The Only Shark In The Sea (The Date Shark Series Book 3)

by Gladden, DelSheree

  When Guy found out about Charlotte’s cancer and didn’t know if he strong enough to sacrifice for her, Vance was his first call. Vance was the one his friends went to for support. He was supposed to be the rock. How could he admit how far he had fallen, admit his mistakes and failures? When the coroner’s report listed a cerebral hemorrhage as the cause of death in Stephanie’s file, it should have been a relief, but it was just another knife in his gut.

  He had missed the symptoms, even though they had been staring him in the face. Stephanie never got migraines. Stress headaches, sure. But the pain she had been in those last few days should have been a glaring neon sign. Bleeding on the brain of that kind was incredibly painful. Vance thought she was just coming down with the flu, aching and emotionally strung out with the difficulties she’d been having in her classroom. If he had seen what was happening early on, he could have gotten her help, saved her and the baby.

  “Vance,” Natalie said when she finally reached him, “I’m so sorry.” Tears pooled in her eyes, though he knew she was desperately trying to be strong for him. There was true compassion in her eyes because she shared the full weight of knowledge and pain. Sabine carried the same look in her eyes when she faced him. It should have been too much for him to bear, but it was the only real comfort he found that day.

  Natalie didn’t try to touch him or shake his hand. He had never once held her disability against her, except in that moment. All he wanted as she stood in front of him was for her to just…pat him on the shoulder or shake his hand, something to prove he wasn’t alone. Sabine could only stay in Chicago so long. He knew she would talk to him as much as he needed her to, but she would be halfway across the world within days. The only other person who knew his secrets couldn’t bear to be within five feet of him. How could he ever get through this?

  “Thank you,” he managed to say before his throat closed off from the emotions squeezing it shut. “For everything.”

  More tears welled in her eyes. At any second he thought they would come spilling over, but she kept them under a tight rein. He suspected it was a skill she had perfected over her entire life. Part of him wanted to ask her about Samuel and her father, but he knew it wasn’t the appropriate place. If he were being completely honest with himself, he was too emotionally drained to care enough to ask the question.

  He worried about her being safe, but it couldn’t compete with losing Stephanie and knowing he was ultimately responsible for her death. His fingers started twitching. He clenched them into a fist to make them stop, but not before Natalie noticed it. Her brow furrowed in concern and he knew what she was thinking. He never used to do that before. Now, it was a constant struggle not to let everything he was holding in escape the only way it could.

  Behind him, he felt Guy and Eli shift. Both had gently tried to ask him over the last few days what had really happened with Stephanie. Vance didn’t lie or try to pass off their suspicions. He simply refused to speak about it. They both knew Sabine and Natalie understood at least some of the truth, though. They seemed to sense nothing else was going to be said with them standing there, so they excused themselves to check on their families, walking away with worry and confusion written on their faces.

  “You need to tell them,” Natalie said.

  Bristling, Vance glared at her. “It’s none of their business.”

  “Look, I get that you don’t want to tarnish her memory, but you’re drowning and I don’t know how to help you,” Natalie begged.

  “Who says they do?” His sharp, undeserved words seemed to echo off the walls. Vance knew he was practically whispering, but even speaking of it in public set his skin on fire. “They can’t tell me anything I don’t already know.”

  Natalie shook her head slowly. “You know that’s not how it works.” She took a step closer, closing the distance between them to about three feet. Her arms stayed wrapped tightly around her body. “Sure, you know the techniques and treatments or whatever. That’s not the point. You need to talk about it before it eats you up more than it already has. None of this was your fault.”

  “Don’t tell me it wasn’t my fault!” Vance snapped. From the corner of his eye he saw Guy and Eli both stand from their chairs and narrow their eyes at him in worry. That didn’t concern him nearly as much as the way Natalie jumped back from him in fear. Enough of his anger fell away that he was able to take a breath. “I’m sorry. I didn’t…”

  “It’s okay,” she whispered. She stayed at a distance.

  Hating that he had scared her, he opened his mouth, but the words just got jumbled up on his tongue. He knew he wasn’t thinking clearly. The realization didn’t really do anything to help him sort things out. Natalie wasn’t who he was angry at. Taking his pain out on her was a jerk thing to do. Everything he felt was so close to the surface, though. Putting it aside was impossible.

  Natalie started to turn away from him. “Wait, stop,” he begged. “I’m sorry, please…please don’t go.”

  He was begging. All out begging, like a child. She couldn’t leave. He didn’t think he could get through the rest of the day if she walked away from him. There had to be someone else who knew the truth, who shared the burden of hiding it from everyone, because holding it by himself was crushing him.

  “I won’t leave,” Natalie said quietly.

  Somewhat more composed than when he had last seen her, Sabine marched up to the both of them and took in a deep breath. A second later, she threw her arms around Vance’s neck and hugged him fiercely. She didn’t say a word. Everything Vance had wanted when Natalie walked up was given in Sabine’s embrace. During the funeral he had been surrounded by his family, but she had been close by, offering her silent support. Finally feeling her sympathy, compassion, and grief so close and real was like being pulled out of water that was trying to drown him.

  Pulling back, but not letting go of him, Sabine’s expression was serious as she said, “You must tell Guy and Eli.”

  Vance pushed her hands away and Natalie flinched. Another hot retort was on his lips, but before he could actually say anything, Sabine grabbed his arm and started dragging him from the room while motioning for Natalie to follow. Yanking him into some sort of small parlor, Sabine rounded on him. She wasn’t angry, but she was determined.

  “This is not acceptable. Eli and Guy can help you. You do not always need to be so strong. Sometimes you must let others help you.” Sabine pointed a finger at him. “This is too much for myself or Natalie to help you with. You only allow us to know the truth, but we are not professionals. It is too much.”

  Her voice cracked and she pressed a manicured hand to her lips as her eyelids batted furiously to keep back the tears. “It is too much for me, and I was only her friend. She was your partner, your love. She was everything to you. Now she is gone and has left you with lies and hurt and loss. You need your friends. You need to trust them.”

  “I can’t.” His voice betrayed his brokenness. The two syllables barely made it out of his mouth before falling apart. “Maybe they’ll understand because they know about her past, but it will change the way they think about her. It will never be the same. Every time I talk about her they’ll think about the babies and judge her, judge me for leaving her when she needed me. I can’t do that to her.”

  “Vance, she is gone. You are the one who must carry on,” Sabine pleaded. “I know protecting her is important to you. It is all you have done since the two of you met. Protect her from her past, from her fears, from the future. It gave her confidence to love and live her life, but it is no longer your job to protect her. You must care for yourself now.”

  She was begging him. Almost demanding. Part of him knew she was right, but he refused to accept her words. “I can’t stop protecting her now.” His body convulsed as another sob wracked through him. “I failed to protect her when it really mattered. She died because I didn’t see what was happening.”

  “She died because of a freak occurrence,” Sabine argued angrily.

>   “I should have seen it!” Twisting his hands in his hair, pulling until he felt pain, his fiery eyes leveled at Sabine. “I was too angry, too focused on my own pain to see what was killing her. I was selfish!”

  “You were human!” Sabine snapped. “Hiding what she did and the lies she told to you, is not protecting her. You have a right to be angry with her. I am angry with her! I am so very furious with her for the hurt she caused you. I understand what led her to do it, but I am still angry. You are angry too, and you should be angry. Pretending you are not accomplishes nothing but hurting yourself even more. You must tell Eli and Guy.”

  Shaking his head angrily, Vance pointed at her. “You have no right to tell me what I must do! They won’t understand. How could they?”

  “They’ll understand, because,” Natalie’s soft, hesitant voice said, “because we all have those scary dark parts of ourselves, the scars we don’t let people see. Some of us have more than others, deeper wounds, but we all make decisions we wish we hadn’t and hurt people we love. They’ll understand because they’re your friends and they want to help you.”

  Her words struck something inside of him, something that terrified him. They resonated deep in his core, but he was unwilling to face what she was saying. He knew the dark parts of life all too well. He knew she was right. He also knew he was too weak to face them. So he ran instead.

  Chapter 15

  The Reasons

  It had been the second longest three weeks of Natalie’s life. Losing one of the few friends she had and watching what it was doing to Vance tore her apart, but it still didn’t compare to the weeks after she ran away from home. Shaking off those awful memories, she tried to focus on her work, but every few seconds her thoughts slipped back to Vance.

  He had stormed away from them at the funeral. Natalie understood he was hurt and scared, but she was worried about him. So was everyone else. It wasn’t just Natalie’s calls he wasn’t answering. Tuesday night seemed like it would never end as she’d sat in Vance’s living room listening to him explain everything about the fight, the pregnancies, the abortion, and him leaving. She remembered confirming that Vance had met her at the café for a session, but she didn’t remember if she said anything after that. The whole time, all she had been able to think about was how useless she felt sitting next to him, unable to offer any kind of comfort at all.

  Natalie had spent the whole rest of that week trying to work up the courage to touch Vance at the funeral. To give him a hug or shake his hand, anything. She saw the disappointment in his eyes when she had walked up to him at the funeral on Saturday with her arms glued to her body. It didn’t matter that she had managed to sit through the entire service next to strangers—but not too close—in order to honor Stephanie’s memory and support Vance. In the end, she had failed him.

  It had killed her to see his reaction, but what could she do? Nothing she said had made any difference after that either, well…except to have made things worse. Even though Vance was ignoring everyone’s calls, it was hard not to wonder if he wanted to speak to her least of all.

  All of the following Sunday she had paced around her house between calls from a very concerned Sabine, worrying and wishing he would at least text her to let her know he was okay. It was stupid. She realized that. It wasn’t like they were friends, not really. A few weeks of sessions together and that dinner Tuesday night didn’t place any debt on him that he should feel like he needed to reassure her. Honestly, they didn’t even have their sessions anymore.

  The call she received the previous Friday had been the final kick in the gut, one that convinced her Vance was angry at her for her uselessness and what she’d said at the funeral. Sure, she’d expected that Vance wouldn’t be seeing patients for a while. Of course he needed time off. What she hadn’t been expecting was for his receptionist to tell her that all patients who had been with Vance less than six months were being referred to new psychiatrists. That meant her.

  She wasn’t Vance’s patient anymore.

  It was hard to argue with the receptionist’s logic that since patients like her were so new, it would be least traumatic for them to switch doctors. Natalie was welcome to come back to Vance when he was back in the office full-time, she had claimed, but for the time being she needed to go elsewhere, and someone would be in contact with her soon about where that would be. Natalie had been staring at her computer accomplishing nothing all morning.

  Even when the phone rang again, she didn’t answer it right away. Part of her simply didn’t want to move. The remainder of her hesitation came straight from fear. Had they found her a new psychiatrist? She doubted anyone else would be willing to work with her issues like Vance had. Still, for some reason, she reached out and picked up the phone.

  “Hello?”

  “Natalie,” a familiar French accent said, “this is Dr. Guy. How are you holding up?”

  She had to think unusually hard about her answer. “Uh, okay, I guess.”

  “You sound less than okay, but that is understandable,” he said. The compassion in his voice seemed to echo how much pain he was holding onto as well. “I am calling to discuss with you options for continuing your care. Until Vance is ready to come back, myself and a friend will be seeing his patients.”

  “Not all of them,” Natalie said quietly.

  Guy hesitated. “No, not everyone.” He sighed. “I had asked Mrs. Cartwright to let me speak to you before she called to explain that Vance’s newest patients will be referred elsewhere, but she was too quick. While all new patients are being sent to other practices, at least temporarily, that is not the reason I am referring you, Natalie.”

  There was no chance of her responding. She held her breath, knowing he was about to tell her that Vance was too angry at her for everything to continue to treat her. Even knowing it was coming, tears burned at the backs of her eyes and her chin dropped to her chest in shame.

  “Natalie, I am going to ask you to start attending a group therapy session that specializes in disabilities similar to yours. It is held in a big open room with ten to twelve people, so I think you will be able to handle the situation.” He paused, then continued, though his words were halting. “The reason for this, uh, I do think it will be a good situation for you, but, um, I do not think it is wise for you to remain as Vance’s patient even when he returns to his practice.”

  She tried to stop the sob from bubbling up, but it broke through her control anyway. The attachment she felt to Vance was a glaring sign that Guy was right. It didn’t stop it from hurting.

  “Vance, he will need a friend,” Guy said slowly, “one who knows what he is really dealing with. Sabine seems to know as well, but she cannot be here to make sure he is all right, and since he refuses to confide the truth in anyone else…Natalie, I feel very awkward in asking this of you, and I would never ask that you betray my friend’s confidence, but I think you may be the only one who can help him right now.”

  Everything seemed to slow down, like that weird feeling you get when a carousel decelerates too quickly. Her stomach lurched as her mind tried to process what Guy was saying. “You don’t want me to be his patient because…because you want me to be his friend?”

  Guy grumbled something under his breath in French before speaking again. “You are already his friend, Natalie. To be perfectly honest, the relationship you, Vance, and Stephanie had was already beyond what a normal doctor-patient relationship would be. I do not mean that badly. I only mean that now, with Stephanie gone, continuing to be friends while still being his patient has the potential to become quite complicated. When he is ready, he will need someone to talk to. He will need you. It is better if he can do so as a friend and not worry about being your doctor as well.”

  “I, but, I can’t help him. He won’t even answer my calls or texts,” Natalie argued. “I mean, I just wanted to make sure he was okay is all, but he won’t respond.”

  “I know this,” Guy said, “but you must keep trying. Please.”

/>   His tone was bordering on desperate, and even though the rejection Natalie had been fearing hadn’t come, she thought this might be even worse. Guy couldn’t put that kind of weight on her. He couldn’t trust her to make sure his friend didn’t fall apart. Didn’t he remember how much of a mess Natalie was herself? How on earth did he expect her to make anything better for Vance?

  All those thoughts and more sprinted through her mind. It was too big of a task for her, too much to ask. She knew that, but her lips parted and she said, “Okay.”

  As soon as that one word left her mouth, Guy sighed. Natalie’s response was vastly different. She felt like she was going to puke.

  “I also wanted to ask you about what had been going on before Stephanie…before that Tuesday,” Guy said. “Sabine mentioned to me that Vance had been very worried about you when he left that night and perhaps thought you might be in danger. I do not know the specifics, but is everything all right?”

  Glad to be on a different subject, even if it was an uncomfortable one, Natalie took a deep breath. “I’m fine, for now. The guy at work who was bothering me and didn’t show up for work that day just had food poisoning. That’s all. When he came back to work a few days later he apologized for everything and accepted the write-up without complaint. My boss is keeping close tabs on him, but there haven’t been any other problems.”

  Natalie didn’t mention the phone call from her dad. She had found out how to have his phone blocked from making calls to her work number, so she hadn’t received any more harassing calls, but that didn’t mean he hadn’t tried, or that he wasn’t trying to find another way to reach her or some way to get her back home. It wasn’t something she cared to discuss with Guy, though.

  “I am glad to hear you are safe,” Guy said. “If you have any further issues, please don’t hesitate to call me, yes? It may be a while before Vance is himself again.”