She's just missed him, Paula tells her when she shows up at the site of his book signing, Heat Rises clutched to her chest and sealed against her bullet wound. Paula eyes her up and down, pausing in her arrangement of what looks to be leftover books from the signing.

"But if you want my advice? You've got the guy twisted up enough over you, either get him out of your system or move on already. Gina can't handle anymore tragic love crap."

"Gina?" Kate questions, her fingers clenching hard around the novel's spine.

"Calm down, honey," Paula waves her off with a chuckle. "I meant that when it comes to writing, all he's produced this summer are love stories about you. Granted, Gina received those by mistake, but my point? No Nikki Heat, nothing useful, because he's too busy being heartbroken over you. So fix it."

"I can't," she growls, threatening to snap the book she's holding too tightly in half. "He's going to get killed sticking around me-"

"And you're just noticing this now?" Paula scoffs. "Look, I've always known Ricky playing with the police was a bad idea, but who am I to stop him? As long as he fulfills his publicity requirements..." Paula shrugs. "But the past couple years? He's been hung up and head over heels about you. I know you've got some dark past, dead mother, and that's why you were shot, yeah? But Richard's not going to leave you alone unless you cut him off. Why? Because he loves you, which I'm sure you have to know by now." Paula narrows her eyes, sending a very intentional flush of shame through Kate's system. "So make a choice and make it now because I'm personally sick of the moping."

Kate purses her lips, but Paula is already stalking off towards the back, not a single care or regret weighing her down. Her words remain like fresh wounds in Kate's already decimated heart.

Because he loves her.

Yeah, she knows. And maybe… maybe she loves him too, but her mother's case just takes up so much room inside of her and loving her - it's no easy feat. She would ruin him, ruin them both, get him killed.

Everyone around her tends to die and god, if she lost him too? The mere idea of it makes her stomach twist into irrevocable knots, gives her nightmares every other evening when she does manage to gain a few hours of rest.

Kate exits the bookstore with his novel still held to her chest. Her courage from earlier, her desire to talk to him, is waning, but after three months, if anything, he's owed an explanation. She sighs and finally withdraws the book from her sternum, stares down at his name gleaming on the glossy cover and strokes her thumb over the raised letters.

He deserves more from her.

She starts up the street towards his loft, only a few blocks from here, thinking only of even breathing and sure steps on the concrete. Her bullet wound still pounds out a steady rhythm of pain through her sternum, the scarring tissue along her side slicing deep with every stride. But she doesn't stop walking, not until she's stepping into his lobby and riding the elevator to his floor.

She knocks on his door before she can talk herself out of it.

It takes a moment, nothing but silence on the other side, and she begins to worry that she missed him again. Maybe he never came home from the signing, maybe he went somewhere else, maybe there's someone else-

The door swings open.

The pleasant smile on his face falls away.

"Beckett."

Shards of her heart catch in her throat. His eyes are cold, his jaw like stone, but his gaze flicks to the book in her arm.

"I went to the signing," she gets out, swallowing hard. "Paula said I'd just missed you, so I… I came here."

The hard set of his features doesn't soften. "What do you want?"

"You." His eyes flare subtly and her chest flutters. "I want to talk to you."

"I waited three months to talk to you. You never called," he reminds her, the anger alive in his gaze, but the hurt twitches along the frown lines of his mouth.

"I know," she sighs, dropping her gaze to the plaid shirt hugging his upper body. It's too hard to look him in the eye, much easier to study the way the fabric fits perfectly to his chest. "And you have every right to be angry-"

"You're damn right I'm angry," he snaps, but it's controlled, like a parent lecturing a child. "I watched you die in that ambulance, did you know that? You know what that's like? Watching the life drain out of someone you… someone you care about."

She almost wishes he would have spoken the truth again, given her a reason to address it.

"I told you, I needed some time," she murmurs, but Castle shakes his head.

"You said a few days."

"Well, I needed more."

"Well, you should have said that," he tosses back, prepared to close the door on her, but she catches it with her hand.

"Castle, look, I couldn't - I couldn't call you," she admits, lowering her hand from the door. He doesn't try to draw it closed, but the risk isn't gone. "Not without dragging myself into everything I was just trying to get some space from. I needed some time to just work through it all."

"Including what happened after the freezer?"

She sighs, but her heart is seizing, words failing.

"Or did you conveniently forget that too?"

Her eyes flash up to him, grief and despair welling up in her stomach. "Rick-"

"Look, maybe you aren't the only one who needs some time here," he murmurs, scraping a hand through his already disheveled hair.

"Castle," she whispers, biting her lip, wanting to cry. How did they ever get to this point? Standing on opposite sides of a door with his eyes so carved out and heartbroken over her? "I - how much time?"

He shakes his head and reaches forward, setting her heart to flutter as he sweeps a strand of hair behind her ear. But the graze of his fingers is fleeting, regretful.

"I'll call you."

The words, an echo of her own, sting like a slap. But all she can do is nod as his hand falls away and he retreats back into the loft, easing the door shut when she doesn't try to fight him.

She clings to the hope, though, that his words can be trusted where hers never could.

Castle rummages through every drawer he owns, tearing apart his closet and even searching his office. But he's spent the entire morning looking and it's not here.

Alexis wants him to meet her for dinner at their favorite spot later and he can't find the scarf she gave him years ago. Striped shades of blue and thick enough to keep him warm if need be, it was the first real present she ever bought him with her own money and he's fallen into the habit of wearing it when they go out together during the fall and winter months.

Rick curses and plops down on the edge of his bed. He doesn't have time for this. Dinner is just a few hours away, he's looked everywhere, and the only other place he can think of it being is...

Shit.

He glances to his phone, sitting lonely and abandoned on the edge of his office desk. He could call her.

But it's been so long since he's called her. Since she promised to call him. And he just told her less than a week ago, a mere matter of days, that he needed more time.

Calling her isn't just a terrifying idea, it's a pathetic one.

But he needs his damn scarf back. Anything else, he would let go, but not that sentimental gift from his daughter. Castle scrapes a hand through his hair. Facing the woman he used to love in person is even worse than calling her, hardly appealing, especially when he doesn't know if he should be referring to his love for her in a past tense.

Rick takes a deep breath and rises from the bed. He's already dressed, just has to grab his coat, forgoing a glance in the mirror. He doesn't need to see the lines he's noticed carving into his skin or the smears of darkness beneath his eyes.

It's only been a few months, three months to be exact, but she still has him just like she probably has his old scarf.