Thank you to everyone for your favorites/follows/reviews. Some people have been very critical of Kate's decisions. Please understand that writing her a certain way doesn't mean that I agree with her actions. "I'm sorry" doesn't even begin to cover what she's done to Rick, or Jo for that matter. She can't change the past or her decisions. Kate will have to live with the consequences of her actions.

Also, a big thank you to Ally for the beta and putting up with my odd story revelations.

Kate is in the middle of paperwork the next day when Castle texts her: Coffee break?

She texts back her affirmative answer quickly, grabbing her coat and purse after finishing her last form. Esposito and Ryan, earning their titles as the Homicide gossip kings, don't miss the way she moves toward the elevator with a smile that betrays the fear she feels at Castle re-entering her life.

"Hot date, Beckett? And in the middle of the day?" Javi throws out to her, just short of passing for nonchalant.

"Not that it's any of your business, Espo, but I'm just taking a break to meet Castle for coffee."

"Wait, Castle?" Ryan joins in, dropping the paper he was reading and stopping her progression toward the elevator. Damn, she should know better than to feed the dogs.

"Yes, Castle. Is there something wrong with that?"

"You tell me, Beckett. Is there some reason for us to be concerned that you seem to be spending so much time with Writer Boy, even though the case is over?"

"It's coffee, Espo," she replies, playfully shoving him out of the way. "That's all."

She doesn't doubt that the boys continue to discuss her coffee "date" with Castle long after she's gone, but she's not about to give them more to talk about by telling her the real reason they're meeting for coffee.

Rick waves to her as soon as she enters the coffee house five minutes later. When she reaches the table he's procured for them, he slides a cup in her direction.

"Am I going to regret this?" she asks, realizing the double meaning only after the words are out of her mouth.

"I think I can definitively say 'no' to both of your possible meanings."

She sits down and brings the cup to her lips, her eyes falling closed as the drink warms her and the moan leaves her before she can stop it. His soft laughter from across the table reminds her of her surroundings.

"You remembered," she says thankfully, both hands caressing the warmth of the cup as she inhales the the mixture of coffee and vanilla.

"I have a long memory," he tells her, his eyes leveling with hers. The smile that had taken over her face upon seeing he remembered her favorite drink leaves immediately, and she is again hit with the ramifications of the decision she made without him.

"I-"

"Don't," he interrupts, his hand moving across the table. "Can we just skip over the constant apologies? I'm sorry, you're sorry, we're all fucking sorry." His voice rises above what is socially acceptable, and he has to apologize to a couple old ladies who stare him down for his language.

The moment breaks the tension between them, and they both hide a laugh through their respective drinks.

"You were saying?" Kate asks, still holding back her laughter.

"I just...I think we should focus on now, instead of rehashing everything we did wrong when we were teenagers. We can't change it now, Kate."

"Doesn't make what I did right."

"No, but you're doing what you can to fix it now. That's what counts."

Kate looks away from him, playing with the hem of her sweater. God, she's missed him. Even with his childish ways, he was still a constant source of encouragement for her, especially when she was homesick and missing New York.

"I told Jo about you last night," she tells him, her eyes still downcast. She doesn't feel like she should allow herself to see his initial reaction to the information. Because as much as he remembers about her, she remembers just as much. Rick Rodgers wears his heart on his sleeve, and just because he's changed his name, she doesn't suspect this part of him has changed to the point that he can hide how pleased he probably is at the idea of finally meeting his daughter after all this time. "Can you come over for dinner tomorrow night?"

"She doesn't think I'm an asshole deadbeat dad for not being around all these years?"

His words give her reason to make eye contact with him again, and she sees the worry there-that she would not correct their daughter's assumptions that he left them high and dry upon hearing that Kate was pregnant.

"The idea was certainly there, but I set her straight before her wild theories got out of hand."

"I like her already," he says with a laugh, and she can see that he's itching to know everything about their daughter.

"She's actually a lot like you, crazy theories included."

"Is this where we launch into a debate over nature versus nurture?"

"No," she says with a glare, "it's simply an observation. She's a writer, you know."

"Of course she is."

"She sticks to the facts, though, unlike her father."

"Hey, I put in my time as a journalist in college," he reminds her, jabbing the table with his index finger for emphasis.

"You wrote the entertainment gossip column, Rick. It's hardly the same."

"So...dinner tomorrow night?"

If it were anyone else, she would think that he was trying to change the subject. But at his heart, Rick has always been out for the approval of others, and she thinks he's already trying to win Jo's approval by being serious about the situation.

"Yeah, if that works for you. I don't want to keep you from Alexis or-"

"I haven't told Alexis yet," he interrupts, like it's a fact he has to tell her at that very second. "She has a school dance that night, though. I can come over for dinner."

"Rick, you know you have to tell her, right? Jo is her older sister, after all." She sounds hypocritical, saying such things to him. But he doesn't call her out on it, even though she thinks he's considering it by the way his face scrunches up.

"I know that, but I was hoping that I could meet her properly first. That, and I don't know how I could possibly pull off the 'oh by the way, Alexis, you have an older sister' bit without sounding like a total man whore."

"I doubt she would think that."

"I don't know. The papers-mostly fed information by Black Pawn and my agent-have portrayed me as the millionaire playboy. And as much as I've tried to shelter Alexis from that, she's a smart girl. That, and teenagers are horrid people who don't have filters."

"Unless you've had a complete personality transplant, you're far from a man whore, Rick."

"And you're far from one to tell me how I should tell my daughter-the one I knew about and have raised on my own since she was three-about the older sister she didn't know existed."

And there it is. The jab she's been waiting for ever since they started the conversation. She can't, however, deny him the right to make these comments. She's more than earned any anger Rick has toward her.

"I deserved that."

"Yes, but...whatever this is, however this turns out, can we at least not promise to do this in front of Jo-or Alexis, for that matter?"

Kate nods adamantly, understanding how everyone of their lives are going to change drastically in the coming months. She's not selfish enough to think that she and Jo are the only ones who will be affected by this.

She knows she's completely to blame for the situation. Yes, everything-her mother's death, her father's struggle with the bottle, and her pregnancy-presented itself within a few weeks of each other, but there was nothing that stopped her from calling Rick and telling him what had happened.

Seeing him now, all these years later, she's finally realizing the depth of the hurt she put him through. She rationalized her decision to not tell him about the baby by telling herself that he would see it as a tactic to tie him up into a relationship for the long term. It wasn't about money then-it couldn't have been. He hadn't even published his first novel at the time.

The longer Kate kept quiet about the identity of Jo's father, the easier it became to keep the status quo. Why upset the apple cart by making a proclamation that he'd fathered her child, especially once he was writing full-time and making a very comfortable living doing so?

"We're going to do a fair amount of arguing, aren't we?"

He laughs at her question, a sardonic sound escaping him. "You have to ask? Of course we will." He stops for a moment, taking the time to school his features before he continues. "But listen, I don't want you to think that I'm going to come in and try to undermine your parenting. I'll follow your lead."

"I'm not worried about that."

"But you're still worried about something, Kate. I can tell by the way your brow is furrowed."

"Is there any chance-that is, I don't suppose we can be friends."

She doesn't expect the laugh he answers her question with. "What is it with these questions? Kate, I hope we're friends. Despite everything that's happened, and everything that is bound to happen in the future, I think we can manage to be friends. At the very least."

He adds the last part as an afterthought, and she has to fight the urge to hope they could get back to being anything close to what they were to each other seventeen years ago. Friends is all she dares to hope for right now.

Rick's fist freezes in mid-air, right before it reaches the door of Kate's apartment. He's played it cool in front of Kate about meeting Jo, but the truth is that he's scared. What if she doesn't like him? What if she decides she doesn't want anything to do with him? And...what exactly has Kate told Jo about him?

The last week has been surreal, beginning with the guy who was copy-catting the murders in his books. Normally, that alone would be enough. But seeing Kate again, and subsequently learning that they had a daughter together, probably ranks first on his list of weirdest weeks ever.

The door opens, and Kate is there, smirking at him for what he's sure are tell-tale signs that he's nervous. He's adjusting his jacket, carefully running his hands through his hair, and making sure that the flowers he's holding are absolutely perfect.

"Are you going to stay out here all night?"

"I was going to knock...eventually."

"When? College graduation?"

"Not cool." He warns her, deciding that her comment was not meant to rub their situation in his face, but to break the tension and get him to come inside her apartment. They agreed not to argue about it around their daughters, and he plans to uphold his end of the bargain.

"Sorry," she tells him as she opens the door wide and allows him to enter. "Jo should be out in a minute. She was Skyping with another editor about the next issue."

"It smells amazing in here," he says, searching for some kind of conversation starter. They're both nervous, and he doesn't expect the nervousness to go away anytime soon, but he's going to at least try.

"It's-"

"Italian meatloaf," Jo says, interrupting her mother as she enters the dining room. "Mom, didn't you say it was one of Grandma's specialities?"

"Yeah."

He doesn't know if Kate says anything more, and he feels bad about that, but seeing Jo-his daughter-has stolen all of his attention. He saw her last week when she came into the precinct, but she was so surprised and shell-shocked at the time that by the time he realized her importance to him, she was already out the door.

Her hair is long and wavy like Kate's, but she has his eyes. And she's tall like Kate (though Jo can probably thank both of them for that), but curvier than her mother. Her facial features are very similar to Kate's, and he thinks that must have made it easier when she was younger for people to undeniably see that she was Kate's daughter and not raise questions about the girl's absentee father.

That thought alone makes him stumble forward and awkwardly extend his hand to Jo, not wanting his mind to venture down the road of resentment and anger toward Kate for hiding Jo from him for all these years.

Rick still hasn't been able to find any words, but for that matter, neither has Jo. She looks just as nervous as he feels, and he finds that he's cataloguing every movement and facial expression-the way she moves so he can later spend hours deciding which of her traits he got from Kate and which she got from him.

"Rick," Kate says as she steps between them, "allow me to introduce you to Johanna Alexandra Beckett-our daughter."

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