Notes: This chapter goes out to LittleLizzieZentara, who reviewed Packing Heat with a muse-worthy comment:

". . . That would be an interesting conversation for her to have with Castle. What would a writer's POV be about what a person writes says about that person?"

Great question, Liz!

Part Twelve: If I Didn't Write

Beckett set aside her mostly-eaten slice of wedding cake and poured another glass of champagne, remembering what her father said last week about her poetry—not only the idea that her words honored her mother's life, but that they did so in a way that meant something to him, even after he'd pushed Kate away.

She looked at Castle, who was oddly quiet and lost in thought himself, now that their tablemates had scattered about the room. Then she returned her attention to her champagne flute and asked as though out of thin air: "When you write, do you think about how people will read it?"

Castle almost choked on his cake, recovering quickly and acting as though nothing had happened, despite that Beckett was still mildly alarmed (amused) and watching him closely to be sure he wouldn't die. "Well, sure," he managed tentatively. "I write with intent to publish." He waggled his brows because he'd just made his job sound like a crime, and he thought she'd appreciate that.

Instead, she took half a beat to decide to rephrase. "Oh, yeah. But I mean, do you write and then, I don't know, re-read it like you're someone else and imagine how it sounds to them? Or get somebody to read it before you send it in officially? Or do you just—you know, go to it?"

If she was furtively asking whether he imagined how a Nikki Heat book would sound to her when she read it, he was not about to answer that. He said, "Usually I ask Alexis to be the first set of fresh eyes."

Beckett nodded. A little lightheaded and cozily warm, she asked, "Is it easier to share fiction with someone you know?"

"As opposed to someone I don't know?"

"As opposed to not-fiction." The world of her poetry was as real as her mother's death. A truth for a truth.

"I don't know," said Castle. "I don't write non-fiction." Yes, he thought. Good. Remind her that I don't think it's real.

"I know you don't," she said, thinking about eulogies and epigraphs and poetry and wondering if it was pointless to have this conversation when Richard Castle didn't write these things. Still, she couldn't seem to stop there. This time she spoke Castlese: "I know you always say, 'What would make a better story?' But that can't be all it is, can it?"

He was amused to hear her quote him back to himself—how tipsy was she to be doing that?—but she continued before he could get a word in edgewise.

"Because if that's all it was, it wouldn't matter who tells the story."

"Sure, it depends on who's telling it," Castle agreed. "If a writer decides what would make a better story, I guess that choice says something about the writer."

He swallowed then, suddenly hearing himself, and hoped that Beckett wouldn't read into it in a way that would get him into trouble. For all of his excuses about "traditional" mainstream lit, there was really only one way to interpret the writer's take on the Nikki Heat thing based on a comment like that.

We would be a better story if we were having sex.

"No, not that," she said, and he wasn't sure which surprised him more: that Beckett didn't call him out on what his creative choices said about him, or just how relieved he was not to deal with it now. "I just meant that it makes a difference who writes something. Like—like a eulogy."

She narrowly dodged telling him what happened with her dad and the poetry several years ago, and the conversation they'd had last week over their spread of finger-foods.

"To me, your words are even more of a dedication to your mother than that old epigraph."

She was already speaking so freely, it nearly slipped out. But she still had her wits about her and there were some things that she knew well enough to hold back, to hold sacred.

"Oh, of course," said Castle.

"It matters who gives a eulogy," Beckett continued, not really hearing him now. "It means something when the speaker knew the person—can honor their memory and share their legacy."

He studied her eyes and her brows and the thoughtful little crease between them. So this was about death, then?—this unusual conversation about the writing process and being heard and the difference between one voice and another? Not Tipsy Beckett nosing around his writing habits to embarrass him?

She didn't wait for him to respond. "So I wonder if it's similar with songs and poetry and stories. How unique Hayley Blue's lyrics were to her, for instance. How, even though she performed, it's like she wrote some of them just for herself.

"Maybe," she added thoughtfully, "it's just as gratifying to write something for yourself and learn that it's meaningful to another person as it is to write with a whole audience in mind and get their praise."

He smiled at the insight, but even more so because it came from Beckett. After all, she was a cop, not a writer.

She glanced at him fleetingly, just enough that he felt like he was still meant to be included in this conversation. "So is that why the adage, 'Write what you know'?" she asked. "And how does that even work in fiction if it's fiction? And—"

Castle grinned. "You want me to answer here somewhere, or just be the bobble-head to your talk radio?"

She flashed him a quirked brow. "The what to my what? Oh. Yeah, go ahead."

He nodded once, geared up to tell a story. "One professor told me over and over to write what I know—decent, longstanding advice, right? It's why I research what I don't know to flesh out a story."

"Oh, I'm familiar with your research," she assured him a bit bawdily, abandoning the champagne flute for the slice of cake now.

"Except," Castle continued, "this guy was mainly a memoirist and didn't 'get' the mystery novel thing, so we didn't always agree about what that meant. He was a good writer, though, and I did value his input, so I tried. Well, at the time, I knew high school and college. So I wrote Death of a Prom Queen."

He paused, refraining from adding that he published that novel right around the time that Kyra went to England. It was also around the time that he decided to hang his first rejection letter on the wall. He stole a glance at the bride across the room.

"But you know what?" he said, turning to Beckett, and not shying away when she met his gaze and held it for the first time in what must have been hours. "I really like writing what I don't know. Sometimes that's how we work things out that we don't understand—just like dreaming. Or explore things that a fictional character would think and do even if we wouldn't. Or give something a practice run on paper. Or imagine something different that may never exist except inside us. But that's the great thing," he said, his voice low but magnetic, "because once you say it or write it and give it to someone else, it exists in them, too."

He couldn't read her. They were looking into each other's eyes and, God, he couldn't read hers. Why did eyes mean so many things all at once? He looked at her lips; watched her roll them inward just enough to dampen them with the tip of her tongue. His first and only logical thought was to wonder how inappropriate it would be to kiss her at Kyra's wedding dinner.

But maybe he could just—say something. Say something that existed in him and see if maybe it existed in her, too. "Kate . . ."

"I have to pee," she said suddenly. She left the napkin from her lap at her place setting, stood and strode to the ladies' room; left Castle alone at the table with his own baggage.

He imagined unlatching it to stuff one more unwieldy emotion inside.

Kate had no sooner gotten past the restroom door before she leaned back against it, closing her eyes and sighing deeply.

"Everything okay?" Kyra smiled back at her from the row of sinks as she washed her hands.

"Yeah," said Kate, still pressed to the door. Her eyes shifted as she considered how ridiculous she must look, inexplicably pinned in place, and she promptly released herself. "Yes. Thank you."

"By the way," the bride said, turning off the faucet, "I'm really glad you could be here. For us, and for Rick."

"Oh. It's nothing." Kate eyed the stalls. She didn't particularly like to have conversations through a bathroom stall. Was Kyra done chatting now? Could she go pee without expecting more pleasantries? She took a tentative step forward.

But Kyra had missed all significant nonverbal cues when she'd gone to dry her hands. "He doesn't always say things outright," she said.

Against both her bladder's wishes and her better judgment, Kate was compelled to curiosity. "What do you mean?"

"Just that I don't know if he's said it, but I hope you know what it means to him to have you here. Sometimes he can be hard to read."

Kate managed a smile as the bride headed for the door.

But Kyra paused, trying to figure out where to draw the line in self-disclosure and avoid prying into an acquaintance's life, yet unable to leave without saying something else. "You know, eventually I assumed that he would follow me no matter what I said, no matter how I pushed him away," she told Kate. "He was the one who decided that respecting my wishes was even more important."

It was only when Rick finally published Flowers for Your Grave a year after they parted that Kyra took it as a sign that he'd moved on; that she wasn't distracting him anymore.

But she kept reading. And chances were good that she would keep reading. She was hoping for a happy ending to Rick's story, whatever that might look like.

So, really, what was one more little nudge to the first woman who seemed to her to be on the same page as Rick Castle?

It wasn't meddling if it was helpful. (Oh, no—was she really going to become Sheila Blaine?)

As Kyra left the room, Kate made a break for a stall. Good champagne tonight. She really did have to pee.