76. 78: Sunday

78

"Don't let me fall back to sleep," he murmurs.

Right before he falls back to sleep.

And Kate is feeling just selfish enough to let him, his weight heavy across her legs as his nose nuzzles her inside thigh, his mouth on her shorts, his breathing deep and regular.

She skims her fingers over the side of his face; he lies in her bed with his arms wrapped around her waist as she sits against the headboard. He was supposed to go home an hour ago, see his daughter, make her breakfast, catch up on the summer experience weekend.

It's only seven though; he has time. She wants this quiet Castle all to herself for a little bit longer.

She stays half-reclined in her bed, her hips cradling his head, her knees bracketing his waist. His breath is soft and warm, his body dense with early morning sleep; his arms encircling her feel loose, keeping her here but not leaving her unable to escape.

Only why would she?

Kate strokes her fingertips along his cheekbone, the line of his jaw, tripping over his mouth to the flare of his nose and then the ridge of his brow. His hair is spiky and hanging over his forehead, that sexy, mussed look that she's come to find irresistible.

It's so much easier to love him when he's asleep.

She gives him an hour - she gives herself an hour of silently loving him, alone in her adoration - and then she wakes him up.

She unboxes the computer he bought for her and sets it up; it takes only fifteen minutes. Whenever it got delivered, however it got here, there's also an external hard drive with it. She connects it to the computer, clicks it open when it mounts, and her mouth drops open when she sees her files, her music, her photos, all right there.

He had her destroyed computer recovered. The files at least. It must have - expensive, so very expensive, but here's everything.

She emails him found the hard drive; you did good, Castle and then she checks her finances online.

Not as bad as she feared. She's already gotten a check from the publishing house she's reading for, paltry though it may be, and she saved enough in her checking to be absent from work for three months.

Her savings it pretty much shot - has been since she got shot - but it's not going to ruin her if she still doesn't have a real job by the end of August. She'll manage; she'll stop going out to eat every day, force Castle to cook her dinner instead.

Kate smirks to herself and puts her computer to sleep, turns in the desk chair to survey her apartment.

So much ruined, violated-

Her phone vibrates with a text and she scoops it off the desk, thumbing it on.

I try.

Surprisingly succinct for the writer. Her lips lift in a smile and Kate ignores the bare furnishings of her apartment in favor of heading back to her bedroom. She'll go for a run.

Just to get out of the house for a while.

Kate is peeling the sports bra from her body when she gets in the shower, so she doesn't notice at first. It's only when she steps under the spray and kicks something across the tile that she glances down.

And laughs.

Castle has left that black seashell in the shower stall, and then he's apparently left another one as well, so that there are two little shells at her feet.

She stoops down and scoops them up, the black one now mated with a pink one that's larger and little more flourished, the two oddly paired but a match.

Kate puts both shells on the shelf, keeps her eyes on them even as she washes her hair and soaps her body, rinsing the suds quickly. When she gets out, she swipes at her feet with a towel, runs it up her legs, across her back before wrapping it around her torso.

She finds her phone and texts him: His and her seashells?

When she shows up at his place for dinner - he promised to cook so they could stay in - Alexis is the one who opens the door.

"Hey, Kate," she says.

"Hey. How was Columbia?" Kate asks, moving inside and dropping her bag in the entryway.

"It was awesome," Alexis laughs a little. "But Dad says I'm supposed to give you this?" Alexis holds up her hand and slowly uncurls her fist.

Another shell. This one with fiery orange ribbons in its spiral.

Kate bites her bottom lip and takes it from the young woman.

Now there are three.