Close Encounters 6
Beckett was dressed in Carrie's clothes - jeans and a concert t-shirt from Duran Duran, a motley colored thing with bright purple and metallic blue that made her look entirely too young for him. Castle fingered the hem of her shirt and she gave a little self-conscious huff of breath before she leaned into him.
He embraced her and heard Carrie approach them, her feet louder than normal on the back porch steps, and he smiled a little and turned to his former partner's wife.
"Thanks for taking us in," he said quietly, holding out a hand to her.
She grasped his tightly and nodded, then she pulled Kate out of his arms and into her own, hugged Kate so fiercely that a rush of breath went out of her. Castle felt strangely relieved to know that Carrie was there equally for them. Either of them.
"You should take the truck," she murmured.
"No," he said. "Don't want it traced back to you. The cab is fine."
"You need more money?" Carrie asked, releasing Kate only to catch hold of her hand like she didn't want to let go this time.
"He has plenty," Kate said with a little laugh. She gave him a look of her eyes that made him want to strip that metallic band shirt right over her head and go for her pants next, but she laughed again and pushed lightly on his shoulder. "We're good, Carrie. Thank you. And thank you for keeping Sasha for us. I never meant for it to be open-ended."
"It can be for as long as you need."
"We'll get a place soon," Castle answered firmly.
Kate lifted her eyebrows, but she only shook her head at him and reached for his hand. "We have a lot of things to work out."
"There's nothing to work out," he said bluntly.
"Hush," she murmured. "We'll talk in the car."
And like she'd conjured it, a cab was grinding up the gravel drive and coming to a stop with a short honk. Kate reached down and took the duffle bag of supplies they'd borrowed from Carrie and handed it over to him with a push. He turned for the dog first though, scraped his fingers through the soft mane of fur, let Sasha lick his neck and whine as she nudged him with her head.
"Be back soon," he whispered. "In our own place. No matter what your momma says."
He got a knee to his ribs for that, Kate huffing at him as she pushed him out of her way. She loved on the dog too, hugged Carrie good-bye, and then she was guiding him down the porch steps and towards the waiting cab.
His hand was bandaged, his cheek had a blackening bruise, his ribs ached, but he had Kate Beckett. And everything - she was right. Everything could be worked out.
She flexed her fingers in between his and their digits lined up, tips to tips, their joined hands resting on the seat in between them. She hummed at the feel of his skin, the callouses and the warmth, let her head rest against his shoulder.
Castle reached between them with his free hand and used his thumb and finger to circle their kissing thumbs, up and down, slowly, erotic and tender at once. She closed her eyes and let herself coast in it, ride the wave of quiet that swelled and swirled around her.
"I love you," he spoke softly, a breath at the top of her head.
"I love you," she said into the stillness.
They'd talked; they'd hashed out their plan for confronting his father. There was so many things not still said, so much undefined and waiting for substance and clarity, but this moment of strange and intimate allure in the backseat of a cab, halfway to the city, was knitting together every broken place.
His fingers stretched out against hers, his palm wider and longer, their flesh warm and meeting with a curl, and she let her cheek rest hard against his shoulder, her eyes closed.
His other hand came to the top of her head and brushed the hair back from her forehead, looped it around her ear, and his lips were pressed into her skin, and then their fingers were sliding off each other's and gripping, squeezing, laced together now.
It was time to make every secret thing known.
"I don't know yet," she said firmly, even though her answer wasn't an answer.
"I think you should stay in the waiting room," he said again.
"I don't know yet, Castle."
He wasn't frowning at her, at least there was that. He did squeeze her hand a little harder even though it was his bruised knuckles doing the work, but she didn't hesitate.
Kate reached out and pressed the call button on the south side of the hospital lobby. The bank of four elevators responded at once, cables and gears whining and churning, the floor itself seemingly vibrating under their feet, and then Castle pointed to the one on the right, nearest them.
"I call it. Bet I'm right."
"No way," she took up immediately. "Far left. I win, you give me three hours to take a bath. All by myself. Bubbles and wine and a book."
He huffed. "I can't even play a little, sit by the side of the tub? Maybe read it to you?"
She cocked her head, heard the ding of their competing elevators as they went through each floor. "I'll consider it."
"And when I win?"
She shrugged, eyes on the sluggish movement of her horse in the race.
"When I win," he said slowly. "When I win, you let me pick our new place. No questions asked."
She narrowed her eyes, gave her elevator a steady glance. "Deal."
"Deal," he breathed, and his eyes were too wide, his grin a little too placed. He was trying for her, because he knew she was hanging on by a thread.
The light on the call button popped off and she heard the sound of elevator doors grunting open, and they both looked up.
But it wasn't either of their picks.
He chuckled and turned back to her with a shrug. "It's a draw." His eyes were set into a deep smile that kept springing up on his lips as well, and he tugged her forward into the open elevator with his heart peeled open for her to see.
She loved this man - this one right here. The tender one who cracked jokes to keep her going and yet stood beside her every step and lurch of the way towards the hardest thing she'd ever had to do.
Face the devil.
And stare him down.
Without flinching.
Only Rick Castle could make that seem at all possible.
God, she was amazing. She was patient and careful and reserved, and she was fierce and loyal and insistent. Her integrity and strength of character made him want to drop to his knees sometimes, even when her mistakes and her trauma and her issues made their path together seem a maze of broken glass.
Like it did now.
And here he was, knee-walking over those jagged remnants. Because of her.
Kate Beckett strode down the hall of New York Presbyterian Hospital, looking for all the world like she owned the place and everyone in it.
Esposito was in the waiting room and he jumped to his feet when he saw them, when he saw her, and Castle found Agent Jones - the assassination specialist - standing rough guard just outside the door leading to ICU. He had his arms crossed but he shifted forward when Beckett and Castle approached.
"Agent Castle," he said gravely. "You heard about your father?"
He and Beckett had agreed on this point. "What was he doing at the Plaza?" Castle said quietly, taking Jones to one side as Esposito and Beckett looked on. "Jones. You know who was holding a fundraiser in that exact location, right?"
Jones winced and rubbed his jaw with a hand. "I know. I know. Look, you didn't hear this from me, but your father has had it out for the Senator for more than a decade now. When he brought me in on this op and filled me in on the investigation, I can't say I was surprised."
"But it was all set in place. Why would he take on Bracken alone?" Castle asked, feeding Jones the bits and pieces of the story he and Beckett had written together. "It doesn't make sense, Jones. I've got to see him. I've go to know what I'm supposed to be telling people. The Director of the CIA will be down here in a matter of hours, and I'll have to have something to report."
Jones was nodding thoughtfully. "I'm not supposed to let anyone into his room, Director's orders. But. . ."
Castle didn't push; he knew Jones, as a loyal man, would want to protect Black. Castle hadn't been sure who would be here, but they were in luck that it was the specialist - a man who already knew so much about what had been about to happen.
Jones sighed. "Okay, I can give you twenty minutes or so. He's been in and out of it, son, so it might not be pretty."
He set his jaw and nodded. He still hadn't been able to think much past the story they'd come up with, hadn't wanted to actually dwell on his father's condition, and who was really responsible for it.
"Bracken's goons did a number on him?" he said carefully, once more planting the seeds of their story in Jones's mind.
The agent shook his head once with a sigh, like he was trying to dislodge the mental image Castle had instilled: Agent Black taking on the Senator only to be dragged into that alley and beat to a pulp.
"I don't even know what's going on with our mission," Jones said with a disgusted sigh. "You need to let me know what he says."
"It's got to be scrapped," Castle said bleakly. "I ditched training when I heard about Black. And don't you think Bracken will increase his security after something like this?"
"You're right," Agent Jones said mournfully, rubbing his jaw again. "You're right. It's got to be scrapped."
Castle let out a small breath of relief. "Okay, Beckett and I are going to talk to him, Jones. We'll let you know."
But Jones paused, seemed to study Castle.
Rick forced himself not to hold his breath and he reached casually for Beckett's hand; their clasp would hide his bruised knuckles, and the black eye from Esposito was already something Agent Jones had seen.
If it was puffier and more brutal looking than it'd been, Jones couldn't possibly notice.
"All right," Jones said finally. "The both of you. Room 1006. Twenty minutes."
Jones stepped away from the automatic doors that led on to the rest of the floor and he let them pass.
Still in Castle's grip, Kate's hand began to sweat.
When they turned the corner and and came down the long hall and finally in front of Room 1006, Castle let go of her hand.
"You don't have to go in there," he said, giving her an out. "You can stand right here. No one will know."
"I'll know," she answered quietly. Her hands were damp and her back ached at her scar, the force of it driving pain clear through to her sternum. She bit her bottom lip and waited for Castle to lead the way.
Only he didn't. "Kate. You have nothing to prove."
Except she did. And not just to herself. But to Castle. Because it was his own father who had marched her out into the gritty alley between the Plaza Hotel and some brick office building, the chain link fence in her view and the rush of traffic too far to help; it was Rick's father who had calmly ordered her to her knees and stood at only a few feet away and leveled the gun on her.
It was her husband's father.
And she had to prove to him that it was actually and only a CIA agent named Black.
And Black had nothing at all to do with the man she loved.
So Kate nudged him aside and pushed open the door herself and led them into Black's hospital room.
Her partner had her back.
The rush and beep of machines measured out the moments.
Kate's feet were stuck fast to the floor even as her throat constricted, a keratin ring around her trachea that thickened and hardened until every breath was a competition for space, crowded and throwing punches.
The thing in the bed was unconscious.
The marred lines of his face were distorted by purple and black swelling, the jagged edge of starburst stitching, and the mottled bruises. The oxygen tube under his nose was askew, the chest looked concave under the sheet and hospital gown.
But still deadly. A thing that carried plague and might - at any moment - rise up with his one seeing eye and clutch at her with that clawed hand.
Everything was heavy, from the air dragging down her lungs to the set of her spine bowing out. Heavy. Her chest ached and couldn't expand with it.
Still. She didn't turn and run.
The room was gnarled with every encounter and every touch and every terror, but Beckett withstood.
She finally turned her head to look at Castle and he was swaying forward, hands clenched in fists, chest rising and falling erratically.
She reached out to - to help? - but he jerked forward to the side of the bed and stared down at his father.
"Let's wake him up," he rasped.
Castle wanted Black's eyes open and his mind clear when it started.
Oh, yes.
He had thought about this in the cab, considered the role he would play in their scene, but he found the reality of it-
Brutal.
He found the reality of it made him want to wrap his fingers around Black's throat and crush the air out of his lungs until he bucked and writhed and pissed himself.
He wanted to fuck him up.
Castle reached for the IV and pinched the line, halting the flow of meds down into the tough, leathery skin. "Kate," he ground out.
She was at his side in a moment and he grabbed her hand and wrapped her fingers around the line.
"Like this," he said. He lifted his head and met her eyes and she was standing there with her fingers blocking the IV and he saw the tremor of her pulse in her neck. "Don't let go."
She nodded.
Castle moved around her to the other side of the bed and caught the flicker of a muscle twitching beneath the blankets. He could hear every one of his wife's breaths and he counted them to keep his heart beating.
And then he looked at his father in the face.
This was what he'd done. He let the image play out, superimposed over the man in the bed, let the film clatter through to its terrible and screaming end: opening the exit door and finding Kate on her knees, the gun pointed at her head, and the length of steady arm attached to its shoulder and flaring up to that one man.
Blackest night.
He would never forget.
This man had made his childhood a cold and lightless place, but Castle had found ways to survive. This man had ordered his life and arranged his every movement and dictated his days with an iron grip and had not once, not once, let go. But Castle had survived even that.
Putting a gun to his wife's head was not to be survived.
He reached for Black's hand and pinched the sensitive webbing between the man's thumb and forefinger. Harder. Harder.
Until Black awoke on a sucked in breath and flared his eyes open to see.
She hadn't known. Not really. She'd thought she had because she'd been with him all over Europe and they'd killed side by side and she'd saved his life and he'd saved hers, but she hadn't known, truly, that this side of him existed.
She had watched him instead of looking at the man in the bed because Castle was always the one to keep her steady, and so she had seen that moment of change.
She had seen him gathering his resolve and his anger and his desperate grief around him like armor plates and she had seen the slow blink of his eyes as he gave in to it.
He became the darkness.
Her fingers tightened on the IV tube and Castle stared down at his father's wide, seeing eyes.
"Richard," the man slurred out.
Her heart pounded thick in her mouth and she fought to stay upright.
"Good. You're with us," Castle said. His voice had the low tones of carelessness, as if this was entirely unimportant. His hand moved up to the inside of Black's elbow and then his knuckles pushed hard and swift into Black's broken and taped ribs, catching him off guard.
The man in the bed arched, the movement arrested and restrained through a force of will so strong that not a sound passed his clenched teeth.
And then Castle released the pressure.
Black turned his eyes to her first, a long and amused look, before he looked at Castle again. "Son. You've already made your point. Don't you think?"
Her fingers were frozen around the IV tubing and she felt it slip, clutched harder at it as Castle reached back and dragged a plastic chair over the floor towards his father's bed. The chair clattered and screeched and came to a stop beside the raised bed.
Castle sat down, seemingly at ease, and laid a hand on the bed in careful placement.
"Have I made my point?" he said slowly.
Kate found the eyes back on her once more and she realized it was all still a game to him. Black was still attempting to push Castle's buttons.
But Castle torqued Black's already puffy pinky finger and those eyes jerked away from her and closed, panting breaths through a tortured chest.
"My point," Castle said calmly. "Oh yes. I remember now."
Kate shivered as Black's eyes flared open and scalded a line down to his son, sitting sedately at his bedside.
Castle leaned in. "You and I have a problem."
Black wheezed out through a laugh. "A failure to communicate?"
Something dark and slithering went through Castle's eyes and Beckett's fingers pinched harder over the line, her own nails digging into her palms.
Castle tapped a finger over Black's elbow as if thoughtlessly. "I have a solution to my problem," he said, and she watched as his fingers pressed harder into the vulnerable skin. "But for some reason, Beckett is opposed. I think it's just that she's better than both of us."
Black's finger curled and released, the only outward sign of the agony Castle's touch had to be inflicting on the inflamed nerve at his elbow.
"Beckett has an alternate solution."
"You have me all ears," Black roughed out, trying for smooth and succeeding only in making Kate's skin crawl.
"You live," Castle said. "She lives. Life for life."
As Black expanded his lungs for a chance to speak, Castle casually leaned into the bed and hid from Kate whatever movement he made. But Black's chest caved in and his body arched, and Castle was standing up now, still blocking her view, his eyes so blank and dead.
"She lives," Castle said again. "You don't touch her. You don't talk to her. You don't fuck up her life or mine, you don't start mind games or little wars. She lives and you don't have any say in how or with who or where."
Even though whatever Castle was doing made Black's body rigid in the bed, he grit his teeth and forced words out. "And you think I'll go quietly?"
"You will." Kate said suddenly, pushing her hand out to Castle and gripping him hard. She released the IV line and felt the tremble run through the man in the bed. "You'll do it. Because otherwise we go out of this room and we tell what happened in that alley. How you fought with Senator Bracken and tried to murder him. How I came to his rescue. How you put me on my knees and tried to execute me."
Black's eyes were resolutely on her now. She had him. She had him.
"You think it's my word against yours? I've got two detectives in the NYPD who will back me up, plus Senator Bracken himself, and whoever else he can buy, bribe, or blackmail. You two have some bad blood. You think he's not willing to help me fuck you up?"
She leaned back now, let the resolution come to her face.
"You don't get to have Castle either. Not me. Not him. Anyone in my family gets hurt - anyone I love gets in a car accident or gets fucking audited by the IRS, then we tell our side of the story. We've already got half the men down the hall believing you're unhinged and desperate to eliminate a US Senator. All it takes is a nudge."
Kate took a long breath and she saw the calculation in his eyes, the dark and commanding need for a control being wrested from him.
"I'm done," she said then and turned her head to Castle.
He was studying her. He was not yet himself.
"You finish this up," she said, and she heard the hollow echo of her voice in the room. "I'm done."
She turned her back on the man in the bed and walked out of the room.
He watched Beckett leave.
And then he turned back to the bed.
"I went easy on you because she was in the room," he said softly. "I went easy on you because when she's here, I'm in control. I'm trained to do this, trained by you. And I know how to make it hurt now, and hurt for a long time later. I know how to fuck up your nervous system so that you will always have pain."
His father said nothing.
"But now that she's gone."
And it was saying the words in that order. It was hearing his own voice, calm and detached, that reconnected him to his body and pushed the maelstrom straight down into his chest and made him shake with it.
"If I ever - if she is ever gone - if she's gone," Castle rasped. "There is nothing to stop me. Do you understand? Not just in this room. But in this God damned world. Nothing will stop me. I will fuck you up and make you live to see your entire kingdom come down around your head."
"This. . ." Black let out a long and wheezing breath. "This is how you love?"
"This is how I grieve," Castle hissed. "Love is what kept me from doing it now."
"She only ruins you. She ruins it all."
Castle was breathing like he'd run a marathon, but he jerked the chair back from the bed and replaced it at the far side of the room. He stood at the end of the bed and stared at his father.
"Are we clear?"
"You're throwing away everything."
"Here's the last of it," Castle said evenly. "After this hospitalization, you'll withdraw from service."
"Fuck you."
"You'll tender your resignation. You will cite retirement and declining health; you will not nominate a replacement."
"You ungrateful little bastard."
"You walk away with a pension plan and your place in the South Pacific. You play your fucked up games from there for all I care. But not in my back yard, not with my Kate, and not in my life."
"Fuck this medication, damn it. . ." Black was rolling his eyes back and trying to move, as if he wanted out of the bed. "I will not let this civilian whore take everything I have and-"
"There's one thing you get in return," Castle said finally, and his hands clenched at his side. His father's imprecations rattled him; he'd never heard the man curse in true anger before.
Black grunted and his body shook in the bed; one hand clenched the railing and the other clawed at the sheets and Castle felt his whole being ripped inside out.
"I get. What? I get what?" Black gritted out.
"I stay in the CIA."
Black let out a long and dangerous breath; his heart rate and blood pressure were wild. Castle had to get out of here before the nurses came to check on him.
"I do my job," he said again. "You wanted me? Well, you've got me."
"You are my son," Black growled finally. "You can't deny who you are. Your training. Your legacy."
"It's my training, but Kate is my legacy," he said quietly. "Do we have a deal?"
Black clutched at the railing harder and his chest worked. "You don't - leave me much choice."
"There is always a choice. Kate has taught me that. Do we have a deal?"
"You stay in the CIA," Black roughed out. "I leave. She lives. Bracken?"
"Has nothing to do with you, but he murdered her mother. Do you think I'm letting that go?"
"That's why you're staying," Black said with some relish.
Castle couldn't deny it, and he didn't like giving his father any satisfaction at all. But he'd be gone, retired, out of it. "Do we have a deal?"
"Deal." And then Black laughed, a strange and scraping sound. "You have no idea what you've done."
For a moment, it caught him. It actually made him pause.
And then he remembered who he was dealing with.
Castle was done.
He turned and he left.
They sat down side by side in the waiting room chairs and even though there were CIA agents scattered here and there, he turned his palm up over his thigh and stretched out his fingers, waiting for her.
She took his hand.
"You okay?" he murmured.
"No. You?"
"No." He said in a breath and closed his eyes, couldn't keep them like that for long. Too many visions, too much he'd done. The cold curl of her fingers around his kept him static and anchored for now, and he focused on that one connection.
"How long?" she said then.
"I don't know. Director should be here any moment. After that, we'll find a place for tonight. And then. . ."
"And then."
"Life?"
She sucked in a breath more ragged than clean and he squeezed those fingers in his.
"We can do it, Kate. We can."
"I don't think I want to do this anymore," she whispered. "I can't be this person."
He nodded slowly, his guts churning. "I don't want you to, either."
"But I don't want you to be alone," she murmured. Her voice caressed even as it cut. "You need a partner. I'm your partner. I don't - I can't let you go alone."
"Staying in the CIA is part of the deal," he said quietly. "We talked about this."
"It ensures his cooperation. I know. I do. I just. . ."
"I don't want you to do this either," he said again. "I don't. Go back to being a cop. You're so good at it, Kate. So good."
"I can't leave you to him."
"He'll be retiring," he said quietly.
"Still."
Their words fell off and into nothing. Her fingers flexed in his and he stared at the linoleum floor.
"I don't know what I want," she said finally. "I can't make this decision now."
"Then, don't. Leave it alone."
She nodded, silent, and he wished again that she hadn't gone in that hospital room.
A flurry of movement caught his eye and he lifted his head.
The Director was here.
She found a room for them online at Larchmont Hotel and booked it while he talked with the Director of the CIA in a room off the hospital's main corridor. She could see them across from where she sat in the waiting room, see the grave set to Castle's mouth and the serious slant of the older man's shoulders.
The Director was gray-haired and grizzled, like he still spent time in the field. His eyes were the same piercing blue as Castle's, and Beckett had a strange and brutal surge of feeling in which she wished this man was his father instead. She pressed the heel of her hand to her chest where the scar ached straight through like a knife.
The Larchmont and then?
She had no idea. He'd said life but that was a long-term goal that seemed both ridiculous and entirely unavailable.
Esposito came back into the waiting room and sank down to a chair beside her. His knee knocked into hers once.
"Nice shirt, Beckett."
She glanced down at herself and saw the band tshirt, the metallic lettering and the ratty hem. Kate huffed and lifted her eyes to one half of her best team. "You know. Going old school."
"You pull it off. Me on the other hand." He shook his head.
"I don't know, Javi," she said, her voice warming as she spoke. "A tight tshirt, show off those guns - Barry Manilow maybe?"
He growled and hulked in the chair beside her, all swarthy and male and feigned hurt.
Castle rose from his seat with his hands at his side, a look of resignation. She felt the laugh that had germinated at Espo's arrival suddenly die stillborn in her chest.
"I've been listening to the scuttlebutt," Esposito said quickly. "Everyone thinks that Black has finally gone off his rocker."
She let out a fast breath and glanced to Javier. "Yeah?"
He nodded. "That he confronted Bracken, that Bracken's men took him to the woodshed."
She released her fists on her knees and pushed her fingers into the material of her borrowed jeans.
"Beckett," he said suddenly. "You gotta know. He gets near you and I'll kill him. Ryan too. I made him pinky swear."
The laugh tumbled out of her mouth, weak and spindly, but there nonetheless. She turned to Espo and hooked her arm around his shoulders, tugged him in for a quick hug. He grumbled and shrugged her off, stood up again.
"You guys need watchdogs tonight?"
She smiled up at him, let him see how much it had helped, and shook her head. "No. We have to trust that it's worked."
Espo shook his head. "Only so far you can go with that."
"We know," Castle said suddenly. "But for now, it's what it is."
Kate shifted her gaze and saw him standing just inside the door, the breadth of his shoulders fitting frame to frame.
"I don't like it," Espo said roughly.
"Neither do I," Castle sighed. There was bleakness in his mouth that made her heart clench.
"It'll work for now," she insisted. "It's the best we can do until we find a better way."
She saw him take a long, slow inhalation, and she was relieved to see that his eyes were settled. He was tired, and he was wounded, but he wasn't hopeless.
She'd thought he'd been dead. And then he hadn't been. She could handle anything else, so long as he was here. And now-
"Kate," he said, swallowing hard. "I want to get out of here. But I've got no idea where-"
"Yeah. I found us a room for tonight," she said softly. "And then we'll see about the rest."
She stood to meet him in this new life.
Thus ends Close Encounters 6: You Only Live Twice
Stay Tuned for Close Encounters 7: Live and Let Die
She watched him in the waning light that spilled in through the open front door. Their open front door.
He settled the box on top of a stack of them in the entryway and put his hands on his hips, his head tilting as he studied her. Kate couldn't see the details of his face, the way the light backlit him, but she almost could feel the soft smile, the tenderness there. The golden man.
He reached out and caught her hip, tugged her into him with a jerk that had her stuttering across the wooden floor and into his body. He smelled of sweat and sunshine and she leaned in to press her mouth to his neck.
"Hey there, sweetheart," he murmured to her, a hand coming into her hair and tangling. "You like it?"
"Love it," she breathed out.
When she lifted her head, she was close enough to see the pride in his face, the little boy pleasure at having gotten her a gift. She bit her lip and smiled back at him, cupped his cheek and scratched her nails along the five o'clock shadow.
"Hey, baby," she murmured. "You got the last of it?"
"Yeah. Last box. Boys still here?"
"Mm, whole crowd of them trying to make your illegal satellite tv work. I promised pizza," she answered. Her fingers trailed down his arm and snagged his hand; she leaned past him to shut the front door and then tugged him after her towards the kitchen.
"Pizza sounds good," he offered. "You have cash on you?"
Kate shook her head. "Was going to do it online-"
"No," he said quickly and she glanced back at him. She shouldn't be so surprised, not anymore; it should be second nature to her now, all the things he didn't want them to do. She could handle his paranoia; she could.
"Okay," she said slowly. "No online ordering. Got it. I can call?"
His lips pressed flat and his eyes went dark. "It gives them our address. There's a place a couple blocks over, right? I can just go for carry out."
So she was never allowed to order in pizza?
His hand squeezed in hers and she glanced down at their laced fingers, his strong forearms and the dusting of hair and freckles.
Okay. No pizza.
Not so hard.
"Get five or six," she said quietly. She cleared her throat and lifted her head to his gaze, saw the worry laced with a firmness that meant he wouldn't back down on this. He thought he was keeping them safe. And maybe he was.
"Five or six. All kinds?" he said.
She nodded and raised their joined hands, pressed them between their bodies as she lifted up on her toes. He seemed surprised by the kiss, and his hand startled to her hip, held her there. Kate took a breath and then nudged him away.
"Go get pizza. Gotta feed our boys."
He grinned back and that pleased pride was on his face again, sweet and almost shy. "I'll be back in thirty."
She let him go, watching him snake through the stacks of boxes towards the front door again. He plucked a key from the entry table and held it up to her, a little smirk, and then he disappeared out the front door.
She stood in their new home, her heart leaning after him, until the raucous noise of the officers and detectives from the 12th pulled her back to the present.
to be continued in Close Encounters 7: Live and Let Die