The Only Shark In The Sea (The Date Shark Series Book 3) by DelSheree Gladden Page B

sliding down until he was on his backside cradling his head in his hands. “You knew?”
    “No, my friend, but I suspected.” She sighed, and he heard the deep sympathy in that simple exhale. “She kept telling me she was just sick, but her emotional state was strange for weeks before that. She had been calling me quite often, talking about her fears that you would get tired of her and leave because of her issues. I did everything I could to reassure her that you would never leave her, but she kept bringing up how much you wanted children and how terrified she was of having to face raising a child. I thought perhaps she just had a scare, but even after she was well again there was a difference in her. It was months before she seemed to shed her burden and regain her usual cheer. I suspected I knew what had happened, but I never confronted her about it.”
    “She was going to do it again,” Vance said, his voice breaking on the last word.
    Sabine gasped. “She is pregnant again?” Sabine let out a long and rather unsteady breath. “She at least told you this time, yes? You can discuss it?”
    “She didn’t tell me. I came home early and found her crying in the bathroom and saw the test. She had no intention of telling me a damn thing.”
    “Oh, Vance,” Sabine said with a voice full of sympathy. “I am so sorry for you. I do not know what to say.”
    There was silence for a long time on both ends of the conversation. The heaviness that seemed to be grinding Vance into the asphalt below him was relentless and it was all he could do to not break under the pressure. “She won’t keep it, no matter what I say, will she?”
    Sabine was her closest friend. She saw what Vance was too blind to see two years ago. She was Stephanie’s confidant. He couldn’t breathe as he waited for her response. “No,” she said softly. “I do not think she will keep the baby.”
    Finally, Vance broke down. Sabine listened patiently as he poured out his hurt and sorrow for the children he would never meet, for the woman he loved but didn’t think he could ever forgive, for his failure to live up to his promises.
    “I don’t know if I can get past this,” Vance said. The suffocating emotions he was drowning under barely made his words intelligible, but Sabine understood all the same.
    “I know you love her very much, and she loves you, but you both want such different things out of life,” Sabine said. The compassion in her voice echoed over the line, a small comfort to Vance as he felt ready to split open. “Give her time. Give yourself time. Talk when you are both calmer. Do not give up on each other yet, but this is something you have both been putting off facing since you met.”
    Wiping his eyes with the back of his hand, Vance said, “It’s not just the babies…” He stumbled over the word and had to bite back another collapse to continue. “She lied to me, hid both pregnancies from me. She never even gave me a chance to talk about it with her. She didn’t trust me not to force her into something she couldn’t handle. It kills me that she was carrying my child and got rid of it, and that she’ll do the same thing again no matter what I say, but despite how angry I am about that, I understand her terror at being a parent. But how could she think so little of me that she would hide all of this and lie right to my face about something this huge?”
    “I do not know,” Sabine said quietly. “It is difficult for me to understand as well.”
    He was lost. He had no idea what to do in that moment. He couldn’t stand the thought of going back to his apartment and facing Stephanie after everything that had just happened. He was liable to say something he would regret. The anger roiling inside of him was too volatile to attempt a civil conversation. He couldn’t make a rational decision about their relationship right then. He had to leave. At least for a while.
    “Sabine, can you call your brother and ask him to