I own many notebooks. One of them, at this point, has no cover and is completely illegible to anyone who isn't me. Around fifty of the scenarios in How Many Ways To Say I Love You started life in this notebook. I lost it about a year ago and recently found it. The scenario you are about to read, I do not remember writing (but it was in my handwriting so I must have). It's a continuation of Scenario #70, Camping Trip, in Chapter 41 of HMWTSILY. This is way too dialogue heavy - make that monologue heavy - for my liking, but for the most part I've copied it verbatim, only making small changes.

The next day, as they ate breakfast around the camp-fire, they discussed the previous night's events.

"I really do," Beckett said. "You know, love you. I really do... that. I mean, I feel that. For you."

"Why tell me now?" Castle asked.

She shrugged.
"I guess... up until now I've been afraid. Well, a big part of me is still afraid. I have these feelings for you and they're... scary. Big, scary feelings. I've fallen for other guys before - hard. What we have goes beyond that.
"It's that deep, forever-type love that I never wanted to feel but now that I know what it's like to love someone like this I never want to stop. It scares the crap out of me because I never wanted to need another person; care more about another person than they care about them self. It scares the crap out of me because if you ever left me,or if anything ever happened to you, honestly,I could probably survive it. But... to go through that again, with you... that'd be the point of no return for me.
"I might still go to work, see my friends,to all appearances I might seem ok. But I'd be an empty shell of who I am now. I would never be able to be truly happy again. Losing my Mom was the worst thing I've ever had to go through.
"The thought of losing you, too... That's totally unacceptable. These feelings for you run so deep, they're messed up and twisted but in the most beautiful way that hurts and feels wonderful at the same time. These are the kinds of things I think about when I contemplate how I feel about you. So, I'd rather tick to the talking and the laughing and the kissing and the sex because acknowledging how I feel about you is acknowledging how much I have to lose."

Castle merely stared at her for several moment before croaking out in a low, throaty voice, "Good answer."