Chapter 25

On her trip up to the apartment Catherine had time to think. It was the first moments she'd been apart from Vincent since learning he'd kept his side of the Bond closed to her all this time. 'How could he have done that?' she wondered. 'Didn't he know that she wanted to share everything with him?' A quiet despair began to creep into her heart. The only conclusion that she could come up with was he simply didn't feel he could trust her with his emotions.

Vincent, on his solitary climb to the balcony of Catherine's apartment felt this feeling of despair from her. As she had pointed out earlier he didn't know what thoughts accompanied the feeling, but he did know it had something to do with him. 'What could have caused this in the short time since they'd parted? At this time of night she shouldn't have encountered anyone on her way to the apartment. So what then had changed since they had kissed on her threshold?'

He landed on the balcony lightly for such a large man and peeked into her bedroom. She wasn't there. Entering through the other set of French doors, he found her slumped on the couch crying. Her jacket was still on, but she hadn't even turned on the lights. Luckily his vision was such that he could cross the room to her side without it.

Falling to his knees beside the couch, he placed a tender hand on her back. "Catherine, what is it? Tell me," he urged.

Lifting her tear-streaked face, she looked at him forlornly. "Vincent, why did you hide yourself from me in the Bond? Didn't you trust me?"

"Catherine no! I always knew I could trust you, right from the first! When Father kept telling me to tell you nothing about our world, I knew even then that I could trust you with our secrets. I've always trusted you!"

"Then why?"

With a heavy sigh, he allowed himself to sit on the floor next to her before he answered, "It was myself I didn't trust, Catherine. I felt our Bond from the first and knew that I would come to love you as I do now, but Father's teachings ran deep. I knew that a life of love with a woman, any woman, was not for me. I didn't want to burden you with my feelings of love for you, when you didn't feel the same for me."

"But what about when I did realize that I loved you? Why didn't you tell me then?"

Their eyes met, hers full of pain and questions, his full of worry and shame. His gaze dropped as he hung his head. "Catherine, the feelings you had for me were so new. I had never felt anything like that before. I wasn't sure what to do. It was just so unexpected. Also, I was unaware that the passion and desire I felt for you was 'normal'. I had thought those feelings were…'animalistic'."

She was quiet for a time thinking over what he had said, when she finally spoke he could still hear the hurt in her voice, "Vincent, all that aside, I guess I still don't understand why you didn't feel you could let me sense when you were worried, or happy, or lonely…" she trailed off.

"Because if I had let you feel those things from me, but not the others…you would have wondered if I didn't have those feelings for you."

"I see…" she said slowly.

"Do you, Catherine? My love for you was never a question in my mind, but the other more intense feelings were something no one ever talked about to me and so I believed that they were 'unnatural'."

"And because I tried so very hard to keep you from knowing that I had 'those' kinds of feelings for you, I was contributing to that belief. I'm sorry, Vincent, I didn't know. If I had, I would have made you aware of how much I desired you!"

"I know now, Catherine, and that's all that matters!"

Sitting up on the couch, she wiped her tears away and smiled at him. "Let's make a vow to each other never to keep our feelings from the other ever again!"

"Yes Catherine, I promise you that!"

She happily threw herself into his arms that opened automatically to her.