She exits the venue with her head down and her heart ripping itself to shreds inside her chest. It pounds in an angry, scandalous rhythm, attacking her ribs and reminding her if she was angry before, she's fucking livid now.
The chill of the night catches at the exposed skin of her long legs, caresses up between her thighs. A mimicking tease at the memory of the writer's kiss.
Her hair lifts and the loose tendrils flicker, tracing the back of her neck with icy fingers. Beckett shivers and refuses to remember the feel of Castle's hands moving in the same way over her skin, the heat that erupted under his touch.
It pisses her off that she can still feel it. Still feel him.
Her eyes dart to the door and there is his face, his giant cardboard cut out and she growls under her breath.
He's fucking everywhere.
She needs to leave.
Quickly and quietly, with pounding heart and stomping feet, Kate skirts a few of the stragglers who've slipped away from the party early, pulling Roy's jacket around her and dipping her chin down in the soft black collar to hide her face.
The last thing she wants is to be fucking gawped at. She's back to wanting to take off the head of the first person who looks at her in the wrong way and she seethes in silence, her tongue fast becoming acquainted with her teeth.
Kate cuts to the front of a queue of people and steals the cab of an irate woman waiting on the sidewalk. She's tall with dark hair and the fact she looks vaguely like Paula gives Beckett an odd sense of satisfaction.
She mutters "NYPD" under her breath before she can be questioned, barks her address and slams the door in the woman's face without a second glance.
Politeness and social protocol be damned. She needs to get the fuck out of here.
The cab ride hurts.
She'll admit that, it hurts. But her anger simmers quietly over everything else, dulling the knife edge their interaction has left her perched on.
The confused looking driver, with his dark eyes downcast and knuckles gripping tight to the wheel, grunts his response to her directions and it barely registers with her ears.
Beckett ignores him quick enough anyway, she longs for the silence, and yet, as it draws near, she starts to fear it too.
They creep away from the masses, slowly joining traffic, and she hates herself for it immediately, but with eyes that operate outside of her control, Kate watches through the window as the distance between them increases.
Her, in the cab and Castle, still inside and oblivious to her exit.
Castle.
Still oblivious.
There is a flare of annoyance, more anger through her chest and she hears the words again.
Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.
What man has ever turned you away?
He's - she has no words for it! The grind of her teeth is sufficient vocalisation, the clench of her fists and the fight of her heart against the truth verbose enough for the moment.
Yet in the silence her heartbeat is deafening.
It looms, hovers just out of reach and driven back by the roar of the engine, but as the vehicle finds its rhythm, the quiet descends, seeking her out, vicious and claiming.
Absolute.
Kate finds herself cloaked in darkness with the shine of a single, spotlight focused dead center on her chest, where she hides her secret.
She's in love with Castle.
Self centered and egotistical as he may be. She wants him. It's a fist behind her breast bone. It hurts. This truth she hides from in daylight suddenly like a neon reflection in the pitch black.
She's in love with Castle.
Under the microscope of her own investigative mind the moment she finds herself alone on the back seat, Kate squirms to escape it, but there is no release.
There is nowhere to go.
She's trapped. All alone with the pounding, fucking insistence of that little voice in her head.
You're in love with Castle.
It's more than a crush.
You like him.
You don't want him to leave.
That's why it hurts, why she feels the rejection blister more than it should. It's why she had to have him in a very public place and damn the consequences, because as much as she hides from it, as much as she pretends to herself, Kate knows the truth.
She has for a while.
She's in love with Castle and the hazy blur of her stupidity has blinded her sensible side.
Why can't she bring herself to regret it?
She swipes at her hair quickly - the strands mussed and scorched by the trace of his fingertips - pulls Roy's coat around her for warmth and the sudden movement engulfs her in a scent both sweet and familiar.
Castle.
She shifts and it hits her again, stronger this time, as if the man himself were sitting beside her.
It's everywhere.
All over her.
Burnt into her skin.
The smell of him thickens the sob that lingers in the back of her throat, the words idiot, moron and fool on endless repeat in her head, only now and then interspersed with titters of you love him and get her out of your system.
She tortures herself as the cab glides through the too awake streets of New York, she listens to the voices that battle for dominance inside her and she believes them all.
She's in love with him. And she's a fool.
Kate pulls the coat around her further and inhales the warmth of him, the aroma of sex and skin and that tang of something she can't name that catches her by surprise every time they pass in the hallway of the twelfth.
The secret pounds under her skin, but for the few moments that she has here in the solitude she allows herself to revel in the scent of him as it lingers over her.
She pushes aside the jacket, dips her nose down to the curve of exposed skin at her shoulder - the skin he sank his teeth into - and inhales.
The sweetest intoxication.
It lasts all of ten seconds before another wave of anger crashes over her.
It pisses her off that she's in love with him.
As suddenly and as sharply as the realization hits her, as it sinks in and squirms its way under her skin - to find purchase in the tenderest parts of her - it starts a fire of a whole other kind.
Rage comes back. A roaring inferno.
It crackles and licks and twists in smoky spirals of heated red and hot white veracity.
It burns.
She gets angry with herself and the feelings that propelled her into his arms.
Quick, fast and desperate, hungry and intense, they all come back so damn quick she feels as though she's missed the ignition.
The fire's already consuming her, swallowing up her oxygen and spreading out over her limbs, blackening everything in her path.
She's in love with him and so what?
She had sex with him. And maybe it started off as a way to prove a point but now it's so much more than that.
She owns it.
Owns the stupidity of the night and the recklessness of her decisions and she's half tempted to turn the car around and take her anger out on him again, in spectacular fashion. But they're already pulling up outside her apartment.
Fuck!
She takes it out on the door as she wrenches herself free from the cab. Cracks the handle viciously the same way she flipped the lock in the bathroom, slams the door closed with the same force she used to propel his hard and willing body into the wall.
And it's not until she's out in the cold night and standing there on the sidewalk that she realizes she has no money to pay for her ride. That she forgot her damn purse and has no key to get into her building, into her own fucking apartment.
"Beckett."
She flinches, startles and turns.
His voice attacks her from the shadow and for the stupidest half second she thinks it's all in her head.
Then Castle emerges.
Impossible and rugged, looking a little worse for wear, but there he is. A flare of flavor bursts across her tongue and she knows it's him she can taste, the remnants of their kisses under her skin.
He wants her out of his system, but Castle's so firmly embedded within her that she can taste him, feel him, hear the echo of him inside her head when he isn't there.
He swims through her veins like alcohol, the effect hot, electric and exhilarating.
From the shadowed entrance of her building, with his hand extended, offering her the missing purse, Castle steps closer.
His voice is firm and low.
"Beckett, we need to talk."