A/N: So, this is the story I had mentioned before, and it's about two years old, but not read much. It's from the beginning of season three, and was started in the summer so things don't really match up. Yes, we're on season 4, but if you'll entertain a little time traveling to season 3, I think you'll enjoy this story. There is a bit of a mature scene at the very end of this, so if you're not into that you have two choices: 1. Don't read the story, or 2. Don't read the last chapter (personally, I'd just not read the last chapter, because the story is fun). :P

It's a long story at around 62,000 words, but that's chump-change around here, so I don't think anyone will mind. Also, it's written in First Person, my first foray into this type of POV.

Anyway, enjoy!

Chapter 1

I sat in the passenger seat of Kate's car and she ignored me. Her eyes kept watch over the road and were narrowed to little more than slits and never once looked in my direction. She had let me back in, but we were still on rocky ground from time to time.

I didn't even do anything this time, but I could tell it was going to be one those days and it wasn't even nine-thirty. I usually made it until eleven before she wanted to throw me out. Not today and maybe it was the chill in the fall air or just that time of the month, but she was more annoyed with me than usual and I started to wonder if maybe I'd be better off riding with Ryan and Esposito.

"Beckett?" I said slowly, not sure if talking would be good for my health, but sitting in silence had begun to drive me crazy. I wanted her to talk to me again so that this coldness that sat wedged between us would melt, but nothing I did helped. I was just about out of ideas. Trying to figure out what Kate Beckett wanted was like trying to figure out why a dog greets you sometimes with a nose in the crotch.

She turned to me, that glare that I've come to know quite well playing on her face. She looked cute and I would have said so, but last time I mentioned something like that it didn't end well. It still surprised me how oblivious she seemed to be to her own beauty, and if anyone, (or maybe just me) suggested that she was gorgeous they better have an escape plan… luckily I always had an escape plan. Except, I was in a car so maybe I don't.

"What?" Her voice was stern, the bossy Beckett voice that she liked to use most of the time. Call me crazy, but it started to grow on me. I smiled over at her and hoped it would defuse things. It didn't.

"I'd say I was sorry if I thought it would help," I said, and I'm not exactly sure why. I had nothing to be sorry for—yes I left for the summer but I left last summer too. We were back to working with each other and while there seemed to be some kind of weirdness between us I thought we gelled together pretty well… except for the glares and the trigger temper Beckett seemed to have picked up over the summer.

"What are you talking about?"

"Nothing, I'm just kind of sorry." I said, still trying to figure out what exactly I meant. The words had come out before I actually thought about them, one of my many talents, I guess. Can't edit the words that you say, only the ones that you write.

"Sorry for what?" Her eyes jumped from between the road and me. It was crazy how much I loved those eyes on me, even for a moment, even when they were locked in a death glare. I loved them even more when she looked to me for help. She hadn't done that too much lately, even before I left. She kept those gazes reserved for Demming most of the time.

Demming.

For some reason that guy really caused a problem for everyone. I never would have guessed, and yet looking back on it I should have seen that giving him a pass was going to ruin things. Beckett wasn't mine though and I had no right to deny him… which didn't mean if I had it to do all over again I wouldn't have.

I sighed and looked out the window. The streets of New York traveled by in bursts of blurs as driving in the city wasn't so much driving as it was stopping and waiting. Normally we would talk and I'd crack some joke and she'd laugh and tear me down a peg or two. It had become routine but when I left and didn't come back right away I seemed to have broken that.

I could feel her eyes on me, waiting for an answer and I didn't have one.

It was almost painful to be this close to her and not be able to touch her without having my fingers broken. It took Demming for me to see how much she meant to me. I missed her over the summer, missed her so much that at times I was writing Kate instead of Nikki just because I wanted to see her name. I'm sad, I know and I'm okay with that, possibly a little crazy too, but then again I'm a writer and we're all a little crazy. The only thing that changes with a writer is what they're crazy about and if someone asked me? Well, my answer would be a certain NYPD Detective… and after admitting that I'd be found in a sewer grate somewhere with two well placed shots in center mass. They would never catch the killer, of course.

"Castle." I turned out of habit. It's funny how she says my name when she's mad, almost as if she's calling me an asshole, and maybe she was. If I had to take a guess I'd say she hated me a little bit.

"Beckett?"

"What are you sorry about?"

"Everything." I said and shrugged. I couldn't quite read her expression as she traded time between watching the road and me. "And nothing. I don't know honestly. I just want to know what I did."

Goddam. I should have got some tape or something because I was just digging myself deeper and if I kept going I'd have to brush up on my Chinese.

She drummed her fingers on the steering wheel, and I almost could see her mind working as she thought over what I said. A minute went by and her bottom lip found its normal place under her teeth. God, I loved it when she did that. She brought the car to a stop at a light and turned to me, the lip was still in place and her eyes searched me.

"Why did you leave then?" She asked and I found myself in the spotlight. It wasn't a surprising question but it was one I didn't have an answer prepared for.

"Because… there wasn't anything here for me," I said and regretted it the moment the words left my mouth. Beckett's face contorted for only a moment into the saddest, most painful look I'd ever seen on a woman and I found myself trying to back track before I realized there was no where to go. "Demming took over where I was. There was nothing more for me to do and I had a book to get done."

"Demming wasn't working with me, you were."

"Beckett, you were freezing me out on cases, sidelining me." She didn't want me around anymore. She was fine on her own, always had been and now she had someone to fill the hole she had in the love department. What was I suppose to do?

"Only because you two were going at it like moose in heat." The image made me smile and I saw the slightest hint of one on her lips as the light changed and she went through the intersection, only to be stopped at the next light.

"I know and that was part of why I left." I said and tried my best to block out the memories as they came flooding back. It's amazing how the mind works. It can wall off the pain so well that you completely forgot about it except for a faint pang when you started to get close, like a radar blip telling you to go no further.

If you did, if you ignored those warnings, then you were slammed with every little thought and detail from those memories… and right then that was exactly what was rushing though my head. The sitting on the desk, lips against ears. The kissing in the halls, the knowing looks and the sharing of cabs. Her shoving me to the side, taking Demming and leaving me behind, having to work with Ryan and Esposito. Don't get me wrong, they were great, awesome even, but I was there to shadow her. It hurt, I'm not going to lie, but I was an outsider here.

Demming fit in even better than I did, he was a detective. He belonged. I was just someone she was saddled with, and while she had let me in sometimes, for the most part, I now realize, I wasn't part of her world. I was just someone looking in, writing down what I saw. All that time I thought I was starting to fit in with them, but I wasn't even close.

The thought that I meant so little struck me a little hard, especially as she didn't say another word for a good long while, leaving me to my thoughts. They weren't friendly thoughts but they were thoughts that I had all my life, mostly showing up when I was kid. The thoughts of never really fitting in, being abandoned. Sounds all dark and dramatic, don't it? That's not what I'm getting at, well, not really. I just mean that being rejected hurts and finding out you weren't as close as you thought hurts even more.

I wanted to fit in with them. I loved each of them and loved Beckett a little bit more, but I cared deeply about them all. I just wanted to be a part of the team and I thought I was. I really thought they enjoyed me being around, that I brought something to the table for them. It turns out I didn't. Nothing had changed in the time I had been there. At least not as much as I had thought. I was just a writer that didn't know when to say when.

Writing was a way to deal with my trouble and my pains, but how do you do that when what you're writing is the thing causing you pain? I could write Nikki no problem before, when Kate and I were close. Sure, she shunned me like a mennonite farmer, but she at least would play, have a little fun with me once in a while. She at least acknowledged me. I thought we had become pretty good friends, and yet when Demming showed up it all fell apart around me, and I don't even think she noticed how out there I had become.

So, I left. Just got my ass out of there as soon as I had a good enough excuse. Partly because I couldn't stand it anymore; how could anyone stand watching the person they care about most be with someone else? I don't know, maybe some can, but I'm not strong enough to sit there day after day, spending all this time with her and then having to listen about Demming having done this or that, or wasn't it funny when Demming came in and… so on and so forth. I can't sit through that, not that I thought Kate was going to throw it in my face or go into detail, but it would come up and I didn't want to hear it.

So what was a guy like me to do? I didn't push, I didn't try to get in the way, I just stepped out of the light and watched for a bit until I found someone to spend my time with. Sure, maybe Gina was a bad idea… a very bad idea with how things had broken off before, and how things had broken off a few weeks ago, but at the time it seemed like such a great idea. She was a known entity; I knew what I was getting for the most part and she seemed like what I needed for the summer. She worked for everyone. I wouldn't be alone all summer, I'd be out of Beckett's hair and she and Demming could boink each other all they wanted and I wouldn't have to see the aftermath. Or any of it.

The problem was, and I had only found out after coming back, that she'd broken up with Demming the day I had decided to leave. Great timing, I know. I never would have guessed because she gave nothing away at first, until we were in interrogation.

No one really wanted to talk to me then, not even Esposito or Ryan.

Things were bad with them since that whole thing with the body in the bed and me not getting in touch with any of them as soon as I got back. Not the smartest thing I've ever done, but I had a book coming out, I was busy as all hell and… well that was all an excuse. Really I just wanted to stay away. I wanted to try to move on with my life without having to think about Kate every ten minutes, (I was able to go about fifteen at one point, I was impressed with myself).

It took a bit of doing, a couple times of letting them beat me at Halo: Reach and Madden, but Ryan and Esposito had let me back in, at least I think so. Sometimes I think I hurt Ryan more than Esposito by not getting back in touch and he was at least being civil to me. But compared to Kate, we were best friends forever again.

I still tried to fix things with Kate every chance I got. Of course it didn't matter then. She was dating someone else, or she had been the last couple of weeks. I was still not really sure of her status and I dared not ask. She's always played it close to the chest, (and we'll move away from that before I think to much about it) so it's hard to read exactly what was going on in that head of hers. But since I left and came back she's even more closed off. I had lost my footing on the mountain and now I had to start back up, but at least I had a bit of map this time out.

We finally pulled up to the crime scene we had been making our way to for what felt like hours in the silence of the car. The entire place swarmed with people and it made sense considering it was Central Park, mid-day and some kid found a body in a tree. New Yorkers loved a scene, whether it was a club, or a crime scene, it didn't matter. All that mattered is that they could say they were there.

Kate got out first, no word to me, no pause to ready herself. She just turned the car off and stepped out, walked away. I sat there for a moment, watching as her coat flapped around behind her, caught by the wind. There was almost something majestic about her and the scene.

She continued on and I finally got out when she was almost out of sight. She had her hands in her pockets now, and pressed the jacket tightly against her sides. When I got out of the car I realized why she was doing it. It was cold. I'm not talking a nippy fall day; it felt like someone had moved New York into the Arctic without telling anyone. Well, maybe not that cold, but christ, it kind of felt like it.

I pulled my long coat tightly around me, popping the collars against the wind and rushed to catch up to her. It wasn't too hard to keep her in sight as she didn't seem to be trying to ditch me, though I got the feeling she wished she could. She paused at a uniform who was holding a logbook and bent down and signed it before handing back the pen with a smile.

I stopped at the same uniform. McCree was his name. He usually got stuck with the logbook for some reason. He gave me a small nod and a half smile when I looked down at the book. Kate had signed:

Detective Kate Beckett — Richard Casstle — 8:33 A.M.

I shook my head and said goodbye to McCree before rushing off. She usually signed me in with her, but never like that. It was almost kind of funny.

I over took her at a park bench about twenty feet away form the shivering police tape that wrapped around a number of trees, breaking a square of ground away from the park. Uniforms were already on the scene, talking to a few people, their dollar store notepads in hand with pencils scribbling away.

"Just like old times," I said to Kate, trying to break the silence and what I got was a small turn of her head toward me, her eyes narrowed, sending death my way.

Okay, so she was still mad.

I followed her to the tape and ducked under with her to meet with Ryan and Esposito who's faces were already a blistering red from the wind that was pushing through the crowd. I could feel my own ears and nose beginning to ache.

"Morning Beckett, Castle," Esposito said and I nodded toward him and he returned it. "Forty-two year old male. Kid found him in the tree early this morning while with his mom. They were out walking their dog and they found Mr. High-and-dry with no one really around. The mom called 9-1-1 on her cell." He glanced over to me with a small wink and I smiled. He was trying to tell me the mom was pretty hot. I quickly scanned the area, but the only hot woman around was Kate… again not something I was going to mention.

"Any I.D.?" Kate asked and moved closer to the tree, peering up into the brown and orange leaves, which swung weakly on their branches. I saw the body just fine from where I was. He was wedged into the Y of the trunk, his butt toward us, and the rest of him hanging out the other side. He was dressed at least. No full moon.

"None, checked his pockets and found only a few candy wrappers and a fifty cent coin." Laine said and appeared out from behind the tree. I had been wondering where she was hiding because if this was Perlmutter's scene he'd have already yelled at us at least once in that get-off-my-lawn tone he liked to use.

I smiled at her and gave a small wave, which made her regard me with a look that I couldn't quite place. It finally softened slightly and I took the chance to ask the question that I was sure everyone was asking themselves.

"Why is he in a tree?"

"Building a treehouse?" Ryan asked with a small smile and everyone turned to him, including me, no one laughing. "Right then, tough crowd." He said and slunk back a little bit. I did my best not to start laughing which I failed for the most part and it earned me a glare from Kate.

"Forgetting the peanut gallery… you get anything else, Lanie?" Kate took one last glance at me and I held my hands out, asking what the look was for. She had already turned back to Lanie and missed it. Not that it would have mattered, she wouldn't have explained anyway.

"I have… basically nothing at the moment. Once we get him out of the tree I'll have more. I'm not a huge fan of ladders when it's this windy." Lanie paused and took a glance at me. That hard stare was back and I met it for a moment before she turned back to Kate and I was left staring at the side of her face. "Beckett, I need to talk to you for a moment, okay?"

"Uh, okay…" Kate said and moved toward Lanie. I went to move forward too but stopped after taking half a step. Lanie was looking at me over Kate's shoulder, her stare telling me all I needed to know: This was a private chat and if I tried to butt in I was a dead man… so I went over to Esposito and Ryan and talked about Halo, all the while keeping my eyes on the two women as they talked.

Kate looked upset, talked with broad motions of her hands. Once or twice I was sure she had used my name and not in a flattering manner. I didn't really mind, at least she was talking about me. I just hoped they weren't planning how to get rid of my body. I'm sure police officers have all kinds of good hiding places for the bodies, and if I had to guess I'd say Kate had more than the rest and probably some of them were full. Creepy thought, but then, when a woman like Kate was mad at you anything could happen.

The two finally broke apart, Lanie looking reproachful and Kate looking annoyed and tired. She walked away with her head down for a moment before she held it up and found me watching her. "What?"

"What-what?" I said, looking at the two detectives beside me and then back to her as she closed the distance between us.

"You okay?" She came up beside me. I could smell her perfume and I found my heart beating just a bit faster, my stomach danced to the left and then to the right. I didn't get a chance to answer before she was past me and to the tree again, walking around it in a slow circle. She was back to work.

"Do we know what killed him?" She called and I looked over to Lanie who pursed her lips for a second before pointing at the tree. She still didn't look happy.

What could they have been talking about that would tick Lanie off as much as Kate? I doubted I'd ever really know, and that bugged me. Neither woman would be very forthcoming, mostly because they were best friends and when one was mad at me, the other was annoyed.

I just wished I knew what I could do to make it up to Kate, explain that I never really meant to hurt her. Then again, I'm not sure if I did hurt her. It didn't make sense for her to be hurt if I left, especially after all the times she had tried to get rid of me. She didn't even notice me for like three weeks, or when she did, she forgot all about me when Demming walked in or even just glanced in her general direction. It felt a bit like high school.

"Again, have to wait until we get him out of the tree, but my guess is the two holes in his back had something to do with it."

Kate nodded, not looking over. "Okay," she said and motioned to Ryan and Esposito, doing her best to not make eye contact with me. She was ignoring me again, or at the very least trying hard to make me feel out of place. Score one for her because it worked.

She took a hand and brushed back a few strands of hair that had blown into her face before she spoke. "You two, once they get him down, take his picture and see if anyone has seen him hanging around here. I'm gonna go talk to the mother and kid, they might remember something else."

"No problem." Esposito said and the two left me standing by myself with only Kate in front of me for company. She turned to watch them go before she headed off to a group of uniformed officers.

I stood there for a moment, trying to decide if I should go with her or head off with the guys. The guys were at least not ignoring me, but at the same time I had to fix things with Kate. I had to keep pushing. At some point I'd get through, as long as she didn't kill me first.

I fell in step behind her and kept my eyes up to the back of her head, which was surprisingly hard. I don't leer or stare often, but it's a constant battle with Kate. Luckily I'd been winning most of the time and when I wasn't she didn't notice. I was sure she knew I was staring at her now, but she made no mention of it.

A group of uniformed officers at the other end of the crime scene seemed to part the closer Kate got and I could see a young woman with a son who looked maybe five or six sitting on a bench talking to one of the them. Esposito was right, the mom was cute and there was no ring either, always a plus. I won't describe her, but take my word for it, if she was a single mom, the guy that she had been with was an idiot for not putting a ring on her finger. Then again, looks weren't everything. I had learned my lesson after two divorces, sure they were both nice to look at, but in the end they were basically bat-shit insane.

Maybe that says more about me than them, though. I must attract the crazies which explains why Kate isn't into me, I guess.

"Hi, I'm Detective Kate Beckett, this is Richard Castle." She motioned back at me like it was an after thought. "I was hoping I could ask you a few questions."

The woman looked down at her son for a moment and then met Kate's eyes with a frown. "I really wish I could just put this behind us. My son has been through enough."

"I understand that Ms…"

"Emerson."

"Okay, Ms. Emerson, I understand that, I do. It's only a few questions and then we're out of your hair." Kate said and had a half smile on her face. She could be charming when she wanted to be.

"All right." Emerson said slowly, her hand going to her neck and she tapped her pinky finger against her collar bone.

"Thank-you. First, what were you doing out here so early."

"Walking our dog, Moxi. She's over there, tied to the tree." I turned to look where she pointed and found a yellow lab sitting calmly, her head drifting back and forth trying to keep up with everything. I had the urge to go over and start playing with her, but resisted as I doubted Kate would be all too happy with me if I did.

"Who found the man in the tree?"

"My son, Mason. He was walking ahead, playing with a tennis ball and I think it hit a rock or something and it landed over by the tree… that's when he saw the man."

"Did you see anything strange? Anyone hanging about?" Emerson laughed and quickly stifled it with a hand.

"It's New York, there are always strange people hanging around in the park."

"True, but can you think of anything that kind of felt off to you?"

"Other than the guy in the tree?" I snickered at this, turning away. Kate had been nice, but I didn't think she would continue if Emerson didn't stop being a smart-ass. But it was still pretty funny to me.

"Yes."

"No, not really, but I wasn't really looking."

"Okay, thank you for your time Ms. Emerson." Kate said and turned away, and for some reason she grabbed me by my shoulder and pulled me back over to the crime scene.

"What's going on, Beckett?" I asked and wiggled my shoulder out of her grasp.

"Nothing, I just don't want you hitting on a witness." She said, finally looking at me straight on, and I found myself wishing she still avoided my eyes.

"What makes you think I would hit on her?"

"Because that's what you do, Castle. That's all you do around pretty women." I liked to flirt and play, but I wasn't after every pretty woman I saw. Hell, if that was true I'd be dating a lot more than I was. I'd have a girlfriend waiting for me somewhere. If I was interested in tons of other women I'd be somewhere else. I told her this and she just stared at me for a moment.

"I don't care, Castle," she said and began out of the park. Now she got on my nerves. Why was she punishing me? What the hell did I do that was so wrong and worthy of that kind of treatment? It's like I had cheated on her or something.

I caught up with her just before she got to her car and I reached out, grasped her shoulder and pulled gently, trying to get her to turn around. Apparently it was a bad idea because one-second I was standing up and in the next I was looking up at the cloud filled sky with blood running from my nose and into my mouth. The metallic taste almost made me gag and I had to spit out the blood before I threw up as it was pooling in the back of my throat.

Through blurry eyes I saw Kate kneel down beside me, her face in complete surprise and for the second time ever I saw she didn't know what to do, or what really had happened. I didn't either, all I knew was that my nose may have been broken and my head was killing me.

"Shoot, Castle, I'm so sorry." She said and I could feel one of her hands on my chest and the other touching my cheek, her thumb swiping away blood that was trailing around my mouth.

"I'm okay," I said, or at least I tried to but it was muffled and I doubted she really understood.

"Why did you grab me…? I'm so sorry. Let's get you up." Her hand pressed into mine and with surprising strength she pulled me basically to my feet before she cupped my face in her hands. I looked down at her, blinking away the tears that formed on their own.

"Come on, tilt your head forward slightly. Pinch here." She said as she tilted my head for me and brought my hand up to my nose. "I'm sorry, really I am."

She moved next to me, leaning over as if trying to get a better look at my nose. She didn't say anything for a few moments as I continued to squeeze my nose shut. Man, it hurt doing that, but the bleeding did start to subside.

"It doesn't look broken." She said and reached out with a finger and pressed against the bridge of my nose and I winced. "Nope, seems to be okay. You got lucky, or you have a really hard nose."

"Probably both," I said and she nodded, still frowning. I didn't need her feeling bad about this with everything else that was going on between us. "Hey, was my fault, I shouldn't have snuck up on you."

"No, I shouldn't have reacted that way. I know better."

I shrugged. "You're under a lot of stress, I get that. Don't worry about it, I'm still in one piece… bloody, but still all here." I said and smiled for half a second before the pain made me stop. "Can I ask you something?"

She furrowed her brows for a moment before nodding. "What?"

"What's going on?"

"What do you mean?"

"With us," I said, and pulled my hand away from my nose to check if it was still bleeding. It was. "What did I do that made things so… bad between us? I thought we were friends, and yet I come back and it's like one day we're fine and the next we speak in sentences consisting of one or two words."

"Castle, do we have to talk about this now?" She asked running a hand against her cheek. "I already feel bad enough about elbowing you."

"Yes, now is as good of a time as any." I said and caught my reflection in the window of her car. I looked like a goddam clown… well, maybe more like IT the clown than a circus clown, it was creepy. She must have saw my face change because she looked at the same window and started to chuckle.

"I think I have some wet-naps in the glove compartment." She opened the driver side door, reaching over the console. It took her a minute but she returned with a small container and pulled out a towel and came toward me with it. I went to take it from her but she reached past my hand and began to gently wiping away the blood.

She stopped and looked up to me, a small smile on her lips and I found myself lost in her muted green eyes. They were dancing with mine and I forgot all about the pain in my face and smiled despite it.

"It's hard to do it with one hand, and you need to keep pressure on your nose." She said.

Why she explained what she was doing I couldn't say, but I nodded. She pulled away, broke eye contact and took my free hand in hers. She pulled a new towel from the container and wiped the hand before cleaning her own hands.

"You didn't answer my question." I said and gagged as some blood found it's way down my throat. I turned away from her, spat into the grass. It was completely red.

She crossed her arms, leaning back against the car and looked out at the crime scene behind me. She bit her lip hard enough that I could see it fold under her teeth. She wouldn't met my eyes, but I could tell by her expression that she was angry, or at least getting there.

"You just left." She said finally. She looked to the ground, her foot tapped against a stone. "You just left with that woman, and then you didn't even call. You didn't even let us know you were back in town. That hurt, Castle. That hurt a lot."

And there it was, in a nutshell. I had a feeling it might have been that I didn't get in touch with her, but that she was upset that I left? Well, that was news.

"You knew I was leaving, Beckett. I told you it would be our last case for a while." I said as I moved in next to her and leaned against the car. She shifted away from me and kept her gaze to the ground. She licked her lips before she spoke.

"Yeah, you did tell me, but you didn't tell me why."

"What?"

"You didn't tell me the real reason that you were going." She glanced my way with a frown.

"I did, I had a book due and needed to get it finished." I said and wondered exactly where she was going with this.

"So it wasn't because I was with Tom? That we were dating?"

The name struck a dark pit in my stomach. Yes, that was maybe part of the reason for leaving so early, but I didn't think it was that obvious. How could I tell her that yes, Demming chased me away? That I couldn't stand being around her when they were together? That I couldn't stand watching her slip away?

"I know it was," she said looking over, her brows raised and she looked somehow sad. "You couldn't stick it out so you just left and cut ties." She dropped her head and sighed. "I could deal with it, but you couldn't."

"Wait? What did you have to deal with?"

"Ellie? Your ex-wives?"

"I wasn't making out in front of you. Or lying to you about it." I said as a surge of anger rose up inside and if Kate's expression was anything to go by she was feeling the same.

"I told you why I lied to you."

"Yes, not to hurt my feelings, it worked wonders."

"Goddammit, Castle," she said as she pushed off the car. "I really was trying not to hurt you."

"And why did you think you dating Tom would hurt me?" I asked and crossed my arms, turned my head up to the sky. The bleeding had finally stopped, but my nose still ached and it felt like I had a film of blood on my tongue.

"Because—"

"Because you knew I was already hurting because of how you were treating me."

"No…" She began, but trailed off, the anger defused, which was probably a lucky break for me. "Yes… I don't know."

"Yeah you do. But my question about the lying is why did you care if you dating Tom made me uncomfortable?"

"Because you were my friend? I didn't want to hurt your feelings if I could avoid it. Is it really that hard to understand?"

I shrugged. "No, not really. So you only think of me as a friend. I guess I'm firmly in the friend zone then, huh?"

"What?" She said squinting and gave a small shake of her head, her upper lip curled slightly.

"Nothing. Look, do you even want me around anymore? You've said you did before, but your actions haven't bared that out. You tried to hide Josh, which is fine, I don't need to know about your personal life if you don't want me to, but you still pushed me away at work, made things feel awkward. I know you didn't mean to, but still. It just seems like I'm in the way somehow." I looked down at my hands as I spoke. They were stained a cherry color like I had just messily ate a popsicle.

She didn't answer for a few moments and I finally looked over to her. Her eyes were on me, shimmering with what looked to be unshed tears. She wasn't crying, but she was angrier than I had ever seen her and she reached out, putting an insane about of pressure on my arm and pulled me close.

"I was going to tell you what I thought about you that day after the party. That day you walked out on me and didn't seem to even care what I was going to say. Don't turn this around on me."

"You were dating Demming at the time. What? You expected me to sit by and pine for you? You didn't when I was with Ellie, or Gina. Hell, you have a boyfriend now. What did I do that was so different than you?" I said and swiped her hand off of me. "Was Gina what I wanted? No, not even close, but what I wanted I couldn't have so I moved on. I bowed out. I did it as gracefully as I could, and the reason I didn't hang out and hear what you had to say was because I was scared."

"Scared?"

"Yes, scared that I would break. That I wouldn't be able to hold onto the facade I had put up to hide how hurt I was, not that you would have noticed I guess, but I still tried."

"Wouldn't have noticed what?" She said and almost snarled at me.

"You didn't notice what you were doing to me. How your shutting me out hurt more than my nose did a few minutes ago. You were oblivious to it all."

"I wasn't oblivious, Castle. I was just… happy."

"Yeah, but you treated me like you did the first time we met. Like I was a burden again and that the last year and half never happened. Same thing when I came back and you were with Josh, though to a much lesser extant."

"I had to push you away, all right? I had to." She said and turned away from me, her jaw clenching.

"Why?"

She gave a shuttering breath and talked to the car. "Because… I really liked you, but I couldn't have you. I couldn't be with you because, while you make me laugh, and you make me happy, I can't deal with the instability that you have around you. I've been burned so many times, Castle, and I didn't want to be burned by you. I wanted to continue working with you, but I didn't think I could date you."

"But you wanted me to stick around. You wanted your cake and to eat it too?"

"No… I don't know Castle. I really don't. I broke up with Demming because after a talk with Esposito I decided I wanted to take a chance. I wanted to give us a chance. I realized that I wanted… but that fell through pretty quickly."

I actually started to laugh and she turned to me, her eyes shimmering even more. I couldn't stop it though. "God, we are so damn sad."

"What?"

"We're like ships passing in the night, separated by a thousand years. Our timing is goddam horrible." I made a motion with my hands of the passing. "We each figure out the same thing, but at such different times that we had already missed our chance."

"Not sure I'm following you."

I made a sweeping motion with my hand. "It doesn't matter, what does is this: Are you still dating that guy?"

"Haven't been for a few weeks." She said slowly, as if testing the words as she said them. She was watching me carefully and the confusion on her face made her look even more beautiful than before.

"Okay, good." I said as I turned to her and smiled through the pain. I was tired of playing this game. Fear caused all these problem; fear that I'd screw it up, that I'd lose her completely.

"Why is that good?"

"Because this is what I purpose: We go out. No funny business, we don't even tell them," I nodded my head over to the crime scene. "Just you and I. We give it a shot and see how it goes. If it doesn't work out then we can just be friends. No hard feelings and no more hurt feelings. If it does work out…" I shrugged with a smile and one finally found itself on her lips.

"You're asking me out?"

"What do you say?"

As always, a great giant, elephant sized thanks for ChrisS for beta reading this entire story for me!