Finding home

Chapter 33 - The truth

"Kevin, Javi, listen" I started but they cut me off.

"No, Kate, you listen" Esposito pointed his fingers between me and Castle. "This cannot be happening, you can't be serious."

"You of all people shouldn't be falling for things like this crap" Ryan complained and I hushed them.

"What the hell's going on in here?!" captain Gates asked coming into the room and I immediately tried to pushed away Castle's hands from me and prayed he'd hide from my boss.

"Nothing sir" I immediately answered and I saw Esposito giving me a look which I immediately killed with my eyes.

"Who's he?" she asked and I saw her pointing behind me.

"Oh, this is Alexander, he's uh..." I tried to think of something but I couldn't, to my surprise Ryan helped me out.

"He's a witness, he came here but wants to stay anonymous to as many people as possible" he said.

"Yeah, therefore the shades, if you don't mind we'd like to continue without scaring him off" Esposito asked with a convincing voice.

Gates looked from me to Ryan to Esposito and then just threw one glance at Castle before she nodded, said 'continue' and walked out of the room. The second the door was shut I let go of a big relieved sigh while wiping my face with my hands.

"You better get your act together Kate, because I can't do this to Alexis" Esposito said and I looked at him.

I was about to try an explain to him when the door suddenly opened again.

"Did you tell them?" Lanie asked and I couldn't stop the giant smile that came to my face when I saw my best friend come to my rescue.

"You knew?!" Esposito questioned and she hushed him closing the door.

"Of course I knew! I'm the best friend" she said in a 'duh' voice.

Esposito and Ryan looked shocked. I turned to Castle who observed everything happening with a stiff body. I walked closer to him and he didn't even seem to notice, it was almost like he was frozen in place. I carefully removed his cap and threw it to the couch table, then I took off his glasses and put them down too but more gently to not break them. I could feel my friends's eyes on me while they talked about something. I wasn't paying attention to them though, I had my eyes set on the man in front of me.

"Castle, you okay?" I whispered and carefully let my fingers touch his cheeks.

His eyes immediately focused on me, finding my eyes. He took in a deep breath, since he had seemed to stopped breathing there for a second.

"Yeah, just... guns" he mumbled looking down and I felt my forehead wrinkle.

I then turned around and let my eyes land on the guns at my partners's hips. I rolled my eyes and bit my lip.

"I wouldn't let them" I whispered and kissed his cheek.

"Now you need to shut up and let them explain, I wouldn't let Kate do this unless I believed him myself" Lanie suddenly said, loud enough for us to hear.

I turned to my friends and reached out my hand to signal them to sit down on the couch. They moved there and I sat in the chair before them, Castle sitting down in a chair moved beside mine so that we both were sitting in front of my three friends. I took out my phone, on which I could play the tape for my partners. I took a deep breath and told them everything. The only things I left out was all the things irrelevant to the case, including how Castle made me feel. My partners looked skeptical up to the point where I turned on the tape and they got something else than 'theories' as proof of our story.