometimes needs a little help to keep going, and how she finds it in the memories of her mother and the stories of good guys winning in the end.

The good guy – gal – had won in the end. Just like she tries to. Just like she almost always does. But it hadn't come without a cost.

As long as the book speaks to you, he'd said. This book had spoken: told her the story of her own personal Golgotha; the subsequent quiet grave in Cypress Hills which she visits now and then; and now, in its beautiful prose, given her the resurrection of her mother's calm voice and joy in each small win.

Joy in her life: that's what she remembers of her mother. Even on the days when she failed, her mother would come home, watch Temptation Lane, or read a Richard Castle novel: simple pleasures where right would always win in the end. She'd have, in the end, a lurking twinkle in her eye, a tiny quirk of her lips. She'd always seen the joy in the day, the hour, the moment. In their home.

Oh.

That's why she'd been so comfortable with Rick Rodgers. He'd had that same ability to take joy in everything: burger and milkshake at Remy's; a small Italian restaurant; coffee and takeout and her. He'd bounced round the whole time with insatiable enthusiasm for life in general, seeing the small opportunities for happiness and gentle pleasure.

It had reminded her of her mother; of a loving home.

So when she'd found out his lie – it had taken her mother away twice over, because she'd lost the books and she'd lost all faith in joy, again. She hadn't realised how happy she'd been made by his endless capacity for happiness in the smallest of things; how much it had returned her to the happiness in which she'd grown up, spread wings, and flown.

Until it had all collapsed around her, and the emotional earthquake had, unnoticed, uncovered long-scabbed wounds.

She'd overreacted, and hadn't realised it: not seen that it was the rerun of a much greater, earlier loss. So she'd pushed everything away from her exactly as she had that first time: rid herself of everything that reminded her of it. Then, she'd quit Stanford, left the family home, given up on being a lawyer, given up on her father. This time, she'd quit the relationship and refused to take his calls. Refused to have contact with either of him.

Rick Rodgers was everything she didn't know she'd been missing.

Richard Castle was everything she didn't want to know about.

Rick Rodgers is real. He's who I am. Richard Castle is the PR invention. That's what he'd said. Rick Rodgers is real. I could be real. I didn't have to be Richard Castle.

But he'd lied.

But Rick Rodgers had made her happy. Richard Castle wouldn't have made her – hadn't made her – happy.

If only he hadn't lied… she'd never have got to know him.

She wipes her face, checks for smudges and, finding none, goes back downstairs.

"Coffee?"

"Please."

He doesn't say anything more, but brews the coffee and hands her a mugful. Beckett stares into it, hoping it'll provide some words. Words don't come easy to her. She looks up from the dark liquid, to find him watching her: face tired, eyes hoping for a miracle which he doesn't expect.

Somehow, that makes a difference. He doesn't expect anything. Richard Castle, celebrity superstar, expects things: pretty women, cocktails and the Pegu Club, limousines and red carpets, fame, fortune and (by reputation) fucking.

Rick Rodgers, who is standing here next to her with a mug of coffee and a desperately hopeful demeanour, never expected anything, and still doesn't. I won't bother you again. And he isn't. He's waiting for her. I didn't want to lose you, but I did anyway, so what does it matter?

"What did you want?" she says.

"You," he answers simply, and his eyes are clear and truthful.

"Why?"

There is a silence. He's staring into his coffee just like she had a few moments ago.

"First it was inspiration. I'd lost my book and I was blocked but I met you and it came back. I can't deal with not being able to write. It's not the money or the fame or anything: I have to. It was like losing an arm and then it came back. I told you that. But then it was just you. I could be real with you because you didn't want anything or need anything and I wanted that and I think I was already falling in love with you right then."

There is a loud crash and coffee spreads across the floor.

"What?"

Rick stares at her, as shocked as she is.

"I… I…" he babbles, and then takes a proper breath. "I think I was falling in love with you right then," he repeats firmly. Mostly firmly. There's a betraying stammer as he ends.

"You fell in love with me?" she squeaks, two octaves above her normal mezzo, frozen in place with the coffee puddling around her shoes.

"Rick Rodgers fell in love with you."

A half-beat pause.

"So who are you?" she challenges. "Which one are you?"

"I'm the one who knows you well enough to write your mother back to you!" Another percussive shock. "Does it really matter who I am if I brought her back for you?" He takes a shaken breath. "It… it was the only way I could even try to make amends."

He wrote her mother back to her? Intentionally? As soon as he'd heard how he'd upset her? That's one hell of an apology. And he'd said that it was with his editor – she knows that, she just read all the comments. So it's real. It's a real book. Really going to be published. It's not another lie to deceive her into thinking that he's apologising when he's not.

She looks up at him, desperately trying to control her emotions – and from his face, failing miserably. "You wrote her for me?" There's a tremor in her voice. He can only nod. "Rick…"

His heart lifts. She hasn't used his name once since she discovered the truth: only the contemptuous Richard Castle. Her eyes are liquid. He dares to take a step towards her, heedless of the shards and spilt coffee.

"Rick," he repeats. "Always Rick for you," and takes another step to close arms around her and pray to all the angels that she'll accept it.

His arms close around her and for the first time in over a week she feels right. Her hand creeps up to his shoulder, her head rests on the other one, and his embrace tightens. She curls in against his warmth.

"You got her just right," she says. "That's how she was." She sniffs, and nestles closer. "That's just how I remember her."

He pets her hair, smoothing it down. "I just listened. She – you made her real. She's there in your memories, and it came out when you talked. She was right there."

"She's right there. In the pages." She sniffs damply. "Everything. How I felt, how I feel, how she was."

"Is."

"Huh?"

"Is. She's alive in your memories. Is."

Her hand tightens on his shoulder. He realises that she's weeping, silent and still, trying not to let him notice. He goes along with her pretence, and continues to stroke her hair and hold her close. Moving might break the moment, and they need this moment.

Eventually, she lifts from his shoulder. "You brought her back." She meets his eyes. "I wouldn't have believed it if you'd said it." Castle winces. "But you did. You made her real again." She blinks several times. "Thank you."

Quiet, comfortable serenity envelops them, for a short time. After a while, however, Beckett becomes aware, again, of her dishevelled state.

"I ought to get home," she murmurs. A flicker of disappointment runs over Rick's face. "I could really use a wash and clean clothes, and maybe a few hours' sleep." She bites her lip nervously. "We could get dinner, later?"

His face clears instantly. "Remy's?" he bounces. "And this time, it's my treat." Her mouth opens. "No, no, no. Date. I suggested Remy's, so I get to take you."

"I invited you for dinner first."

"I said where. So it's my invitation."

She grumbles indeterminately. This is a fight she clearly isn't going to win. "My turn next time," she insists.

"Okay. Remy's. Six-thirty?"

"Yep."

But she doesn't move out of his arms just yet. Instead, the hand on his shoulder becomes a hand tracing his jaw and then cheek; and then becomes a hand bringing his head to hers; which then becomes a delicate, half-shy kiss.

And then she steps away and collects her purse and departs, leaving Castle to survey the smashed mug and puddled coffee and then start to wipe up the floor with no unhappiness at all.

Thank you to all readers and reviewers.

Final chapter on Sunday.