A/N: Wow, can I just say that the response I got for the last chapter has blown me away? Thank you, that was actually my favourite chapter so far. Anyway, I hope you all really like this one and please keep reviewing. Thank you so much for all the wonderful feedback from last time, please keep it up! Special thanks go out to theputz913, castle1701, fire90, Yanni23, Guest, LiseCate and NinaK.05. Thank you all so much!
Disclaimer in chapter one.
Kate,
I hate waiting.
Seriously, if I thought waiting or you to notice me or to feel the same way was hard waiting to get back to you now that I know you love me is just so much harder.
As a young boy I could never wait patiently, I had to be doing something all the time, always moving. I wouldn't wait for food to cool down, wait for my mother before I crossed the road, wait to have my picture taken. Waiting for this damned tour to be over so I can kiss you senseless again.
Waiting for you has been the hardest thing I've had to do in my life. I had to watch you pass me by, never seeing the way I would look at you. The way that I was the one there, bringing you coffee at some ungodly hour in a park just so you would have some company and not Dr Motorcycle Boy, not that I'm bitter about him still.
I remember after you were shot, sitting in that awful chair, head in my hands trying not to cry, not too break down in front of your dad or my daughter. I sat there waiting for something, anything. Nurses passed and I saw families crying and laughing and mourning and, God, Kate I honestly don't know what I would have done if I'd lost you. That wait felt longer than the three months that you left me for because at least I knew you were alive when you asked me to leave. I may not have been able to protect you but at least I knew that somewhere out there you were okay.
I sat there waiting patiently for four years, watching you change and grown and laugh and cry and smile. I watched as you fell in love and broke up, I saw you in your darkest hours and waited for the right time, to find the right words to help. I have never stopped waiting. Sure, sometimes you couldn't see me, the times I left you but, Kate, you have to know that I never really left you, I never stopped waiting. I almost did, I threw in the towel and thought that was it and then one dark and stormy night my wait was was over.
And do you want to know something, Kate Beckett, NYPDs finest and love of my life?
It was worth it.
Every second that I have spent waiting for you has been worth it. I've gotten to know you and more than just some girlfriend but as a best friend. I know that you like to watch those silly medical dramas, I know that you don't like running, I know that you like to take your shoes off underneath your desk when it's late and you think that no one is looking. I know the things you like and don't like, I know what makes you laugh and when you're just pretending. I know that when you stretch you roll your ankles and they click and I flinch every time and you think I'm a wimp because of it.
I know that you need people a lot more than you let on. I know that you don't like to let people in, not because you can't love but because you love too damn much. Like everything else in your life you're either all in or not at all and that's just another one of those things that I find amazing about you. When you love, you love a person with all your heart and there's no room for doubt. That's why you're so scared to give it to anyone, it's been broken before, men have walked in and hurt you and left so you built these walls around it, to protect yourself. To keep the world out.
Well, I got in Kate.
I'm not leaving you.
I can't leave.
You're always talking about these walls that you have built but what you don't know is, that without realizing, you broke down my walls. You wormed your way into my heart and I never want to let you go. I love you too much. This thing between us is everything I could have wanted and more, you're my best friend and partner and, if I'm going to be really bold and say it, you're my soul mate. you're that missing piece. You're the Yin to my Yang.
I love you.
'W' is for 'Walls', we've been building them and breaking them down without ever realizing. I'm glad you let me in because it was completely worth it.
Always.
Rick.