"Yeah, but at least you had the guts to say it." Sure, because she was dying and there was a good chance he'd never get to say it again and that makes for some pretty high emotions mixed with pretty low possibility of it coming back to bite him in the ass. Kate had spent a good chunk of those three months trying to be angry at him for choosing that moment, of all moments, to say it. She wanted to be angry because it felt like a cop-out, or a knee-jerk reaction and it wasn't fair because he waited until the safest moment possible to tell her how he felt and what was she supposed to do with that information? She wanted to be angry for him making it about him again but... She couldn't.

Because the side of her - the annoying side that had, on occasion, tried to tell him how she felt - reminded her this wasn't surprise information. That stolen kiss, the hand holdings, the nearly dying with each other, the cup of coffee he brought her every single morning... He wrote her a three-book long love letter, for Christ's sake. Kate might not have been good at dealing with emotions, but she wasn't stupid.

"You made it pretty clear, Castle," she told him. "You told me plenty of times. I just wasn't ready to hear it yet."