Between the traffic and the atmosphere inside the car, which did relax a little but never really lost all of its strain, the drive to the Hamptons was long. But finally they arrived, and he pulled into the familiar driveway just as he'd done so many times before. The only thing different, and it was remarkably different, was his passenger.

Ten years ago, Alexis had jumped out of the car and run immediately toward the beach, pulling him along. Five years ago she'd brought a friend, and had gotten out of the car before he even shut it off to start showing the girl around. Last year, Gina had immediately requested to see the bedroom.

Now, Kate sat silent beside him, not moving yet, just looking out the windows. "This your place?" she finally asked, although he would've thought it was obvious.

"This is it," he told her. "What do you think? Will it do?"

"I think it will," she said, smiling slightly.

He opened the car door and was immediately grateful for the fresh, salty air that surrounded him. It seemed to immediately dissipate some of the tension that had been in the car. "Shall I show you around?" he asked.

"Don't we need to get our bags?"

"We can get them later. Let me give you a tour."

She opened her door. "Okay."

He led her down the pathway that wound around to the back of the house and toward the beach. He looked out at the water. It was a pretty calm day, and the sunlight glistened off the surface of the water that seemed to go on forever. "Pretty good view, isn't it?"

She nodded. "Not bad."

He started up the stairs to the house. "Here we have the deck," he said as he reached it. There was a fairly large, rectangular table surrounded with chairs, and four lounge chairs off to one side. "Good place to have coffee in the morning if the weather's nice. Sometimes you can look out into the water and see dolphins."

She smiled. "Sounds nice." She still seemed a little disconnected, like she was looking at a picture. Like she wasn't actually here.

He unlocked the glass-paneled door and showed her inside. "Kitchen," he said, nodding to the right. He pointed out the table. "And dining room area." To the left there was a couch and two armchairs – elegant, but overstuffed and comfortable-looking – with a large flat screen TV on the wall in front of them, a fireplace off to the side, and a pool table behind. "Living room," he said. He pointed out the front door and the stairs that would take them back to the car, and then showed her to the hallway with the bedrooms.

It was a vacation home, so the bedrooms weren't really personalized. They all had similar furniture and beach-themed pictures on the walls. Still though, it had always been predetermined whose room was whose. He got the room with the largest, most comfortable bed, the adjoining private bathroom, and the two picture windows that looked out on the ocean. Alexis took the room beside his that had two beds, one for her and one for a friend. Down the hall were two guest rooms that were occasionally, albeit rarely, used. Usually when his mother came along she stayed in one of these.

He'd already decided that, this time, the master bedroom would go to Kate. It had the best view, and he figured she'd be most comfortable with her own bathroom. There was no reason she needed to know it was the master, since the doors were closed and she wouldn't know what the other bedrooms were like.

"This is my room," he said, casually tapping the door of one of the two guest rooms. "And this," he said, opening the door of the master, "will be yours. It's got its own bathroom, and the kitchen is right around the corner."

"Wow," she said, stepping inside and looking around. "Nice."

He smiled. "It's a great room, isn't it?"

"Great room," she repeated. "Thanks, Castle."

He nodded. "Okay. So I say we get our bags and get settled in, and today we can just relax. I'll unpack and then I'll probably be out on the deck if you want me for anything. We can talk if you want, or you can just pretend I'm not here. It makes no difference to me." That last part was a bit of a lie. Of course it made a difference. But he wanted her to have the freedom to decide how she wanted to spend her time without counting him as a factor. "We have no food whatsoever, I'll have to go grocery shopping tomorrow, but tell me when you get hungry and we'll order pizza. There's a great place down the street from here that delivers." He looked at her for some hint of acknowledgement. "Sound good?"

"Yeah," she said. "Sounds good.

He wished there'd been some basic amount of enthusiasm behind that, but he'd heard none. Regardless, he went to go get the bags.

Kate seemed partial to the pretending he wasn't there idea. As promised he'd gone out on the deck and tried to get some writing done, but he found that his glance kept falling back to the door, wondering if she'd emerge.

She didn't. Around seven o'clock he felt his stomach start growling, and he still hadn't seen her. He knew she hadn't eaten since they'd stopped for lunch on the drive and had to be hungry as well, so he figured he should try and find her.

It wasn't difficult. She'd left the door to her bedroom open, and she was sitting on the bed, which was still fully made, reading a book. He knocked gently on the doorframe and she immediately looked up.

"Hey, I was just gonna order pizza," he reminded her. "You hungry?"

She shrugged. "I guess."

"Any suggestions?"

"No, just get whatever you want. I'll eat it."

He sighed and took half a step into the room. "Okay, see, this isn't going to work. We're not just going to do everything I want because you feel like this is my house." He saw the way she was looking at him and amended. "Okay, yes. It is my house. Technically. But it's not like I live here all the time. While you're here, I want you to make yourself at home. I mean that."

She nodded, although he still wasn't convinced that she was agreeing to this. "Okay, but you've been to this pizza place before, right? I haven't. You know what they have that's good. You pick."

"See, that kind of logic I can understand." He smiled. "How do you feel about buffalo chicken pizza?"

She raised an eyebrow. "Crime against nature."

"So you've never had it?"

"Can't say that I have."

"Then that's settled. A small buffalo chicken and a small… pepperoni or sausage?"

"Uh, pepperoni."

"Good. Small buffalo chicken and a small pepperoni. Should I just come get you when it's here or…?"

"You're having it delivered, right? Won't I just hear the doorbell?"

He nodded. "Right. Good. That works then."

"I don't know, Castle," she said, eyeing the pizza on the plate in front of her skeptically. "Buffalo chicken on pizza?"

He smiled. "I can't believe you haven't tried it yet. It's been big for a couple of years now."

"Yeah, well, I grew up in New York. I'm a pizza purist."

He shrugged. "So did I, and I love this stuff. First you have to try it, then you can judge."

She picked it up, but continued staring at it rather than taking a bite.

"Think of it as a new chapter in your pizza-eating life," he suggested.

She rolled her eyes, but then took a bite.

He waited for her to react. "Well?"

"You know, it's actually pretty good."

He grinned. "What did I tell you? The pepperoni's pretty good too. This place just has good pizza."

She nodded. "It really is good."

"So how do you like the place?"

"It's great." She looked around the deck for a beat. "I love that you have a table out here, and the view is fantastic."

"I'm glad you like it. I do too. Been coming here for… oh, most of Alexis's life, I guess. It really feels like a second home."

"It is a second home."

He shot her a slightly impatient look. "I know, but that's not what I mean. I have a lot of memories here is what I mean, I guess."

"Oh," she said simply, her expression unreadable. She was suddenly very concentrated on finishing her first slice of pizza, and he couldn't begin to guess what she was thinking about.

"With Alexis, mostly," he added. "She learned how to swim here, in the pool and the ocean… and when we were here, it was like… nothing else mattered. We were the only two people in the world." He smiled, suddenly feeling nostalgic. "When I look at pictures just from our summers here, it's like watching her grow up all over again."

Kate smiled as well. "That sounds nice."

He nodded. "It was." He shrugged, bringing himself back to the present. "Then you know, she started to get older and wanted to bring friends… it was never quite the same. But we had some good times here."

"And I'm sure you'll have more. She's not totally grown up yet."

He nodded. "You're right. But she is getting there a little faster than I expected."

"Well that's life, isn't it?" she said, a little sadly. "Nothing ever really happens the way we expect it to."

"That's good though, isn't it? I mean, if everything was always exactly the way you expected… wouldn't that be boring?"

"You know, sometimes a little bit of boring isn't the worst thing in the world."

"It's good to break things up, though. I mean, even a week ago, would you have believed you'd be here now? In the Hamptons? With me?"

"No. Not at all."

"And is that the worst thing in the world?" He was trapping her here and he knew it. He knew she was far too polite to say yes. But he still hoped that maybe she wouldn't want to. Maybe she'd realize that this was a good thing. That she could be happy here, if only for two weeks.

She shrugged. "I guess not. It's just… not where I would've chosen to be right now."

"Or who you would've chosen to be with." As soon as it was out of his mouth he regretted it. Why had he said that? Why had he had to make this about himself? That wasn't the point. That wasn't why he was here. It wasn't what he'd wanted to do, it had just come out. He wanted to tell her not to answer, to pretend he'd never said it, but she answered before he could.

"I didn't say that, did I?"

He didn't mean to smile as he took a second piece of pizza out of the box, but it was a reaction that he couldn't control.

Beckett's door was still closed when he got home from grocery shopping. He hadn't seen her since pizza the night before, but he assumed she was sleeping late again and left her alone. Sleep could only be a good thing, he figured, especially considering that he was pretty sure she hadn't gotten enough of it lately.

He started putting food away in the cupboards and the fridge. His goal had been frivolity without excess. Choices, but moderation. He wanted to make sure he had food that Kate would like, but he knew they wouldn't be here any longer than two weeks and didn't want to have to throw a lot away before they left.

His phone started ringing while he was putting a pint of Ben and Jerry's in the freezer. He closed the freezer door and saw that it was Lanie, identified as such since he'd added her to his contacts. "Hi Lanie," he said when he picked it up.

"Castle, what the hell is going on?" the already angry ME asked, forgoing anything that could in any society be construed as a greeting. "She's still not answering her phone and I know you talked to her, so spill."

He frowned. She'd said all of that so fast that he couldn't quite put two and two together. "Who?"

"Who?" Castle held his phone out from his ear and looked at it, momentarily convinced that she'd blown out its speaker. But she obviously hadn't, because then he wouldn't have been able to hear the rest of her exasperated demands. "Don't give me that! You know exactly who! Where is she?"

He was pulled back to reality very quickly, and found that Lanie was right. He did know exactly who she was talking about, and he wasn't sure why he hadn't known immediately. "Sorry, Lanie. She's here with me. In the Hamptons. I thought it would be good for her to get away for a little while. She didn't tell you?"

"I haven't talked to her at all. I can't get her to answer her phone or call me back. So no, I have no idea what's going on in her life." It was obvious that Lanie was more than irritated by all of this. "She went to the Hamptons with you?"

"Yeah. Trust me, I was as surprised as you when she said she'd come. But she did, and we're here."

"Well, that's good." She seemed to relax a little. "It will do her good to get away, I'm sure. I just wish she'd talk to me. How's she doing?"

"Uh, I don't know." He sat down sideways in one of the dining chairs just outside of the kitchen. "She's hard to read. Sometimes she seems totally fine, other times I can't even get through to her."

"How is she now?"

"I'm not with her now. I haven't actually seen her yet this morning."

"You what?"

"I haven't seen her yet," he repeated. "She's probably sleeping late, she did yesterday. She didn't sleep well the first couple of nights, so she's had some catching up to do."

"You haven't been in to check on her?"

He frowned. "No? I'm trying to give her some space."

Lanie sighed heavily. "Space? Space is the last thing she needs right now. Do you think she agreed to an intimate getaway in the Hamptons with you because she wanted space?"

Intimate? He felt like his mind had just been erased. He didn't know what to make of anything anymore. Everything was blank. "She just… she just said she'd be more comfortable with me here, since it's my place. But you know how independent she is, I think she wants to be alone."

"Come on, Castle. You don't really believe that."

"What? I keep telling her I'm here if she wants anything, but she's mostly just stayed in her room."

"Don't be an idiot, you know Beckett as well as I do. She hides. From me, obviously," there was still some bitterness in Lanie's tone, "but also from you, from herself… When she doesn't want to deal with something she tries to ignore it, and when she can't ignore it she tries to hide from it… you know all of this. But what she really wants, what she really needs, is for someone to find her. Bring her to reality. Make her deal with it. And since you're apparently the only person she's willing to talk to right now, my guess is she wants it to be you."

He thought about this for a long moment, but he soon came to the uncomfortable conclusion that Lanie was probably right. "I don't want to upset her," he protested.

"Of course you don't. But guess what? She's already upset. She's just keeping it to herself, and that's not good."

"No," he agreed. "It's not."

"I know you care about her, Castle," Lanie said in the gentlest tone he'd heard yet. "Otherwise you wouldn't be with her right now. And I know you want to do the right thing. So don't just take the easy way out. Don't let her hide from you."

"You think she's awake?"

He could almost hear Lanie's eyes roll. "It's almost noon. I'm pretty damn sure."

"And you think I should go check on her?"

"Absolutely. Check on her. Talk to her. Bother her. Don't leave her alone."

"Okay. I will."

"Good. Take care of my girl, Castle."

He nodded. "I'll try."

"You'd better. I'll keep checking in."

"Okay. Thanks, Lanie."

"No problem. Let me know if there's anything I can do. And try to get her to call me?"

"I'll see what I can do."

"Good. I'll talk to you later."

"Bye." He hung up the phone, sighed, and slid it back into his pocket. He glanced at the groceries he'd left on the table. He'd already put away everything that needed refrigerated, so he abandoned them and turned the corner that led to the closed door of Kate's room. He knocked softly and waited for a response. When it didn't come, he turned the knob soundlessly and pushed the door forward.

Wow. That's a pretty horrible cliffhanger, isn't it? Sorry about that. Kind of. But look at it this way: it's a cliffhanger for me too. When I leave a chapter like that, chances are I'll have more incentive to get the next chapter done sooner. Because I want to know how it turns out too. :) And because I fear angry mobs... Kidding. Kind of. :P

Oh, how I love Lanie. I miss her. And everyone else, obviously... I SO can't wait until Monday. :) That said, I will definitely try to get at least one more chapter posted before then to keep you (and me!) entertained (and procrastinating).

You know what else makes me write faster? Reviews. They also allow me to gauge just how angry a mob I might have to deal with... :)