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Clyde is gone, Catharina is found and the Greene siblings have all been reunited (briefly) on Days of Our Lives. Right now they’re all off-canvas as

Mark faces the legal consequences of his actions and Cat takes Aaron and Felicity off to see their mother. But this isn’t the last we’ve seen of them —

especially Cat!

She’s going to have an uphill battle carving out a life in Salem after all of this, though. And as to whether or not she and Chad have an actual shot at love is very much up in the air. Though it’s something both Cat and, it sounds like, AnnaLynne McCord are all for!

The actress tells Dishin’ Days that for the short term, “I think that the big focus for Cat is can she ever get Chad to forgive her?”

If that doesn’t happen, there’s no path forward for anything more. The good news for Cat is, as we saw as they said their farewells (for now), he seemed to be a bit more understanding of her plight. But if the Clyde storyline had ended as McCord had hoped, that forgiveness would have been fast-tracked straight into love!

The actress admitted that when she started finding out about the Vancouver episodes, she imagined Catharina’s role as being very different.

“I thought that she was going to pull the trigger on Chad,” McCord admits, “and that I was gonna redeem myself by taking a bullet. I was so ready — drop, roll, [do] my own stunts over here. “But when she just takes off and she ends up shooting Clyde, I was like, ‘What about my redemption??’”

She laughs that in her mind, maybe the bullet would just miss Cat’s heart “by a millimeter and she ends up in recovery, and then she’s the sad sappy [person], and he’s got to be like, ‘Well you saved my life, I forgive you.’ And I’m like, ‘Yay! Now make out.’”

But, as we all know, that’s not what happened, “and she has been eating humble pie for longer than I care to tell you.”

That doesn’t mean that Chad won’t get there, nor will the two end up falling in love for real, but the journey will probably take a bit longer than instant redemption and making out. This is Salem, after all. Sarah’s forgiven Xander for how many horrible deeds? Roman’s moved on with Kate despite her her lies to him and shady past. (And present, but we’ll see how he handles her covering for Philip again when that little secret blows up.)

The point is, Chad and Cat are most definitely not down for the count. A longer timeline and a slow build towards forgiveness, trust and love, would just make their relationship all the stronger. Plus, it would give Days of Our Lives time to decide how to bring the real Abigail back (which we all know is coming), and have the coincide with Chad finally moving on with Cat.

Ah, sweet, sweet Salem love.