A very big thank you to everyone who has reviewed, favourite & followed this story. This is the penultimate chapter of the diary but there will also be an epilogue.

Enjoy!

Chapter 24

Always and After the Storm (Part 4)

Once the need for food had been addressed, Kate returned to the diary. As she thought back to that night, she grinned and wondered, not for the first time, why the hell they had taken so long to get to this point in their relationship. She couldn't pin point when, exactly, she had fallen in love with Castle but she did know that it had been a long time ago and she was certain that he had been in love just as long. They had both had moments of weakness during that time but in spite of all that, here they were; the time for looking back now over, the future was all that mattered and this new Kate Beckett, this woman whose face wore a permanent, romantic smile, saw that future stretching out into the far distance. Kate shook her head to clear away her daydreams and returned to recording the momentous events of the recent past.

When I woke up the next time, sunlight was streaming through the window, all trace of the previous night's storm now a mere memory. I turned to look at Castle and had to smile. He looked so adorable; face mashed into the pillow, mouth slightly open, snoring gently. He still had one arm possessively over my stomach and I couldn't resist gently stroking his hand. I knew that now I was fully awake, I wouldn't be able to lie there still for much longer, it just wasn't in my nature. I've always been an 'up and at them' type of person in the mornings and despite all the activities last night, this morning was no exception.

I managed to extricate myself from Castle's hold without waking him and looked round for something I could put on to wander through the loft. I opened the closet and settled for a white, button-down which, I discovered, smelled just like Castle, not that I was going round sniffing his clothes, of course. As I went into the kitchen to get myself a glass of water, I had a momentary flash of inspiration. For four years Castle had greeted me most mornings with a coffee; now, with the change in our relationship, I would start by waking him up with coffee. It seemed an appropriate gesture.

I'd spent enough time at the loft over the years to know where everything was kept and also just about how to operate the space-age coffee maker, so it wasn't long before I was making my way back to the bedroom, duly armed with two mugs of steaming coffee. I wasn't quite prepared for the sight that greeted me. Castle was now sitting up, wide awake, with an almost panicked expression on his face which, fortunately morphed into a beaming smile when he saw me. I was curious about this but it didn't take me long to understand,

"So it wasn't a dream."

I'd not been there when he woke up and his first thought was that the night's events hadn't been real. I felt a pang of guilt and wondered just how many nights he'd had dreams about us and if he'd had them as often as I had. But no, this time it had all been absolutely real and we had both loved every minute of it.

He still had his doubts, though or, at least, he needed to be sure that I was fully on board, that I hadn't just turned up in a moment of crisis and would be running off again at the first opportunity. I reassured him as best I could and thankfully, the moment passed and we were back to our normal selves, even joking about what we could do with my enforced free time. Just as we leant in for a kiss which would surely have started round four, the loft door slammed shut and,

"Richard, I'm home!"

It was Martha. Chaos reigned supreme then as, the next thing I knew, Castle had flipped me off the bed and onto the floor. As we jumped to our feet, I braced myself to face his mother whilst near enough naked in his bedroom but Castle had other ideas and ordered me, yes, ordered me to hide in the closet. I was all set to argue my case but it appeared that I really didn't have a great deal of choice in the matter and just made it to the closet when Martha appeared in the room, for some strange reason, extolling Alexis's many fine qualities. How she didn't see me, I can't quite fathom, but if she did, she certainly gave no indication of the fact, but the woman is an actress, so, who knows?

Castle managed to persuade her that he would far rather talk to her with his clothes on rather than wrapped in a bed sheet but as she left the room, Martha managed to drop one more bombshell; it appeared she wasn't alone, Alexis was there, too. While he was getting dressed, we came up with a rough plan to get me out of the loft without being seen. Why the hell I was doing the walk of shame, I'm not quite sure but I suppose I really wasn't yet prepared to deal with Martha and Alexis knowing about our relationship so I had no choice.

Castle went out to try and distract them while I hurriedly put my clothes on and snuck out of the loft. Putting my clothes on in a hurry was not as simple as it sounds; firstly, they were liberally scattered around the bedroom and secondly they were still decidedly damp from the soaking they got as I'd wandered the streets of Manhattan in the middle of a thunder storm. Once I'd at least managed to get my top and jeans on, I picked up my jacket and boots and literally slid across the floor to the door whilst Castle was doing a great job maintaining the two redheads' attention, although it did appear that Alexis was more than a little hung over after her all-night party. Just as I got to the door, I realised I was missing a rather vital item of clothing; I'd left my bra somewhere in the bedroom.

I headed back and could tell that Castle wasn't overly impressed by my antics, though I could easily say that the feeling was entirely mutual. I found the missing piece of attire under the bed and once again tried to make my escape. This time I made it to the door, opened it and went out. As a final gift to Castle, I may have closed the door rather harder than strictly necessary.

I'd been back at my apartment a couple of hours, long enough to have a long shower and deal with my hair which looked decidedly wild after the night's events, when there was a knock at the door. I didn't need to look through the peep hole to know who was there, a very apologetic looking Richard Castle. Now I had calmed down by this point and had realised the hilarity of the situation back at the loft but I couldn't resist playing with him just a little and see what excuses he would come up with. It appeared that, like me, he just wasn't quite ready to deal with anyone knowing about us but, just as we were ready to go for round four again, we were interrupted, again.

This time the knock on my door was from a source I was not expecting, Ryan. I saw a tiny opportunity for a little payback and suggested Castle should hide in my closet which was stupid, really because my closet isn't big enough for a child to hide in let alone a guy the size of Castle, but when I said that I wasn't ready for anyone to know yet, either, that much was true. Castle assured me Ryan would have no idea of our change of status but I wasn't so certain; his mother may have been an actor but I'd seen Castle in action and, frankly, he's not inherited Martha's talents. As it turned out, Ryan was far too distracted to show any real curiosity about Castle's presence and once he'd explained why he was there, all our concern about relationship matters were suddenly of secondary importance.

He'd brought a copy of the photograph, missing from Montgomery's wedding album and wanted to know if I could identify the guy in it. I couldn't but Castle could. Evidently, it was the man who Roy had sent the files to, the man who had made the deal to keep me safe. Maddox had his photograph and if he found him before we did, if he found the files, I would never be safe again. And just like that, there was the rabbit hole opening before me only this time I was determined not to jump in. I wanted none of it. It was supposed to be over; I couldn't go back to it, not now, I had far too much to lose.

Castle, having spent the last year trying to keep me away from it, was now persuading me that I had no choice but to find out who this mysterious stranger was but I had no idea how I was supposed to even start; I wasn't even a cop anymore. My partner, though, is nothing if not persistent. He talked me round, gradually leading me, guiding me and before I knew it, we were there, investigating together again.

By a combination of our efforts and Ryan's work tracing a call made to Castle's phone, we were able to identify the man as one Michael Smith but, when we got to Smith's house, we found him, barely alive and clearly having been tortured. We were too late. Maddox had burned the file; all that remained were the ashes in the fireplace. Smith managed to say something to Castle and we searched through his files, looking for some reference to 86. Castle was certain that Smith was far too smart and careful to only have one copy and that another copy must be hidden elsewhere, 86 being a clue as to where.

I'd pretty much given up, accused Castle of grasping at straws but, although he admitted to grasping at said straws, he said he would continue to do so as long as the alternative meant my life was in danger without him being able to do a thing about it. He certainly knows how to get to a girl! Just as we were running out of time, he found it, a property owned by Smith, 86, Markwell Street.

That building, as it turned out, was gradually being demolished. As we made our way through, trying to find a needle in a haystack, I had to thank Castle for helping me and pushing me forward because I knew that without him, I would have given up. We found that Smith had an office on the fifth floor, 523 but just as we were about to head off there, we heard the familiar sound of a gun being cocked. I turned and there he was, Cole Maddox. He was after the file and we'd just given him the information he needed to find it. I expected a bullet right there and then, but Maddox was obviously under instructions not to kill me until he had the file so he zip-tied our wrists and locked us in a bathroom while he recovered it. We had maybe a couple of minutes before Maddox returned but, try as we might, there was no way to untie our hands and no way out of the bathroom.

We soon heard footsteps approaching. That was it, we were done. We had one final moment to recall the events of the previous night and wonder why on earth we'd waited four years before the door opened and there stood – Esposito. Never had I been so glad to see his face. He gave me a back-up piece but was rather snarky with Castle when he asked if he had yet another gun. I guess he still felt Castle had deserted us in our hour of need. We all headed to 523 and found Maddox opening a floor safe with his back to the door. I finally had the guy at a disadvantage and I wasn't going to waste this opportunity by being careless. His gun was on the floor at his side and he knew we had the upper hand. I told him to slowly reach down and hand me the file but, as he did so, we heard a click and the next thing I knew Esposito shouted a warning and Castle flung me back out the door, protecting me with his body as the whole room was blown to pieces. Evidently, Smith was quite protective of his property.

Kate found herself shaking as she recalled that latest brush with death. Castle hadn't thought twice about protecting her and she couldn't quite rid herself of the thought that it would have been quite easy for a piece of stray shrapnel to have seriously injured or even killed him. It was now late afternoon and she felt a desperate need for a glass of wine to calm herself down. She thought it would still be a couple of hours at least before Castle arrived so she had time to take a break before writing the final part of the story.