44. Chapter 44

After After the Storm.

By

UCSBdad

Disclaimer: Who'd believe me if I said I owned Castle anyway? Rating: K Time: See above.

Kate and Rick walked into his empty loft. As soon as Rick shut the door, Kate put her arms around him and held him tightly.

He kissed the top of her head, then whispered, "Do you want some coffee?"

She shook her head. "No. Just you. I just want you. Just hold me."

He held her for long minutes, then, "Kate, how close did you come to…"

"Putting a bullet in his head?"

"Yeah."

"Actually, not close at all. Five years ago, even two years ago he'd have been dead and I'd be on my way to prison for the rest of my life. But not today."

"And today was different because?" He asked seriously.

"You know why." She said with a smile.

"I do, but I want to hear it from you."

"Because I love you. Before this, I had no reason to go on living except to get justice for my mom. That's no longer true. My reason to live is to have a future with you. Nothing, absolutely nothing, is as important to me as you are. I love you."

"I love you, too." Castle hugged her again. "But…"

"But?" Kate said. "But what." Again she felt a block if ice forming in her stomach. What had gone wrong? Had she made some kind of mistake?

"But, Kate, please, please don't ever do to me what you did today."

Kate was confused. "What I did to you?"

"I love you, Kate. And no one is as important to me as you are. Alexis is close, but you're first. Do you have any idea what I felt like when I woke up and found you gone? With Bracken in town? I was terrified. Terrified that after spending so many years, years, Kate, waiting for you, you were going to throw it all away by killing Bracken. Kate, I'm terrified of losing you."

Kate stepped back a bit so that she could look into Castle's eyes. "You. Will. Never. Lose. Me." She said very slowly and very deliberately. "I had to face Bracken, but I was in control."

"In control?" Castle said in disbelief. "What if he had brought one of his thugs with him? What if he'd sent one of his thugs to take care of you? What if he had brought a damned TV crew with you there with a gun? What if…"

Kate put her fingers to his lips. "He wouldn't do that. He had to find out what I wanted. What I had. What I'd say. No, he would have come alone."

"Okay, but you were in a hotel. Suppose some maid walked through the kitchen and saw you holding Bracken at gunpoint? Suppose he saw someone else, thought it was an ambush and went for your gun?"

"Rick, I'm a cop. I have to take chances. I been taking chances since long before we ever met. I can't stop doing what I do."

He shook his head. "I'm not asking you to. All I want is for you to tell me what's going on. Let me help if I can. At least let me know what's going on so I don't freak out."

Kate rested her head on his chest. "I'm sorry, Rick. I should have told you. I shouldn't have just left you there. But I love you, you know. If something happened to you, I'd be devastated. I wouldn't have any life left. Look at how long it took after my mom died for me to break down my wall to let you in. If I lost you…If I lost you, I couldn't go on." Kate smiled up at Rick. "Besides, what exactly would you do if I had had to face one of his thugs?"

"Remember Lockwood?" He replied.

"Yes. You went into a gun battle unarmed. If you think I'd let you do that again, forget it."

"Okay, maybe I'm not the fastest gun west of the Hudson, but I can drive your getaway car. I can have a lawyer and a bail bondsman waiting for you. I can have new identities for us made up. I can have a plane ready to fly us to a country that won't extradite us back to the US. I can hire people to break you out of jail."

"You'd do all that for me?" She asked softly, but smiling.

"You bet. Martha once told me that the real test of whether someone loves you of not is whether they'd break you out of prison. Remember when Greg McClintock broke his girlfriend out of prison? That's when she said that. And, if you remember, you said you'd get me out of prison. How could I do less for you?"

"I did say that, didn't I?" She said with smile. "And you'd be able to do all of that?"

"When I say I know a guy, I do know a guy. When I researched the Derrick Storm books, I didn't just research what the good guys did. I know pilots who will fly us anywhere in the world, get us across any borders we please without anyone being the wiser. I know guys who can get us any document you could name. Whatever we needed, he could get us perfect documents. New identities. Not perfect fake documents, but real documents. Everything in the government databases would show we'd lived in that country all of our lives. We'd have birth certificates, school records from pre-school to college, employment histories, everything. It wouldn't be cheap, but it would be better than living without you. I know guys who could break you out of any prison in the world. I'd use all of those people and more for you."

Kate kissed Rick. "Thank you. But, I won't break the law to take Bracken down. And I don't want you to break the law to help me."

Rick wiggled his eyebrows. "And how would you stop me?"

"I would say, "Rick, do not break the law for me."

"Wow! You really play hardball don't you?"

She laughed. "For you, you bet."

"So, how about dinner and then we fool around?"

"Why have dinner?"