Always.

Twelve.

"Johanna. Johanna Martha Castle."

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

"Johanna. Your mother."

"It only seemed right."

"And Martha... my mother?"

"Yeah. I thought it would be good to combine them both into one." I said, smiling. "Do you like it?"

"No." My heart sank as he said that. He saw the look on my face, and quickly added the second part.

"I love it!" He said, kissing me. "It's both if them, both of us. It's perfect. Just like she will be." He said with a smile on his face.

"I'm so excited!" I could hardly contain it at this point.

"It's going to be great. Trust me, I speak from experience. But what's going to be different this time is that I'm going to have the most amazing, gorgeous, remarkable woman next to me the whole way. You." And we finished the conversation with a kiss, when I had a sudden realization.

"Oh my God!"

"What's wrong? Surely my kissing can't be that spectacular... yours is but mine..."

"No, trust me, it is. But I just realized, how are we gonna tell everybody?"

"Well, who knows?"

"Just Ryan and Espo. I had to tell them what was going on, during the 'incident' you know."

"Okay. So, my mother, your dad, Alexis... and Captain Gates." he said the last part with a sneer, making me laugh a little bit.

"Let's hold off on telling Gates. She'll put me on desk duty so fast..." I was already dreading all of the paperwork.

"Okay... but, maybe..."

"Maybe what?" he had me confused.

"Maybe you should be on desk duty. For your, and the baby's protection."

"Castle! Do you know how boring that will be? And I'm only three weeks! If you make me go on desk duty, we are splitting the paperwork!" I snapped at him. I knew I shouldn't have, but he pissed me off so bad.

"Right, I'm sorry." he made me feel guilty.

"Oh, no! I'm so sorry Castle!" I burst into tears. I felt so bad for snapping at him.

"It's okay, it's okay." he claimed, wrapping me in a hug as he did. "It was my fault, I shouldn't have said that." Now I really felt bad. He was being so kind!

"Oh, Rick!" I was sobbing now. "I'm so sorry! You are being so kind, and caring, and I hurt you!"

"Baby, you seem tired. Maybe, let's go lie down for a bit. We can talk more later."

"O, okay." just the thought of a nap was making me tired. "Maybe that will help."

"C'mon. You're getting more and more tired by the minute."