Bab 77: 77. Chapter 77
Castle waits for her beside the interstate mile marker, his hands on his knees. She passed him a few miles back, picking up her pace so she could run the last two miles rather than just jog, while Castle finished his usual amount in his usual time. Or a little slower. He doesn't run as fast without the ipod on, the music setting his speed.
They didn't bring water with them either; he's feeling it now. The humidity, even at eight in the morning, is brutal on his body. He's sweat gallons and his shirt is dark with it.
Just then, Kate comes into view over the crest of the hill, lithe and deadly gorgeous, the kind of beauty that could kill a man if he didn't pace himself. Course, Castle would never have held back, but Kate certainly knew how to prolong the chase-
"Hey," she pants, slowing to a stop beside him. "You ok?"
He nods. "Catching my breath."
"Wanna walk back?"
"It's three miles."
She shrugs.
He gives in readily. "Ok. Let's walk."
"Fast, Castle."
"I can do fast," he laughs, falling in line beside her. "How far did you go?"
She shoots him a reluctant look, sighs. "Eleven miles."
Damn. "Kate."
"Had to work it out."
He sighs, but yeah, he knows this about her. "I did eight."
"That's good." She reaches out, squeezes his elbow. "You're sweaty." She wipes her hand on her shorts.
He laughs again, touches the back of her neck with a thumb while they walk, his fingers wrapping loosely around her throat. "So are you," he grumbles, feels the arousal wake in his chest.
She shoots him a look, meant to put him off probably, but she can't manage to hold on to it. Her eyes are too tender for that; she's still working through stuff, most likely. Austin and Vicki, their kids. When she hurts for someone, it makes her soft, makes her lean in for him.
He knows he's right when she doesn't shake him off, only slows a little and chews on her bottom lip before opening her mouth. "You know. I read this study once."
"I love it when you read. It's hot." He gets a little huff of laughter from her, an eye roll, and he feels better for it.
"Anyway. This study. Twenty-five year study on kids from divorced homes."
His thumb at the back of her neck stills; he wonders sometimes if she realizes. . .but she probably isn't thinking about him right now.
"And how the kids seem all right at five years, ten years. How they've adapted, gotten used to the new paradigm, the separate households. But then when those kids try setting up homes of their own, marriage and family, it just falls apart. They can't do it. They ruin it."
His fingers tighten on her neck; he drops his hand, glances off into the trees clustered around the interstate. A car passes on the far side; the pavement is wet with last night's rain but already drying.
"Even the kids that had therapy, that seemed the most normal, they aren't able to make it work. I just - I can't help but wonder about Claire, and Graham and Tate. Tate's already a kid with special needs, so much stacked against him. And a little girl needs her daddy, needs her mom. For so much. Why in the world would a guy who loves his kids ever do that to them? I just-"
"Kate," he murmurs, and she turns to look at him, her face twisted with confusion and hurt and grief for the Farrells, and then she sees him. Sees it. And she stumbles to a stop in the road, her hand reaching for him.
"Oh. No. Rick-"
He tries to shrug it off, but she clutches his wrist, steps in against him, their chests flush. The sweat between them is cool but their skin hot; she lifts her hand to cradle the back of his head even as she sucks in a breath.
"I'm sorry. I'm sorry. That's not what I meant."
"But that's what I did," he says. He's not sure why it hits him like this. Just that sometimes it does, it grieves him, even though he's got this now, Kate and his kids. He never wanted two divorces, three wives, never wanted to be that guy, but he did that, he put Alexis through that-
"No, oh God, Rick, no. Stop."
"What did I do to Alexis?" he says finally, his chest tight.
"Ignore me. I'm an idiot. I don't know what I'm talking about, and Alexis is fine-"
He presses his forehead against her shoulder, his hand at her back. "Rafe wants to marry her and what landmines are hidden in her psyche because of what I did to her?"
"Hush, Rick. Please stop."
He shivers as the breeze whirls around them; his sweat drying. "She was a little girl. I took her away from her mother and-"
"No. No, listen to me. You did the only thing for her, Rick. The only thing you could do. Yeah, it sucks. And it's not how you would've wanted it. But you did the best you could by her. She's a beautiful woman; she's smart and funny and self-aware and compassionate. She knows her own head; she knows what she's up against."
"But I did that to her. I divorced her mother. Shit, I divorced the second one too, mostly because she wasn't a good enough mother. What the hell did I do to my kid?"
"What you had to. There wasn't any other way. You saved her from worse. We all know how Meredith is. How she was."
"Doesn't mean I didn't break something. I don't want to do that to you, to Ella and Dash. I don't want to screw you up-"
"No. You couldn't. You are a good man, Rick Castle." She tugs his head up, makes him look at her. Kate presses her thumbs into his lips, brushes them over his mouth, out along his cheeks. "I fell in love with a good man. No matter what happens, you will do right by our kids because - the way you love? - it's good and it's selfless and it's generous. I will never have to worry about you."
He wraps his arms around her, tight, unable to control it, feels her hands at his back even though he's drenched in sweat and she hates that. She hugs him harder as if she knows he's thinking that, just to prove to him how much she does love him, and then she presses her lips into his neck.
"I'm so lucky," she murmurs against his ear, her lips soft. "I'm so lucky it's you I married, you I fell in love with. I've been with self-centered, egotistical; I've been with arrogant, and I've fallen all over a guy who was just a pompous ass. But you're not. You're such a good man."
The way she says it, the way she presses her body to his, makes him believe her. Believe that he can be good, be the guy that he wants, deep down, to believe he really is. One of the good guys.
"You're a good man, Rick. And you're mine."
She's edgy and she wants to make it up to him. And walking beside him with their fingers laced together and his body hot next to her only makes her all the more frustrated. It's a long few miles back to a busy, filled condo and she wants to make it up to him right now.
Kate really hates herself for getting into any of that. The stuff about kids with divorced parents. Jeez, how she just opened her big mouth on that one. She wasn't thinking about Alexis; it didn't even occur to her to think about the fact that Castle has two divorces, or that he might still be sensitive about them.
Of course he would be. He's Castle. It's a failure on his part; she knows him well enough to know the way he thinks. A failure to be man enough, but more than that, a failure in writing a better end to the story. A failure of imagination.
She knows he doesn't regret Alexis, that if there had never been Meredith, there wouldn't be Alexis. He doesn't want that. He's said before that Gina was pointless, a mistake. But Kate sees his marriage to Gina as more like the attempt by a good man to give his daughter what she was missing - a mother, a nuclear family.
It didn't work out because Gina's not a mother, not the kind Alexis needs, and because Rick couldn't figure out how to make her into one. How to let her be one. Kate thinks, privately, that Rick knew, somewhere in him, that it wasn't right and wouldn't work, and that's why he never let Gina close enough to hurt Alexis when it went bad.
He's always needed a partner. A partner and not a taskmaster, not a twinkie, not a mother, not a child. A partner. Someone to do this with, all of this, someone that makes him better just as he makes her better.
Kate's not sure where this falls - wanting to drag him behind a tree and have her way with him - but she's pretty sure it doesn't make either of them better.
So she tries to hold it in and let the closeness of his body be enough, tries to remind herself that he's a disgusting, sweaty mess, and so is she, but really, all it brings to mind are the numerous times in the shower after she's gone for a run-
"Castle-" she bites out, turns to him, giving up.
His eyes are still a little tortured, but he widens them at the look on her face. "Kate."
"Just. Real quick-"
"Outside?" he gasps.
"There are trees-"
"Remember that time in Central Park?" he mutters, but he's got both hands on her waist and making circles against her hip bones in that way he knows she likes. "And your back was scraped raw?"
Damn. "Still, if you're careful-"
"You know I can't be careful when you-"
"But if you're against the tree?"
Is she really talking about this with him? Like this? The logistics of having him?
Oh, hell, yeah.
"How deep are these woods?" he mutters, and drops his lips to her ear to suck her skin into his mouth. He's gonna mark her doing it like that.
She takes a breath, lets her eyes trail off to the trees behind them. "Not very. Developments on the other side. More condos."
"Can't get lost then?"
She laughs, darkly delighted with him, turns her mouth to his jaw to get at that place he always-
His hips buck the moment her tongue touches him; she grins and does it again, feels his hands clench around her hips, tightly, his growl at her neck.
"This is a pity fu-"
"Hush," she murmurs back, nibbling on that spot and making him moan. "Take what you get."
"Not complaining. Just acknowledging."
"Not pity, Castle." She sucks at his skin and feels his knees go weak, staggers with him on a laugh. She's got him; he's with her. "Not pity at all. Just need."
"Yeah, yeah," he gruffs, his mouth at hers, strangely gentle, his voice a broken whisper when it comes. "I need you too."
She bites her lip to hold back the urge to cry; she didn't want to hurt him. She never wants to hurt him.
Fix it, Kate.
"Find a tree, Rick."
Status Power Mingguan
-- Peringkat
Power 
-- Power
stone