Dearest Readers: My goodness, I suck. I left you on a cliff for, what, two weeks now? I'm sorry. That's just mean. I've been writing, just nothing I could post... my muse is all over the place right now. At the moment I'm working on three stories (one's a oneshot I haven't posted yet), and she wants me to start yet another multi-chapter story, but I'm trying to resist because I really don't have time to focus on updating three different fics and still deal with schoolwork. I'm actually taking a creative writing class right now, which should help in theory, but I think the fact that the professor seems to have a personal vendetta against me for no obvious reason is causing my muse to hide at really inconvenient times. Anyway, hope you enjoy the chapter. :) I'm not promising anything regarding when I'll be able to post the next update. Hopefully the muse doesn't let me down, but she hasn't been very reliable lately... And happy Castle Day! :)

Lanie had been right, she wasn't asleep. She was sitting on top of the made bed, fully dressed, holding a book, much the way she'd been when he'd found her there the day before. "Hey," he said softly.

She jumped and looked up at him. "Geez Castle, you scared me."

"Sorry." He took a step into the room and noticed that, for all the reading she'd apparently been doing, it really didn't look like she was in a much different place in her book than she'd been the day before. "What are you doing?" he asked.

"Reading," she said. But she closed the book.

"Doesn't look like you're making much progress."

She shrugged. "Just… trying to take it all in."

He nodded. "You hungry? I was just grocery shopping, so there's all kinds of food in the kitchen now."

"Not really."

He frowned. "Come on. You've gotta eat something. I'll make coffee."

"I'm good, Castle. Really."

He walked the rest of the way into the room and sat down on the edge of her bed. "Okay, it's morning and you're turning down coffee." He gave her a little smile. "This is not normal."

She smiled a little as well. "It's not really morning anymore… but if you made coffee, I guess I wouldn't turn it down."

He nodded. "Then I will. How'd you sleep?"

She rolled her eyes. "Are you going to ask me that every morning?"

"Probably."

She shrugged. "I slept."

"But not well?"

She shrugged again, but whether she'd say it or not, he could see it on her face. The dark circles under her eyes, the unwillingness to look at him directly.

"You want to talk about anything?"

She shook her head. "No."

"You sure?"

She nodded.

"Okay, then I'm gonna go make coffee. Meet me in the kitchen in ten minutes." Maybe, he thought, if he didn't phrase it as a question, didn't give her the option, she really would.

She agreed, and his plan worked. Ten minutes later, he was handing her a cup of coffee fixed the way she liked it.

"Thanks," she said, taking it. "But why's it in a travel mug?"

He just picked up his own cup and smiled. "Come on."

"Where are we going?" she wanted to know. But she followed him.

"We're taking a walk." He led her onto the deck and down the path that led past the pool and to the beach.

"Where?"

"It doesn't matter where."

"I'm not wearing shoes."

"Neither am I. You don't need them to walk on a beach."

She rolled her eyes and took a few quick steps to catch up with him. "The pool's nice," she said. "I didn't really see that yesterday."

"Glad you like it." He slowed his pace, less insistent, more ambling, and walked out onto the sand. "It is nice," he agreed, "but it's got nothing on the ocean."

She smiled. "You like the ocean?"

He shook his head. "No, I don't like the ocean. I don't like the ocean at all. I love the ocean. You stand its edge looking out on miles and miles of water, and it's the same water that touches Europe, Africa … every other continent in the world. You could go for a swim and end up nose-to-nose with a polar bear."

She raised an eyebrow. "Some swim."

"But you know what I mean, and that's my point." He walked up to the water so that the waves coming in just touched his toes. "I'm standing here, looking out. Maybe there's someone in… I don't know, France, just standing on a beach there looking out, right at me. The only thing separating us is all of this water, but it's hundreds, thousands of miles away… it just really makes you feel small."

She stood beside him and looked out at the water in much the same way. "So this French girl," she said without looking at him, "she's why you like the ocean so much?"

He turned to face her and nudged her shoulder playfully. "You are completely missing the point."

She turned back to him and smirked. "Uh-huh."

"I never even said it was a girl."

"Come on Castle, do you think I just met you? Of course it's a girl."

"It's a hypothetical person! Gender makes no difference. Besides, all the people I care about are on my side of the water. I just like the concept."

"So how come this love of the ocean has never showed up in any of your books? Most of them take place in the city."

He shrugged. "I live in the city, it's what I know. And it's more personal, my thing with the ocean. It's not really something I've ever felt the need to share with the world." He started walking down the beach again, slowly, right at the water line. "What about you?" he asked. "Do you like it?"

"What, the ocean? Yeah, I guess. I've never really thought that much about it. It is pretty though." She looked down at the sand for a long moment as they walked. He thought she was avoiding making eye contact with him for some reason, but then he realized she was actually focused on the sand, almost like she was looking for something specific. "We used to collect seashells," she finally said. "My parents and I, when I was a little girl and we'd come to the beach. Every year we'd have a contest to see who could find the best one, the biggest or the nicest looking. My mom would take that one and write the year and who found it, usually on the inside somewhere, and she kept them all lined up on a shelf in our living room. I used to like to look at them. Some went back to before I was born." She nodded, still looking down, remembering. "And then we'd throw the rest of them back into the water for other people to find."

He smiled. "That's a great tradition."

She finally looked at him again. "We didn't go every year, my parents were usually busy with work… but when we did."

"It doesn't have to be every year to be a tradition."

He wasn't even sure if she heard that last remark. "I wish I knew where they were now," she mused. "I wonder if my dad still has them."

"I'm sure he does."

She shrugged. "He got rid of a lot."

There wasn't really much he could say to that. He didn't know her dad very well, so he had to assume that what Kate said was true. So he just kept walking wordlessly, down the beach beside her. After a long moment, he changed the subject. "So what have you been thinking about?"

She frowned. "What do you mean? Now?"

"No, not necessarily. Just… since we've gotten here. When you were in your room pretending to read."

"Who says I was pretending?"

"I saw that book, you could easily have finished it in a day, and it doesn't look like you've made any progress at all. Either you're paying really close attention to detail, trying to decipher what kind of ink each letter was printed with, or you haven't really been reading it at all."

She just stared at him for a moment. Obviously he'd noticed something she'd hoped he wouldn't, and he wasn't sure what she'd do. He mentally ran through the possibilities. She might leave, turn around right there and go back to the house without another word. He would follow her. She might get angry, start yelling at him for not minding his own business. He would stand his ground and see the argument through until the end, taking the point of view opposite hers until she'd worked through all of her internal disagreements. She might just break down, all of her barriers so worn by the strain of holding everything inside that they burst. He would be there, with open arms and understanding ears, ready to comfort her by any means that he could.

He was ready for any of these, ready to take her cues and play his role, whatever that might be. But she still did nothing, nothing but stare at him without expression. The tension in the air was almost palpable, almost visible. It was unsettling, almost as if she was sizing him up, trying to determine whether she could take him. And the part that made it even more unsettling was that he was pretty sure she could.

"Everything," she finally said very softly, so that if he hadn't been paying such close attention he might not even have caught it.

"Everything?" he repeated. He stopped walking.

She nodded. "The past, the present, the future… everything."

"Come to any conclusions?"

She shook her head.

"None at all?"

She shrugged and turned back the way they'd come, walking at a very leisurely pace back toward the house.

"What about the future?" he finally asked as they started back up the stairs to the deck. "How do you see it?"

She sat down in one of the chairs and he took the one beside, angling it toward hers as he sat down. "You know," she finally said, "I can't really answer that. I've thought through more scenarios than even you could imagine."

But he wasn't sure that he could agree with that. "I don't know," he said, looking at her but not quite into her eyes. "I've thought through quite a few myself."

"I think…" she sighed, but then nodded. "I think the best conclusion I've come to stems from something you said to me when we first got here. I can't predict the future, so it's better just to try to focus on the present."

At this, he smiled. "I'll be right back." He got up from his chair but then turned to her, afraid that she'd disappear, go back into her room and hibernate while he was gone. "Don't move," he said sternly, using a voice much like he'd used on Alexis when she was younger.

She laughed at this – actually laughed – and when he returned a moment later she was still in exactly the same place. He set the page he'd gone inside to get on the table, pen poised in his hand.

"What's that?" she asked, eyeing it warily.

"The list," he reminded her. "It's time we get back to it. What do you want to do while you're here?"

She shrugged. "Oh, I don't know. Whatever."

"Holing up in your bedroom pretending to read isn't an option anymore."

She rolled her eyes. "This is stupid. You're all about spontaneity, aren't you? Why do I have to plan everything out?"

"Because I don't like the direction you're going without structure, so something needs to change."

"Well, I don't have anything specific that I want to do. I just want to relax and… forget. For awhile."

He nodded. "Good." He wrote the words "relax" and "forget" on the list, two separate bullet points.

She frowned. "That counts?"

"Absolutely. Is that all?"

"For now."

"Well, it's something." He pushed the list aside. "It's a beautiful day. What should we do?"

"Since when's it 'we'? I thought you were leaving me alone?"

"Yeah… not anymore. I told you, we're making changes."

"Changes that involve never letting me have another minute to myself?"

He almost faltered. He still felt sorry for her, and his impulse was to give her whatever she wanted, but he could still hear Lanie's voice in his head. She hides… but what she really wants, what she really needs, is for someone to find her. Now that he'd found her, he wasn't going to let her go back into hiding. He looked her directly in the eye, steady, unflinching. "Yes."

She held his eye contact for a second, trying, as she usually did, to break his resolve, but it fell short when she looked down at the table. She nodded. "Well then… okay."

He frowned. He'd expected at least some form of argument. "Okay?"

She began absently tracing patterns on the tabletop with her index finger. "It's your house, Castle," she said without looking up. "Your rules."

He almost wanted to argue just out of confusion, just because she wasn't arguing and he felt that someone should, but he decided not to look a gift horse in the mouth. "So," he repeated instead, "what should we do?"

She looked at him blankly. "What can we do?"

He smiled. "Come on, Kate. This is the Hamptons. The land of infinite possibility, and the two weeks of infinite freedom. We can do anything you want."

"Well, I'm gonna at least need some suggestions."

He nodded. Suggestions, he could do. "Um… we could go swimming, in the pool or in the ocean if you want, although it's early in the year and it's probably pretty cold… We could watch a movie, either here or we could go out… there's a great theater not far from here, but it's such a beautiful day it would be nice to do something outside… We could just hang here, or I could give you a tour of the neighborhood… you haven't seen much outside of the house yet."

She stopped him here. "That sounds good. I'd like to see what else is around here."

"Perfect. Why don't you go grab us a couple of waters from the fridge, and then meet me down by the shed. I'll get out the bikes." He looked down at her bare feet. "I recommend shoes."

She frowned. "Bikes?"

"Well, that way we can cover more ground than if we walked, and see more than we would in the car." He smiled. "Plus it's fun."

She nodded. "Yeah, okay. You have one I can use?"

"Absolutely." He stood and started walking toward the stairs. "Meet me down there."

"Castle," she said, making him turn back toward her.

"What?"

"Where's the shed?"

He chuckled. "I didn't show you that yet? It's down near where the car's parked. You'll see it."

She nodded. "Okay." She forced a smile. "I'll meet you there."

Okay, I was nicer that time. Not too cliffhanger-y. :) Let me know what you thought! Like? Dislike? Want to see more/less of something? I really don't care what you say, just review! :)