This was not supposed to go quite like this. I started it after the finale; now the summer is over and the story remains unfinished. This is what there is, and maybe that's all there should be, since nothing else fits with what's to come.

0=0=0

'Fuck me sideways,' Esposito says, and doesn't even try to duck the red-heat glare from his boss. He can't hear what's being said out in the hall, but he can see Beckett's face, the surprise and disbelief, the shaky recovery, and then the flash of sharp, unguarded pain as Castle walks away and she forgets she's standing right by the window and they've all been watching the whole goddamn thing.

'Yeah.' Ryan's mouth is far cleaner, but he's nodding in agreement as they all fall back into their seats. Esposito can't see Beckett's face any more, but the slumped line of her shoulders tells them everything they need to know.

'I'm gonna get my girl,' Lanie says to no one in particular, but Esposito nods. He knows that's meant for him, nixing whatever plans they'd had for when this little shindig was over. Before Lanie can leave, though, Beckett comes back in.

'So,' she says cheerily, as if nothing at all has happened. 'I'm going to head out for the night. You guys have fun.' She sets her mostly full bottle back on the table and walks out again, having never met anyone's eyes.

'Fuck me sideways,' Lanie mutters, but so softly only Esposito hears.

She catches up with Beckett at the elevator and plants herself in front of her friend, five feet of sheer determination. 'Talk,' Lanie orders. 'Right now. What just happened?'

Beckett is looking somewhere over the top of Lanie's head. 'It doesn't matter.'

Her voice is deeper than it should be, without any inflection. She's shutting down, and Lanie knows what happens when Kate Beckett shuts down.

'Don't do this, Beckett. Clearly, it matters.'

'Lanie.' For the first time, Beckett's eyes meet hers. The face is calm, perfectly controlled, but her eyes have that wide, confused look some people get when they're in emotional freefall and have just realised they've left the parachute on the plane. 'I need to go.'

As if on cue, the elevator pings and the doors spring open. Beckett detours around and is inside and pressing the close button before Lanie can decide whether it would be better to go with her or let her work this out on her own.

The last glimpse she gets of Beckett's face makes it dubious whether she'll even make it out of the precinct before she loses her control.

0-0-0

Rick is silent all the way to the Hamptons, and Gina decides that she's simply not going to notice. If he wants to stew, she's not going to be able to stop him, though she does feel a bit of pity for the man. He was her man once, and while his refusal to take anything too seriously was more than half of what made her lose patience with him in the end, it was also what attracted her to him in the beginning. She's always been a serious woman, one most people find humourless as well. Gina has always suspected they're right, so anyone as full of wit and laughter as Richard Castle had to be good for lightening her psyche, as well as attracting some very useful dinner invitations. She, on the other hand, knew how to turn molehills of inspiration into mountains of cash, knew how to make a man believe that she believed in him. Richard Castle was in dire need of both after his first wife left him with a toddler, a mortgage and little else and it had been, for a while, a most productive partnership. Not to mention, the sex hadn't been half bad. In fact, it had all been good until he'd pulled that crazy flamboyant stunt with the balloon and it must have been the lack of oxygen that made her agree to fly the damn thing to Vegas and marry him right now.

But this silence is extremely odd behaviour, even for him, and Gina doesn't quite know how to react. The Richard Castle she knows usually just takes what he wants, and if it doesn't want to be taken he bows politely and moves on, no hard feelings and no regrets. Even their divorce, while definitely one of her less pleasant experiences, was mutually no contest. The arguments were over how much reparation she deserved for being tricked into marrying a man who didn't actually know why he'd asked her to marry him, and had told at least one reporter he was thankful she'd left. Since she was the one who'd made him rich to begin with, that little bit of public humiliation was worth at least a few hundred grand.

Glancing at his expressionless face, Gina feels an unwelcome disturbance in her normally smooth conscience. Business is business, and that woman was clearly trying to say something important, so getting Rick out of there before she could was the smartest move Gina had. Rick himself had agreed that he needed help, that Beckett was becoming an addiction and he had to stop before his writing turned into soppy romantic crap. Kick the detective cold turkey and finish the goddamn novel before it was so overdue she had to drop it from the fall list. Wasn't that the supposed reason he was playing cops and robbers to begin with?

One look at Kate Beckett in that Cosmo spread last year had told her it wasn't, but the pages she'd been getting for Heat Wave were so good that Gina hadn't cared. Also, she had (erroneously, as it's turned out) assumed that they were already sleeping together. A five-year-old could have knocked her over when she finally badgered the whole pathetic story out of Rick on the phone last night – the writing wasn't fun, the precinct wasn't fun, Alexis was away and Martha had moved out and yeah, okay, fine, so he probably did want Kate Beckett exactly the way everybody thought, but he'd waited too long and now she was with someone else.

'In other words, you didn't want her till someone else did,' Gina had suggested. Not angry or condescending, but they both knew exactly what had spurred Rick into that balloon ride, and it had been almost 2am by that point in the conversation, too late to pretend they didn't.

'I didn't think she wanted anyone,' he'd answered. And Gina knew that sound in his voice, that little boy wishing Mama would notice him for once.

'Ricky, even if you make her choose and you win, you know how that turns out.' The long sigh on the other end agreed that he did. 'She's not someone who'll shrug and move on if it doesn't work, is she? She's not like us.'

'No,' he'd said, and the part of her that remembered loving him had felt a genuine sympathy for the hurt and regret in his voice. Kate Beckett was a beautiful toy, and Richard Castle certainly did love his toys, at least until he got bored or a newer model came out. Only this time he was going to have to part with one while he still loved playing with it, and the sooner the better as far as Gina was concerned. Probably better for the other woman as well. Gina knew serious when she saw it, and that one was – what was the phrase Rick always used? Serious as a heart attack. Determined to get her man. If Beckett hadn't made a move on Castle by now, she wasn't interested; what bigger proof did he need than the fact she'd fallen for someone else? God help them all if Rick got attached to the idea of being lovesick for Kate Beckett so he could write Rook lovesick for Nikki Heat.

'Listen. Do you want to mess up her whole life just so you can be happy for a year or so? And mess up my life, I might add, when I have to drop you from my roster because your writing has turned to Harlequin Romance?'

'Hey! I'm not—'

'You said she's happy with this guy,' Gina cut in sharply. 'So let her go be happy. You said she hates being Nikki Heat, so stop hanging around the damn precinct telling everyone she's your muse. Let her do her job in peace, and you go do yours.'

'I already told her it was going to be my last case for awhile.'

'And did you mean that?'

In the long silence that followed she had worried that she'd blown the negotiation. Usually she knew exactly how to handle her writers, how much pressure to apply and where. But this wasn't quite the Richard Castle she was used to handling and he definitely wasn't the Ricky she used to know in bed. It was almost as if, by the miracle of a toy's refusal to be played with, the charming boy had finally become a serious man.

And for that, she probably should thank Kate Beckett.

'Yeah,' he'd finally said. 'I didn't really mean it when I said it, but yeah. I need to get out of her life. I hate to admit it, but you're right.'

'I frequently am.' She'd made her voice deliberately low, seductive, so he wouldn't take offence, but she knew then that she'd won something unexpected, that she could even have him back if she wanted. And oddly enough, she found that she did.

And so she'd found herself saying, 'I can help you through this, Rick. Let's get the hell out of the city and we'll go through what you've got, step by step, and figure out why you're blocked. We always did that well together.'

'Yeah,' he'd agreed. 'We did.'

She'd caught the note of longing in his voice, times gone by, when their relationship was purely a professional friendship. Before they were stupid and fucked everything up with sex. No, not with sex, with marriage and all the baggage that came with it. What would he be like now, all grown-up and serious? Maybe it wouldn't be much different, but for god's sake, she wasn't going to be stupid enough to marry the man again. And yes, there would be the irresistible triumph of taking him away from his obsession with that goddamned cop. Muse this, Detective Beckett.

If there's one thing Gina knew by instinct, it was when to lean hard and close the deal. And so she had. 'Then it's settled. We'll go up to the house tomorrow, and you can write and I can work long distance for a while. And then we can both have what we want.'

'What do I want out of that?'

'A clear conscience,' she'd answered, and together they had created a twelve-step plan for getting Rick Castle over the addiction of Kate Beckett. And it had worked. Gina had gotten him out of the precinct and on the road in record time. He'd smiled and laughed and put his arm around her and even in the elevator, he hadn't dropped it. It wasn't an act.

Or at least, she hadn't thought it was an act. But now Rick is silent behind his sunglasses and Gina is in the passenger seat, wind in her Grace Kelly-scarfed hair because she already knew he'd insist in putting the top down. Only he's not smiling his wicked off-to-the-country smile and Gina can't get the other woman's face out of her mind. She knows shark when she sees shark, and Kate Beckett's a shark and a half. Gina has the awful feeling it's just a matter of time before Beckett swims silently out of the depths and takes a bite out of her side.

0-0-0

Kate Beckett is not the kind of woman who cries over spilt milk, or sad movies, or lost men. She's the kind of woman who lets her sorrows sink down somewhere deep inside and find a quiet place to rest. She knows what it means to really, truly, lose someone, and this isn't that. This is just disappointment. Not the first time, not the last.

She lets herself into the apartment that isn't hers, the studio with the two foot shower and kitchen barely larger, on Avenue D, two blocks south of where everything interesting runs out. It amazes her that someone would settle for this little space for this much money forever, but Manhattan being what it is, it's not a surprise. The mangy sublet is a direct result of her own ignorance: she hasn't paid market rent since she first moved back to the city after college (still young enough not to mind sharing a two bedroom with three other girls) and she knows now why everyone she works with lives out in the boroughs somewhere. A cop's salary, she's since found out, barely covers this closet where she trips over junkies on her way home after a midnight shift, but she'd rather that than leave Manhattan. To be forced out of her beloved city, into Brooklyn, or for god's sake Queens, would be to let Nikki Heat and the chaos she's inspired have the final control over what used to be a calm, ordered life. Only Kate hasn't been able to find even another closet between 86th and the Bowery that she can possibly afford to live in, and as soon as Labor Day rolls around, she's going to be homeless again.

Kate kicks off her shoes and falls onto the daybed that doubles as a couch. It used to be, on a day as bad as this, she could go home and at least feel like she was warm and safe. She could curl into her beloved comfy couch and let a book take her someplace else, or light a few candles and soak in a hot bath, or put on some cool jazz and order dinner from the country of her choice, deliverable within the hour. On the worst of days, the days when she wanted her mother so badly her heart felt like dry ice inside her chest, she could pull out the old albums and remember. They're all gone now, along with the books and the couch and the candles and the home she'd crafted so carefully over the years. All that's survived the bomb are some of her sturdier clothes, the few photos she'd kept in the bedroom, and whatever books had been lying half-read on her nightstand.

But there's nothing wrong with her life as it is. All right, nothing that finding a decent, permanent place to spend the rest of it wouldn't fix. She's never been one to dream about her future wedding, and though she lied to Maddy about never being engaged, she hadn't quite lied, because there'd never been a ring. She hardly thinks of it now as an engagment at all; just a couple of teenaged English lit majors talking about running off to Gretna Green on their summer vacation, thinking that memorising the balcony scene from Romeo and Juliet meant they knew anything at all about mad young love. She lied to Maddy so she wouldn't have to think about the scenes that came after, about herself weeping and begging like any pathetic nineteenth century heroine, and Peter walking out the door like the cad of the novel. She doesn't blame him now; she can't imagine what it must have been like to put up with her in those first few months after her mother was killed, before she realised how alienating tragedy can be, and how little interest people have in watching someone grieve. Nothing that happens this summer can be anywhere near as bad as that summer after her sophomore year of college; lying on her bed in the August heat, listening to her father raving in the next room and teaching herself to hold back the tears.

Her father came back to her eventually, but other things never have. A certain belief in the beauty of the world, the capacity for hope, the comfort of a good loud cry. She's a cop now, so the trust would have gone regardless. There have been moments this last year when she's felt a certain strange flutter that might have been hope trying to wake, but when she learned not to cry, she also learned not to want anything she couldn't reasonably have.

All in all, she's been pretty good at that. But then she did the stupidest thing she's ever done: she let herself believe. She brought forth the flutter, held it like a tiny bird cupped in her hands and offered it to someone she had always known would not understand what she was giving him. She doesn't blame Castle for that, for crushing that last vestige of girlish hope. No more than she would blame a bear for attacking if she tried to pet its cubs. The bear is only being a bear, Castle is only being Castle. Nothing more than that.

Kate rolls over onto her back and stares at the yellowed ceiling. She doesn't know why the universe keeps seeing fit to crush her just when everything seems to be going well, but it's certainly starting to look like a pattern. And the rest she's accomplished all by her stupid self.

0-0-0

She never says a word about ending it with Demming, or about Castle leaving, and that surprises no one, least of all Lanie Parish, who probably knows Beckett best, if anyone can be said to know her very well at all.

Case-wise, they're fine without Castle. He was a help, but they are trained for this, after all. Still, as June runs into July, they're all starting to get a little worried about Beckett. The way she is right now - head high, focus straight ahead, looking at nothing but the case on the board - she's been like this before. Ryan doesn't remember; Sorenson was before his time so he doesn't really know what Beckett is like when she's truly happy, or how thoroughly she can board up all the windows and doors when happy season is over.

But Esposito does remember, and Lanie even more. One day Beckett and Sorenson were going to make the squarest-jawed babies in Manhattan, the next he'd run off to Boston and she'd turned into the world's most dedicated cop. The worst of it all is that as much as they've been rooting for Castle since he came on the scene, they hadn't seen that smile again till Demming came along. And to tell the truth, maybe Demming was better for her. If Castle was all enthusiasm and fun and standing up and rocking Beckett's boat, then Demming was solid sailing into the sunset. Maybe that's what Beckett really wanted. Or so everyone, including Tom Demming had thought.

'Why do you think she did it?' Esposito asks.

His skin is smooth under Lanie's cheek and his voice makes her stomach flutter, rumbling in her ear. She doesn't need to ask who did what.

'Scared?' Lanie's thought about it a lot, and this is her best guess. Why else do you throw over the man standing there with his hands out, wanting you and only you, for the one whose hands are constantly wandering everywhere else? 'Demming looked like something about to get real. Maybe she's just not ready for that.'

'So if she was only looking for fun, why not go for Castle months ago?'

'Why didn't he go for her?' She raises her head, cupping her chin in her fist so she's not digging it into his chest. 'Castle had his chance, baby. A million chances.'

'Maybe he didn't think she was into him,' he answers, slowly trailing his fingers up her bare back.

'Don't you be doing that, now. You knew I was into you from day one.'

'Yeah, and look how long this took us. And you're not carrying the kind of shit that Beckett does.'

Lanie puts her head back down and snuggles closer, enjoying the caress. 'Maybe it's our fault, you ever thought of that? All of us putting money on when they were going to sleep with each other. Maybe we put something into Beckett's head that never should have been there.'

'Yeah, I thought of that.'

'So?'

'So, I still think they'd be good together. Maybe not making the squarest-jawed babies in Manhattan kind of good, but you know she really liked having him around.'

And that, Lanie thinks, is just the problem. Watching Beckett this last year has been like watching someone climb laboriously to the top of a cliff, only to be knocked off just before reaching the summit. Oh, she'll survive the tumble – she's Beckett, after all – but as someone who's always been wary of heights she won't be too likely to try that climb again. And no one should have to spend the rest of their lives rooted to level ground.

0-0-0

Kate used to love walking around the city on her days off. Not because she felt lonely or driven, but because the city was hers. Funny how it doesn't feel like that anymore.

With a long weekend to kill (time in lieu for working the 4th), she drives up to White Plains to see her dad. He's surprised to see her, of course. She doesn't come up here much; it was never her home, it's a long drive, and it's rare that she gets a whole weekend off.

In her father's embrace, she's always five and nine and twelve and nineteen. All the best and worst years of her life. He pulls back to look at her, and she smiles for reassurance, though she can tell by the flicker of concern that crosses his face that it hasn't quite made it to her eyes.

'It's not your mother again, is it?'

'No.' The last time she drove all the way up here unannounced it was just after the Coonan investigation and the news had not been good. She takes a breath and searches for something that would be the truth. 'I just really wanted to see you.'

She stays for dinner. And then she asks to stay the night, partly because anything that isn't her sublet shoebox is a welcome relief, and partly because she's suddenly so goddamn tired she can't begin to face the drive home alone in the dark. Her dad never has guests, so the second bedroom is his office and the living room couch is just a couch. It reminds Kate a little of the way her own life is pulling in, reducing itself to the 500sq feet she lives in, the bullpen, and occasional visits to Lanie in the morgue. She feels old, and somehow redundant, though she knows there are people who would notice that she's gone.

Her dad helps her make up the couch, not that it takes two to do it. And then he touches her lightly on the arm. 'Things that bad at work?'

She can't imagine what kind of vibes she's giving off for him to ask. Normally, he waits for her to offer information; maybe that's why they've never been particularly close. Her mother always knew how to drag it out of her, and when, but her dad never has. And she hasn't really helped. Mostly when they meet, they talk about him, the books he's read, the paper on a Keynsian solution to the mortgage crisis he's been trying to write for years. She only half listens when he talks about his research – she disappointed him when she dropped economics between high school and college, and isn't likely to develop any greater enthusiasm for it now. But it's been good to hear his voice, and to see him so lively, almost the father she remembers from when she was a child.

'It's summer,' she finally answers. 'Beer in the sun on the stoop, heat fraying everyone's tempers, darkness comes and somebody snaps. A lot of somebodies. A lot of work.' She wishes it didn't matter that Castle's not there to bring her coffee when she's flagging. At least this summer she's not furious with him. And he'll be back in a few months; Gina or no Gina, he enjoys playing cop too much to just give it up. She has no idea what she'll say when she sees him, but it probably won't matter. Fortunately for her, Castle's too taken with himself to remember an inane conversation that got interrupted months ago, and if he does, well, she's got a poker face and she's not afraid to use it.

The truth is, she can't for the life of her figure out why she feels so ravaged. It's not like Castle betrayed her in any way. Nothing was ventured, so of course nothing was gained. But nothing's really been lost, either. Yes, everyone saw him walk away with the ex-wife, but nobody knows that she was about to throw caution to the wind and join him in the Hamptons. Yes, she's sorry for ending it with Demming, but only for dropping him so suddenly, for stupidly causing him pain. Anything else she feels about the loss of that relationship is purely selfish. And really, she's fine about it. All of it. She just needs to find a way to reclaim the solitude she used to enjoy before Castle came along and made her wonder if there was supposed to be more in her life than work.

Piece of pie, as her mom liked to say. Easy as cake.

'I'm okay, Dad. Just really tired.'

'You know you can talk to me, Katie.'

'I know,' she answers, though his face says clearly that they both think otherwise. To be honest, not even she could say if her reluctance to ever voice what she's thinking dates back to his not being there after her mother's death (when there really was no one she trusted enough to let them see exactly how not-okay she was) or if it's been a part of her all along. Something that only became apparent after her mom – to whom she told absolutely everything eventually – was gone.

They hug goodnight briefly, more of a quick shoulder-nudge than an actual embrace. Kate climbs under the blankets and tries to find a way to fit her long body onto the significantly shorter couch. It would be easier if she wasn't aching, inside and out, for someone else's skin to touch.

Two hours later, she's still awake, and the whirl of disconnected thoughts in her head has become a maelstrom of guilt, anger and self-doubt. Worst of all, she just flat-out misses Richard Castle. She wants nothing more in the world than to pick up her phone and call him, just to hear him say hello, but he'd know it was her. She could, of course, use her dad's land line, but it's two o'clock in the morning, and her days of stalking boys she liked were supposed to have been over a very long time ago. If she were home, she could do something physical to work it out – go for a run, or stick the headphones in her ears and lose herself in her own private disco. She could drive home right now, but that would look weird and probably worry her dad to death even if she left a note.

She finally gives in and turns on the light. There's no books in the living room; her dad keeps them all in his office, and she's not in the mood for academic texts or serious literature anyway. What he does have in the living room are three shelves of videos, none of which were purchased in this millennium. Kate throws on the sweatshirt she's borrowed and goes over for a look. She's sure there's got to be something cheerfully mindless – the kind of thing she'd watch with her mom over a bowl of ice cream when her dad went to conferences. Some days that connection is too painful to contemplate, but sometimes, like now, it helps.

The videos are all out of order, which can only mean her meticulous father tossed them on the shelves when he moved up here and hasn't looked at them since. Has it really been five years since she and her dad watched a movie together? Did they ever, or is she somehow mixing them up with Castle and Alexis?

Automatically, she starts rearranging the plastic boxes, first by genre, then alphabetically by title. Bought videos on the top shelves, the small collection of homemade tapes on the bottom.

And then she stops, and stares at the tape in her hand. Maddy and Katie, September 1997it says, in her mother's precise hand. Kate's sure she's never seen it before.

She pops it into the machine, and sure enough, there's Maddy and herself, seventeen years old, just about to start their senior year. She has a vague memory of this now. The video recorder was new, her parents were about to go to Egypt, and Kate would be left alone at home for the first time in her life. A few nights later she would lose her virginity to Brent Edwards in the comfort of her own bed. A few days after that, Maddy would do the same and with the same boy, and their friendship would come to an abrupt and unpleasant end.

And as if it wasn't enough to see herself so incredibly young and so unmarked by the world, doing the Macarena (badly, so very badly) with her best friend, the video suddenly goes into a swirling blur.

'Come on, Mrs B, show us how it's done,' Maddy is crowing and Kate is saying, 'Yeah, Mom, before you're too old and decrepit to keep up.' Maddy must have taken the camera, because now Johanna dances into the frame doing the Macarena very well in fact, and Kate watches her younger self all but falling over laughing, trying so very awkwardly to follow. Bumping into Johanna, who reaches up to plant a kiss on her daughter's cheek because the child is already so much taller than the parent, and suddenly the whole grownup façade Kate's created as Detective Beckett crumbles and everything comes rushing out.

0-0-0

Jim doesn't know what actually wakes him. The house is quiet, the road outside is quiet. Even when he moves, half-asleep, into the living room and sees Katie sitting on the sofa with her face buried in her hands, it's still so quiet it takes a full minute for him to understand that this is what he must have heard. And he's completely frozen. Jim Beckett hasn't seen his daughter cry since she was maybe twelve years old, not even after her mother was killed. It's not that she never did, but she'd always lock the door and do it in her room. Although the truth is, in those first horrible years, she could have thrown herself into his arms and howled and he probably wouldn't be able to remember it now.

He tiptoes quietly back to his room. If she sees him she'll stop and she's looked like she needed a good cry since she got out of the car this afternoon. And to be honest, the first time he found those old tapes, he cried like a baby himself.

The next thing he knows is the smell of coffee seeping under the door, and for one crazy, wishful second, when he follows the scent into the kitchen it's Jo standing at the stove scrambling eggs. Then she turns, cast iron pan in hand, and of course it's Katie, though he supposes 'of course' isn't quite right, since Katie's not much more likely to be standing in his kitchen making breakfast than her mother is.

'Perfect timing,' she says with a bright, empty smile, and scrapes most of the pan onto his plate. He watches her as she puts the rest on her own plate and brings the coffee pot to the table. Without any makeup, her natural colouring always makes her look a bit tired, but today she looks utterly drained, as if she never slept at all last night.

He reaches across the table and touches her hand. 'Katie, honey…'

She keeps her eyes on her plate and gently withdraws her hand. 'I found an old tape Mom made of me and Madison Quellar last night,' she says quickly. She relaxes slightly as she realises he's not going to press the issue, and finally meets his eyes. 'You know what's really strange? I just saw Maddy again, a few weeks ago. She owns this amazing restaurant in Soho. Do you remember how we were both spitting mad when they made us take cooking in high school? '

She's smiling again, and so he smiles too, and listens as she tells him her side of the Iron Chef murders he'd read about in the newspapers, and when their breakfast is over she gives him a quick hug and heads back to the city without ever telling him why she was here.

0-0-0

Richard Castle is sitting on the back deck of his house in the Hamptons, laptop in lap, watching the waves roll in.

Ninety days up here, ninety miles from the city, from her, and still he can't find the ending he wants. He keeps seeing Beckett's face, the way it was when they said goodbye, trying to read his memory to see what she was holding in. Had she been about to say she was sorry? He's glad he left before that. He doesn't want her to feel like she has to apologise for being happy. And those last few weeks were the happiest he's ever seen her. It's not her fault that the guy who put that big dopey smile on her face wasn't him.

He's tried to give Nikki that conversation to finish, but any way he writes it, they always end with either Nikki or Rook walking away in a huff. He knows they can't end up happily ever after - it's only novel two - but he doesn't want them to end up so far apart that there's no place for Rook in the third book at all. And then there's Schlemming. Gina's already demanded that he tone the character down, and for god's sake change that stupid name. Schlemming is like a thorn in his side that Castle picks at but can't quite remove, a guilty restless knowledge that he told Demming to go for it, so whatever happens now, it's really all his own fault.

It had seemed like such a good idea at the time. He had agreed with Gina that he needed to get Beckett out of his system, and his standard way just wasn't going to do this time. So he'd write her out, and then everyone would be happy. Gina would have the first part of the new trilogy, Beckett could enjoy her guy in peace, and he'd be able to face her again in the fall, free of unresolved attraction. Hopefully by then she and Demming would be over the wonder period and they could all just be friends.

The thing is, he didn't really expect Gina to stick around, but she has. They're like an old married summer couple, except in reverse. He's in the Hamptons all week (minus the kids) and she's the one commuting from the city on a weekend basis. Mostly, he suspects, it's to enjoy his house and his beach and most definitely the contents of his liquor cabinet. He could certainly email her the week's pages as proof of diligence, there's no need for her to battle Friday night traffic out to the island to get them. And it's not like he's getting paid in nookie either. She's there to protect her investment, that's more than clear.

The pitiful part is that while he dreads the moment she arrives, he dreads even more the moment she leaves, and he's alone with the silence and the Nikki in his head. The Nikki in the pages he doesn't give Gina, the one who throws herself into Rook's arms after Schlemming's untimely (and very messy) death, the one with whom Rook has repeated, dirty, tantric sex. There's a small, sane, part of him that knows damned well that this is Beckett he's writing about, and things he doesn't really wish upon her. Even the tantric sex (because let's face it, Rook is younger, fitter, and obviously far more flexible than Castle, and he made Nikki a little bit slutty precisely because he likes the fact that Beckett isn't).

But maybe if he gets it all out of his head, he can face her in the fall, clean and clear, and wish her nothing but happiness. He'd like to be able to do that. He'd like to be able to go down to the city to see her, but that would be a day's loss of pages and Gina will never shut up with the alcoholic metaphors if he does that. He's not addicted to Beckett, or even the 12th, he just likes being there. If he needs to spend the summer without them to prove that yes, he's still a writer and not a wannabe pseudocop, fine, he can do that. Giving Beckett her space is probably the best thing for both of them.

So he writes, and he puts up with Gina's weekly check-in, and appears at just enough of the parties and flirts for just long enough that people don't start talking about him drooping around in his boxers moping over his pretty detective back in New York. And all he can think about is being home with Alexis, and being back at the 12th, and how maybe he'll throw another poker party and invite Demming just to prove he's a grownup after all, and if Beckett is happy, then he's going to be happy.

And until the book is finished, this is what there is.

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