Chapter 2

Silent years

She had to read it over and over again to make sure that she got the headline right.

´Warhero Vincent Keller will marry Erica Baars´

At first she couldn´t exactly detect what she felt, she was surprised, maybe even shocked.

Somehow she felt like her affection for the news wasn´t fair to Noah, not at all but Vincent was going to get married, and not with her.

´´5 years after recovering from amnesia, Vincent Keller finally found the woman he want´s to spend the rest of his life with. On sunday the coupple will start their journey of marriage in a private cerimony while rumour has it that the party will take place at Time Warner Center.

– The great question is: will Catherine Chandler be invited? His former long time partner during his recovery process was spotted in Paris with star architekt Noah Fox last week.- ´´

The article hadn´t made it to the front page but was printed on the 3rd one, pictures of Vincent and Erica and a smaller snap shot of her and Noah in the corner.

Before she read that article, Catherine had managed to succesfully stay away from any ´Vincent- related´news.

No doubt, Erica was beautiful, long blond hair, blue eyes, but she wore too much lipstick and her choice of clothes was questionable in Catherines eyes. This woman didn´t quite look like she was his type after all the beautiful red- haired girls he was with in the past but how much did she know about him after all those years?

Only once did she read the article itself, shallow stuff about his relationship with the bride-to-be, once did they mention her, the fact that they had successfully moved on.

But she still remembered the moment when they first met, the way he looked at her, the way he changed her life, first to the better, than to the worst.

The car she had belonged to Vincent and she wanted to leave everything behind that was connected to him. She walked away from the harbour and tried to find a taxi to get back to her appartment, the place she never realy left behind, even when she moved in with him.

A taxi stopped though it was already occupied by another passenger, only later should she find out who he was. Silently she stared out of the window into the cold night, watching the streetlights passing by. Oh, she wanted to cry again, cry for him, her past and her future. But she knew that feeling only too well, her relationship with Vincent had never been easy, she had cried when Vincent was taken from her and she had cried when she shot him. Losing him to an outside force, to the people who had constantly tried to keep them apart was tragic but losing him like this? This was just stupid.

The taxi stopped in front of her apartement and this time she left it with the stranger.

She had barely talked to him during the ride home, she would answer monosylabically until he realized that she wasn´t in the mood for talking.

Noah Fox had only moved in, he was an aspiring architekt form europe, that much she got and she had to admit that he looked a little like the guys she would date before she met Vincent.

She didn´t expect to ever find another silver box on her windowsill and she supressed the urge to search for him outside the window.

But her full attention snapped to her rining cell phone.

„Tess, hey!" she answered the phone while making coffee for work.

„Hey Cat, turn on the TV, they show something you might wanna see."

Cat just wanted to ask for the channel but basically every local and few of the national channels were showing the good news, „War hero and his bride-to-be".

„I swear, Cat: the next time I get to see him, I´m gonna kick his a**!"

„When did that happen, when did he become famous to be on the news"

They showed several short scenes of Vincent on various red carpets and no matter how hard Cat tried, she couldn´t find her Vincent, the old Vincent in those pictures.

Maybe it was just that she had never really spend time with him in public, he smiled, he was free, no one was hunting him.

„Cat? - Cat! Are you still here?" for a short, precious moment Cats mind had traveled back in time to all those beautiful moments she once shared with Vincent, completely oblivious of her friend on the phone.

„... uhm, yeah, still here...! Yeah, I´ll definitely kick his a** the moment I get to see him again!"

she chuckled and Tess couldn´t hold back from laughing out loud.

When Alex once left their lives for good, she had said that sometimes in life you outgrow relationships that you expected to have forever. Only this time it was Cat who had outgrown Vincent even though she thought that this was never going to happen, back then.

„Good luck with that! But JT is going to kill me if I don´t bring you to our family dinner, Brian want´s to see you again, too! When can I pick you up?"

„Well, thanks for leaving me a choice! How abaout 6:30?"

Tess wouldn´t let her bail from this event so she better surrendered anyway.

She ended the call and the little silver parcel caught her eye again, she went over to the kitchen island to open it.

His handwriting was still the same. He only adressed her with her name, how would you greet someone who´s heart you broke 5 yours ago: hey, hello, or even dear?

´Catherine

I wanted to give this to you for quite a while now. When you left, you left some things behind and I thought that you might wanted to have them back. I know that my timing sucks, and I´m sorry for that, but we have moved on and I shouldn´t have these things anymore. V.´

We have moved on … was he even aware of the irony in his timing?

And he had absolutely no right to contact her, not now, not ever and certainly not for this reason.

Was he stupid or brave to send her this?

All the memories: her old watch was in the box, she knew that she had left it at Vincents but back than she wouldn´t go back for a stupid watch. She never knew how many pictures of them existed besides the ones from her dad´s wedding but finding them in there surprised her. He had even collected the old notes she had sent him and some of them that she had left behind at his place. In the very bottom of the box she found the top of her flanel pyjama, his birthday present for her.

She thought that when he saw Evan kissing her, the fact that he didn´t feel worthy would make it hard to establish a working relationship, all those obstacles, that stood between them. But in the end they had overcome them all, exept one.

Those things had to go, he had to go, leave her mind, her thoughts. She grabbed everything he had sent and threw it into the bin.

„We have moved on!"

Hey guys, Thanks so much for your wonderful. Do you like it? How to believe that this act vincent? How can an idiot? Please review, Tell me what you think. Thank you very much Thisisjulchen.

This is Noah, Mariano Di Vaio. wp-content/uploads/2013/02/DSC_

This is Erika, Candice.

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