She knew that leaving the fight was the wrong move. But she could not just sit there biting her fingernails down to her fingers watching the beating he was taking. So, she left the Garden.

She went to her apartment and just sat in her loveseat and thought about every move he made in each round as she watched. He was leading in points by the seventh round and if he had not gone down as she left in the tenth, then he probably would have won seeing as he was ahead in points.

Knowing that the fight was televised she decided not to turn on her television. If anything, it would be over by the time she found it on TV anyway. She made something quick and easy to eat and then called it a night. She needed a lot of sleep after tonight.

Xx

He wanted to knock her door down. But he also needed to be respectful of her neighbors. He didn't want to wake everyone by making a fool of himself. Making a scene in front of her apartment is something he can do without. He lightly knocks on the front door hoping that she hasn't gone to sleep yet. But as he looks down his watch, he can tell that not many people would be up at 2:15 in the morning. He does what he doesn't want to do in pounds a little bit harder hoping to wake her. When she doesn't answer now, he does what he vowed he would never do he starts pounding on the door. Luckily no one around the surrounding apartments hears him pounding on her front door.

Xx

She hears it from a distance. Well, at least that's what it feels like when she hears it. Someone is pounding on her front door and she does not have the energy to get out of bed to answer it. The pounding gets louder the longer she stays in bed and then she needs to get up to answer it because whoever it is won't stop the pounding.

She throws on her robe and her slippers on and walks out to her front door. When she checks the peephole and she sees that the jerk is covering the sight glass with his thumb and she can't make out who is at her door.

"If you don't take your damn thumb away from the peephole, you're not going to get access to my apartment."

Rick who had been patched up by the Gardens doctor had a patch over his eye and a couple of butterfly sutures on his forehead. He looked more like Frankenstein then himself. If he took his thumb away from the sight glass, she would be shocked at what happened to him when she saw him. But he did it anyway. He lowered his hand from the peephole.

Kate watched as whoever it was move their thumb away from the sight glass and was appalled at what she saw when she looked through the peephole again.

Rick was taking a step back at the speed her door flew open. The next thing he felt was his body being slammed by a five-foot-nine-inch ball of fury. She held him with her arms around his neck and her legs wrapped around his waist in the middle of her hallway and didn't let go.

"Ah Kate we are standing in the middle of your hallway at two twenty in the morning if we don't get inside people will start talking."

"I don't care." She mumbles against his chest, barely audible.

He ventures a step towards her front door and when he feels no opposition stopping him, he continues on. He doesn't know if she realizes it but he is now fully inside her apartment. He reaches behind himself and pushes the door closed with a quick shove. He ventures further into the apartment and sits down on her couch. Her body straddled his legs when he sat.

She raises her head from his chest and takes a good look at his face. Finally, after a good minute of just studying his head, she speaks.

"Rick what did Klitschko do to you?"

"Kate, I can see that you didn't stay to the end of the fight or watched it on television am I right?"

"I couldn't do it, Rick. He was just pummeling you in the ring and I couldn't stay there and watch you get beat up that badly."

"I see. Well if you would have stayed until the end of the eleventh round you would have known that I Rick Castle am once again the heavyweight champion of the world!"

"What? Wait a second, I saw you hit the mat on the middle of the tenth. How is this possible?"

"That's when things turned around for me. You should have seen it, Kate, I was boxing the way the legends boxed. I couldn't believe it myself. I just kept thinking about the way the fight was going and I thought that if I could catch him off guard, I might be able to get the upper hand for once. I knew that he was favoring his left side so that's where I started to concentrate all of my punches. It was only a matter of time before he started feeling like he was close to going down and I capitalized on that. It was kind of sad in a way because he was trying so hard to stay on his feet."

"How did you end up winning?" Kate wanted to know.

"Kate we were respecting each other. It was like we didn't want the other to lose. I came out at the beginning of the eleventh and found a soft spot that he couldn't protect. He fell to the mat and was slow to get back up. But when he did, he was off. I mean from being down on the mat, it must have shaken him. I just built on that and it made me reinvigorated to the point that he could not keep up with the hits I was pounding into his body. He kept retreating back until I had him on the ropes. Then I just pounded on him. He went down to the mat once again got back up moved about two feet from where he was and then I just found a reserve of strength I never knew I had. I was able to get him in almost the same location where he fell to the mat but he kept standing against the ropes. It's like he lost all of his will to fight. He was trying to protect his head which left his body open to what I could throw at him. When he went to protect his midsection, I concentrated on his head throwing combination punches and jabs until he fell to the mat again. He got back up after a six-count and the ref checked to make sure he was okay. I faked throwing a jab, he ducked, and I hit him with an uppercut. He was stunned and then I threw everything I had left at him. I backed him into the corner and threw one last punch that connected and he almost went down again. That's when the referee called the fight with thirty-eight seconds left in the eleventh."

"Wow!"

"That's all you have to say? Wow? I beat him, Kate! I won back my title."

"I know Rick. And I'm so proud of you. But look at the price you paid. Your beautiful face has been beaten and I love your face." Kate says as she gently kisses his forehead above the butterfly sutures.

Rick tries to move to get more comfortable to accommodate his growing bulge and Kate picks up on it.

"Take me to bed, Rick. I have a feeling that we are just taking the first step in our relationship."

Our relationship he likes the sound of that. He gets up off the couch and held her tight to his body she melts into him easily.

"Kate, I told you about the fight, but you didn't tell me about your day," Rick asks her.

"I quit. I had enough and I just simply quit."

He stops halfway to her bedroom and asks,

"Kate, what did you exactly quit?"

"Oh yeah, I should have been more specific. I quit my job at the paper."

"What? Why? I thought you liked that job."

"Rick I was being used by both of my bosses. My current one and my old one. And on top of that, the owner had offered me some perks that seasoned writers don't get. But I asked myself if this was what I really wanted, and it wasn't. I had enough and quit."

"I retired from boxing. Klitschko was my last fight forever."

"I'm glad. Now we can really get to know each other a lot better." Kat said squeezing her legs together to get him to move towards her bedroom.

Rick started to move towards her bedroom and they spent the rest of the night getting to know each other a lot better.

~Fin~