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

around her knees and one hand pressed to her head, she didn’t even realize he was there.
    “Steph, honey, what’s going on?” Vance begged as he entered the bathroom.
    He only made it two steps before a clattering sound caught both their attention. He was merely distracted by the noise, but Steph’s hand shot out from her body in a panic, desperate to retrieve whatever he’d kicked. Blinded by swollen eyes and tears that seemed incapable of slowing, she didn’t see it lying across the room at the joint between the wall and floor, but Vance did.
    Numbness spread over his body as he squatted down and reached for the thin plastic rectangle. His girlfriend, the love of his life, sat sobbing on the bathroom floor, but the only thing he could process was that there was a pregnancy test in his hand. He was hardly an expert on pregnancy tests, but the double pink line and the fact that Stephanie was beside herself made it crystal clear what was going on.
    Stomping on the intense bubble of joy that spread through his body like a lightning strike took a phenomenal effort. The inconsolable sobbing coming from Stephanie was the only thing capable of focusing him. With the test in hand, Vance kneeled down on the bathroom floor. “Steph, take a deep breath, honey. Forget about everything for a second and just breathe.”
    “I…I can’t,” she gasped.
    Heaving in breath after breath, she was scaring Vance. He had no choice but to grab her shoulders to steady her just in case she fainted. “Steph, I know you’re panicking, but I need you to calm down. You’re pregnant. I know that terrifies you. You’re not here alone, though. I’m here. I’ll be here every step of the way.”
    He tried his hardest to reassure her, but his words only threw her even deeper into frenzy. “No,” she sobbed. “I can’t do this. It’s not…I can’t. I thought maybe I’d be ready this time, but I…I just can’t.” She went flaccid, collapsing so Vance’s grip was the only thing keeping her up.
    He knew he should pull her in, hold her until she stopped panicking, but his initial shock at seeing the positive test had morphed into a crushing sense of hollowness. This time? He choked on those words. They couldn’t mean what he thought they meant. They just couldn’t.
    Suddenly finding it difficult to breathe himself, he pulled his hands away from her shoulders and fell backward onto the floor. Sitting there next to her, he couldn’t react to her pain because he was buried so far under his own.
    “This time?” he begged. “What does that mean?”
    The absolute vacuum of sound that greeted his question pulled his eyes up to meet hers. Red, swollen, the emotion in her eyes wasn’t regret, but fear…fear that she had let slip a secret she had never intended to reveal. “Vance, I…it was just…”
    “You’ve been pregnant before?” His voice sounded like someone else’s. He’d never heard himself sound so strained, so empty. Stephanie didn’t answer, but the guilt in her eyes laid bare the lies. The knife twisted deeper, the blood draining from his face. “When?”
    A massive sob wracked her body. Stephanie pressed both hands to her mouth. Her body was practically convulsing as she tried to hold everything in, but her hands dropped away in defeat and she whispered, “Two years ago.”
    The force with which the truth slammed into him was like colliding with a brick wall at top speed. She almost never got sick. Before this, the last time had been two years prior. She couldn’t keep anything down, but never ran a fever. Emotionally, she had been a wreck.
    “Did you lose the baby?” It was a heartrending thought. They could have had a child. He couldn’t believe she hadn’t told him she was pregnant, but he ached for the pain the miscarriage must have caused her. He was about to pull her into his arms when she spoke and threw everything he thought he knew into chaos.
    “No,” she whispered. “I didn’t lose