Capítulo 88: 88. Chapter 88
Allie slides slowly out of Rafe's bed and pauses once her feet hit the floor. Her little brother has never been a sound sleeper, but he doesn't stir. Rafe brushes his fingers over the back of her hand in good-bye, and she takes a long, slow breath and heads for connecting bathroom.
The dog lifts his head when she goes through, but it's okay. If Dash woke up now, it wouldn't matter. He'd just see his sister in the door of the bathroom. Nothing wrong with that.
Well, except it might matter to her mom, who maybe doesn't love the idea of Dash being up for good at four in the morning.
Allie takes a moment in the girls' bedroom to get her bearings, then decides she doesn't want to climb back up the bunk beds and try to fall asleep.
So she opens the door and pads out into the hall in her bare feet. Rafe was already half-asleep when she left, so she's pretty sure he won't follow her out here. Still, the sight of another person haunting the balcony throws her for a moment.
She slides open the glass door in only a thin pajama top and boxer shorts; Kate turns around with a sharp, startled look.
"Oh, Allie."
"Why are you up?" Allie asks, sliding the door behind her slowly and coming to her mom's side. Her mom. Yeah. The only woman who has ever managed to do that for her, be the right balance of friend and parent.
"Thinking. Couldn't stop. Makes me restless. Why are you up?"
Allie bites her lip and averts her eyes, then sighs. "Sneaking back to bed."
Kate laughs softly and slides her arm around Allie's shoulders, hugging her tightly, pressing her lips to Allie's forehead, like it's all so natural, effortless. The thing is, Alexis remembers, knows exactly how much work it was for Kate to get to this point. It makes the effortlessness of it now all the better, the more reassuring, something highly valued.
Allie tucks into Kate's side and presses her nose to her mom's shoulder. "Mad at me?"
"No. Course not."
"Dad would be."
"Your dad has trouble forgetting his little girl. Which is a good thing, Allie. He holds you forever in his heart as the innocent and perfect and unconditionally-loved little girl."
"It's not that good. He won't let me grow up."
"He doesn't have to let you do anything. You're old enough to make your own choices. To be honest, he has enough faith in you to know that you'll make good ones."
She nods but she's more curious now about Kate. About why Kate couldn't stop thinking. "What's going on with you?"
Her mom lets her go, turns and gestures to the lounge chairs sitting side by side on the balcony. The air at four in the morning is still humid, but the breeze keeps it comfortable; the sky is that strange pinking-black that signals the eventual arrival of sunrise.
Kate sits first and Allie follows, reaches over to lay her hand along Kate's, her fingers tangling with her mother's in a sudden rush of need. She knows that her father wouldn't - but - and the bad stuff with Kate was so long ago now - but that couple is getting divorced and Rafe's bringing up marriage and Kate sighed like-
"Mom?"
"A lot of things are changing. That's all." Kate gives her a bright, too-bright smile, that doesn't do a thing for Allie's nerves.
"Like . . . what?"
Kate sits forward suddenly, but doesn't remove her hand. Allie remembers seeing the scratches down her mom's back and seriously, you can't be having crazy outdoor sex and also be changing things too. Right?
Allie strokes her finger over her mom's wedding band; her nail catches on the setting of Kate's mother's ring. "I like this," she says suddenly into the silence. But she does. She likes what it means, what it holds for Kate. She wants something like that too. If it comes. When it comes. When Rafe-
"You do?" Kate asks, and her voice is gentle, her eyes tender.
Allie nods and shrugs, looks out over the water to avoid that too-good look on her mom's face. Whew. Too much. She's not going to start crying for no good reason at four in the morning.
"Allie. Your new job?"
She mentally stumbles at the switch in subjects, clutches an armrest as she turns to look at Kate. "My new job. Yes?"
"You're just on-call now?"
"Right. I go in after the big fights; the problem is already over." Is this what Kate's worrying over? "It's really fine. We sit down, talk about the behavior and what triggered it. We make up an action plan for avoiding the behavior the next time, avoiding the antecedent if possible. It's mostly stuff that's common sense, really."
"When you worked the lockdown unit? How bad did it get?"
Allie studies her mother's face, but when has Kate Beckett ever shirked from the gritty truth? "It gets bad. The girls there all have some serious issues. We had one girl who'd been involved in an incestuous relationship with her brother - at her own mother's brutal insistence. And so -" Allie rubs a hand over her face. "So, she's permanently sociopathic. Her mother beat out of her any objections, any notion of right or wrong, so now she has none. None. She-" She's not supposed to talk about this.
Allie bites her lip and turns her head away, gathers herself back together, finds her center. She remembers how Kate used to teach her self-defense when she first started this work. Dashiell was almost two but Kate would have Dad take the kid so they could spar in the 12th's workout room. Kate taught her this, how to reach back for that calm center, how to be unmovable, fixed, ever ready. It works so well.
"Allie."
She looks up, her mom regarding her seriously, but without any deeper concern, any sense that Allie's not fit to handle this. Kate has always known Allie's strength and allowed for it, given it time to grow and mature. She's grateful for that.
"Allie," she says again, and this time the hesitation is all on Kate's side. Not for Allie or because of Allie's job, but for herself. And that makes no sense.
"Mom?"
"Do you think I could do it?"
Wait. What?
"On the unit. Crisis counselor. Do you think I could do it?"
"Wait. What are you talking about?"
"You need some detachment, right? I can - I think I've got practice at that." Kate gives her a quirk of her lips, self-mocking. "Self-defense training, obviously. The schedule is flexible, from what I remember."
"It is. Yes. You could work the weekend shift and be home all week. And you do have training. Plus this stuff you guys do with Julie and Dash, the behavioral therapy, that's a really good foundation for this. But, wait. Hold on. Mom?"
Kate lets out a long breath, as if she's getting ready to dive underwater and is measuring what it will take, how much she needs to make it last. "Yeah. See. Your dad's going to buy Black Pawn."
"Wow." She stares at Kate, laughs. "Okay, but - how does that-?"
"I set it up for him to come back to the 12th with me, but now - he can't do both. I don't want him to try to do both, when he obviously really wants to go in this direction. It's safer, isn't it?"
"Dad was gonna go back to work with you?" And even though Allie thinks she had this under control, it's been nice these last few years not worrying. The idea of him going back, with Dash and Ellery so small, the idea that Dad might not come home one day and those two kids wouldn't have gotten the wonderful, amazing experience of growing up with her father like Allie did-
"He says he still wants to. But."
"But?" She's still reeling over the whole buying Black Pawn thing, but it hits her that Kate started this conversation with wanting to change jobs. "Wait. Back to you. Back to working at Youth Villages. What?"
Kate brushes her hand over her mouth and closes her eyes. "Don't tell your dad. I'll talk to him about this - I should've said something to him first. I just like to research all my options, you know, and he hates it when we don't talk it out together, but-"
"Wait. You mean - you're thinking about retiring from the NYPD, aren't you? Aren't you?"
Kate won't look at her, but she shrugs. "I don't know what I'm thinking. Convince me, Allie."
"Oh my gosh," Allie laughs, leans forward herself to clasp her arms around her knees, stare at this woman. "Oh my word, Kate. What do you want me say? Yes, you should retire before you get shot? Before we don't get to have you anymore?"
Kate shivers hard, and Allie immediately regrets the words. But they're true.
"You think about Ella and Dash?" she asks after a moment.
"Of course I do," Kate moans, putting her head in her raised knees.
"No. No, I mean, about how much they admire you? How baby girl walks around in your shoes, Mom? She walks around in your own shoes. Dad sent me pictures of her Halloween costume. Dashiell never shuts up about how his mom catches bad guys."
Kate lifts her head, blinks, brushes a couple fingers under her right eye.
"They think you're awesome. And if something ever happened to you, I know they'd think like I do, just like I did about Dad when he first started following you around, just like I think of you now - so proud. We're so proud of what you do. How you put yourself in harm's way just to make sure that the three of us won't ever have to."
Kate uncurls and leans in to Allie, wraps both arms around her tightly. "You - you are a very amazing woman."
Allie takes a shaky breath and hugs her back, the embrace strong but still a little desperate.
Kate kisses her cheek. "Thank you. Go back to bed. Your own bed, Allie."
She laughs and pulls away from her mom, blushing a little, but searching Kate's eyes. "You too, you know. Go get some sleep."
"I will," Kate says, but Allie isn't sure she really will.
Rafe is making breakfast, totally zoned in on the art of it, when the front door clicks open and swings back with a slam. He jumps and ruins his decorative swirl of egg concoction, puts the bowl down to investigate.
He left the balcony door open for the breeze this morning, but it looks like Kate was out running. When she came back in, the wind tunnel effect slammed the door. She's wincing as she steps quietly down the hall, but her face clears when she sees him.
"Oh good. I thought I had left the balcony door open by accident."
"Nope, that was me." Rafe wipes his fingers on the kitchen towel, slings it over his shoulder to put his hands on his hips. "Running?"
She nods and heads into the kitchen, grabbing water from the fridge. He expects her to go, but she just leans her shoulder against the door and watches him a moment.
"You okay?" he asks, glancing at her as he heads back for the egg mixture.
"Oh, yeah. I'm fine. Needed to run. Just - the sweat stings." She gives him a wry look and pushes off the fridge to circle the bar, sit down. "I actually - I was going to suggest something. Wait a sec." She hops back off the bar stool and heads halfway down the hall, then comes back. "Allie's in her own bed?"
Rafe blushes fiercely and scrubs a hand down his face. "Ah."
"No, I mean. She's asleep now, right?"
He nods. Wow. That was awkward.
"I just don't want her to overhear us. Okay, see, Allie and I talked this morning."
He vaguely remembers her leaving his bed and then hearing the girls' hall door open a little later. "Oh?"
"Just girl talk," Kate smiles at him, sitting on the stool again, propping her elbows on the bar. "But based on some things she said . . . actually, I should ask you this first. Do you have a ring for her already?"
He gapes at Kate, his hands freezing over his preparations. "I - Well - not yet. I was gonna try to trick her into ring shopping with me this afternoon. Go to one of the malls here. Casual. And then I'd go back and get it later today. Whatever she likes the best. I don't - I don't know."
Kate only grins at him, then spreads her fingers and tugs off her diamond engagement ring. "I want to - suggest? - I'd like Allie to have it."
He stands rooted to the spot, unable to reach for it, because he knows - Allie has told him - he has some small idea exactly what that ring means. "But. Allie said. Allie said that was your mom's."
Kate's face blanks, her hand falters, but she puts the ring on the counter between them. "It was. And then it was mine. And. And it should be my daughter's."
But Ellery? But her mom was murdered. But-
"I don't know what to say," he gets out lamely. "Allie . . ."
"She said to me, this morning, she said she wants something like it. And I could tell by her face she didn't mean the stone or the cut. She meant something with history-"
"Meaning," he interupts. Because he knows that's it exactly. He knows Allie. "She wants it to mean something."
Kate nods. Then touches the diamond with her fingertip. Her head comes up and he doesn't see any doubt there. None at all. "You'd be doing me an honor, and maybe this wasn't what you had in mind, but Castle's been after me for a while now to get something a little less-"
She swallows.
He has to show her, somehow, that he knows what this means. "A little less burdened?"
Her eyes flicker up to his and she draws her hand back, the ring between them. "Yes. For me. But for Allie?"
He shakes his head and studies the diamond. It's huge - really, bigger than he could afford - and it's simple like Allie, and it's beautiful, it really is. And-
and it's her mother's. Allie's mother. Not just Kate's.
"Allie would - she'd get it. And you're right. The meaning-" He stops again, can't figure out how to say what needs to be said.
"When her dad asked me to marry him, okay well, the time I said yes," she laughs and quirks her mouth. "He had this ring. I always wore it on a chain around my neck, but it kept scratching Dashiell as a baby. I didn't figure it out for a long time, and when I realized it was this - this was hurting my son - I couldn't do it. I took it off for good."
"And then Rick proposed with it?" he says, can't quite see how that was an okay thing.
"It didn't fit my finger; my mom's were smaller. He got it resized. It was sweet - it was what I needed. And then, oh I don't know, a few years ago? He kinda panicked about it. He thought he should've wiped the slate clean, gotten me something ridiculous and expensive."
Okay, so that's funny. And it makes Richard Castle more of a guy, doesn't it? Instead of Allie's father, or the best-selling author, or the man who wants to lay this heavy load of responsibility on Rafe's shoulders. Rick is now just a guy who messes up and tries to fix it.
"So really. Rick will get to pick me out something new, and Allie will get to have something meaningful. I hope. But please, please say no if you don't want to do it like this. I don't want you to think you have to. I've got Ellery to shove it off on, right?"
He laughs at that and reaches out to the ring, his fingers hovering over it. "I - I don't want to take it from Ellery though. I mean. Ellery is really y-"
"Don't even say it," Kate states quietly. He glances up and her eyes are dark, almost dangerous. "Don't think it. Because that's not true."
Heat floods his cheeks, but even through his embarrassment, he's so proud. So grateful. Beacuse Allie loves Kate without boundaries, in a kind of desperate and needy way that he's not sure is always healthy, but it looks like it's okay. Kate not only loves her back, but owns her, claims her, would never let her go.
He scoops up the ring, puts it in his pocket. "Thank you. I don't know how we'll keep it from her for the next few days - she'll notice you're not wearing it - but thank you."
"Just do it sooner rather than later," Kate says with a laugh, and her eyes are so green that they shine even with the sunlight pouring around her. He thought they were brown. But they're not, not always it seems.
He clears his throat and nods at her. "I'll - uh - yeah. She said to ask when I got a ring."
And he feels it in his pocket, not heavy and not burdened, but made light by the way Kate wants to pass it on, by the way it has promise bound to it through the women who have worn it in their own time.
"Now I have a ring."
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