That probably wasn’t fair to think, but he was hardly in the right frame of mind to care. Natalie stood and he followed, wishing he had a reason to stay a little longer. Talking to her for the last few hours hadn’t just been cathartic, it had been enjoyable on a level he hadn’t expected. Something he wouldn’t mind doing again. The thought again crossed his mind that maybe keeping Natalie as a patient wasn’t wise, but he knew a decision like that shouldn’t be made in his current frame of mind. Neither one said anything until they were both standing on the sidewalk outside the café. Vance was the first to break the silence.
“Are you sure you’re going to be okay at home tonight?” It wasn’t just him stalling. He was truly concerned about her safety. Samuel seemed like the more immediate threat, but Natalie had run from her parents for a reason.
“I’ll be fine.” Natalie tried for confident, but she wasn’t fooling anyone.
Worried, Vance pulled out his phone. “I have several patients I see because of a court order. I have a few contacts in the police department who owe me a favor or two. Let me make a few calls and see if someone can maybe drive by your building a few times during the night.”
Natalie attempted to protest, but it was weak. Vance was scrolling through his contacts when a call from Guy lit up the screen. His first reaction was to ignore the call because he didn’t even want to hear about Stephanie in that moment, but worry she had gotten worse or there was a problem with the baby quickly changed his mind. He was angry, but needed to know she was okay. His fingers trembled as he answered the call.
“Hey, Guy.” He hesitated asking about Stephanie, but the strange silence on the other end of the line scared him. “Guy, is everything okay? What’s going on?”
Natalie tucked her bottom lip between her teeth as worry sprung to her face, but she remained quiet. So did Guy. For almost a full minute, his friend said nothing.
Panic rising fast, Vance asked, “Guy, please.”
“Stephanie, she is gone,” Guy finally said.
The strangled quality of his voice twisted Vance’s gut. “What? She left me? She’s just gone?”
Processing such a startling concept was impossible. Vance stumbled back a step and had to lean against the café window. She just left? Vance wasn’t even sure he wanted to try to work things out with her, but she just took off? The baby…Vance was struck square in the chest by the realization that the baby was probably already lost. If Stephanie left, it was likely because she had no intention of discussing it with him before she made her decision. He had no doubt after their earlier argument that she would abort the baby before he could track her down to talk.
“Vance,” Guy said slowly, “Stephanie has not left you because of whatever you two fought over. She is gone. She is…they are not sure what happened yet. I found her when I arrived and called for help, but it was too late. I need you to come back to your apartment to speak with the police. Do you understand?”
Gone? Dead? Vance must have misunderstood. There’s no way Stephanie could actually be gone. Vance’s knees buckled. Natalie rushed over to him and kneeled down on the concrete, but wrapped her arms around herself, trying to hold in her panic. “Vance, what’s happening? Is Stephanie okay?”
Her fingers were cinched around her jacket so tightly her knuckles were white. It was an odd thing for Vance to notice in that minute, but he couldn’t seem to focus on the words coming over the line. Guy was talking. He could hear his voice, but understanding what he was trying to say was like attempting to decipher Chinese. The worry in his voice escalated every second Vance didn’t respond. It was possible Natalie was talking too, but it all sounded like white noise behind his agony.
Someone tugged the phone out of his hand. Vance could only assume it was Natalie, though he didn’t know how she managed to get it without touching him. Another observation he knew was the wrong thing to be focused on. He was desperate not to think about what was really happening. If he just sat there staring at the cracks in the sidewalks and the scuff marks on his dress shoes, would it all disappear?
“Vance. Vance, you need to get up. Please,” Natalie begged.
Anyone else might have grabbed him and pulled him to his feet. Natalie just sat there pleading with him to listen to her. A car drove by. It was green, with whitewall tires of all things. Vance watched it until it disappeared around a corner. Why had he left the apartment? As angry as he’d been, she was sick. She needed him. He’d left her. Now she was gone. The baby was gone. Everything he loved had vanished.
Hands grabbed him, and even though he knew they weren’t Natalie’s, he didn’t resist. What did it matter if someone was trying to mug him? A vague sense of concern that Natalie might be in danger nagged at him, but it didn’t last. Someone yanked his arm around their neck, which seemed like an odd thing for a mugger to do. He was moving forward a second later. His feet seemed to be moving, but he wasn’t sure. Not until he found himself standing next to the passenger door of his car and someone started fishing through his pockets did he start to wonder what was going on. Where they going to take his car too? With him in it?
“Thank you,” a woman said. Natalie? “Could you just help him into the car? I’ll have to leave my car here. Will that be a problem?”
“We’re open all night. I’ll make sure someone keeps an eye on it,” a man replied.
Vance lost track of the conversation after that. He was too busy being shoved into his car. The next thing he knew, he was parked in front of his apartment building. There was a voice in the back of his mind telling him he needed to get out and face what was happening. It was quiet, and he had no interest in listening to it. Vance couldn’t go in. Going in meant seeing Stephanie. No, it meant seeing her body. An image of her lying dead on the bathroom floor where he’d left her broke him. Collapsing in on himself, he lost touch with everything but the overwhelming pain.
“Vance,” someone said. It could have been seconds later or hours. He had no idea. He was numb, but he could feel the pressure of someone squeezing his arms. It disappeared a moment later and reappeared on his face. The rough grip of whoever was talking to him forced his head around and suddenly Guy was in front of him. “My friend, you are in shock. Please listen. You must take a deep breath and try to focus. I know you are hurting, but the police need to speak to you. Do you understand?”
Vance thought he might have nodded. He heard everything Guy said, but none of it made sense. Shock. It wasn’t shock. It was guilt shutting him down, penance for abandoning Stephanie when she needed him.
“Vance,” Guy nearly shouted. “Vance, you must focus, please.”
Blinking, Vance looked at one of his closest friends. He tried to focus on what he was asking. The best he could do was take in a breath, the first solid breath he had managed since Guy’s phone call. The oxygen seemed to flood through his body, reaching his mind last of all. Vance still felt as though he stood in a bank of fog, but his focus improved enough to meet Guy’s eyes.
“Good, good,” Guy said. “Take another breath. Keep breathing and focus on my voice.” He began counting. Vance had done the same thing for Natalie just the day before. More than once. For some reason, that thought helped ground him.
Vance was vaguely certain Natalie had driven him to his apartment, but he wasn’t completely sure. It was an uncertainty he latched onto. After exhaling once more, he drew his eyes up to Guy and asked, “Natalie?”
“She is right next to you. Here for support. She will stay if you want her to, yes?”
That last bit was directed at Natalie. Vance didn’t look back, but the nod from Guy must have meant she’d said yes. The speck of rational thought Vance had left said it was stupid to ask Natalie to stay. This had nothing to do with her and he had no right to ask something like that. Knowing she wasn’t leaving was strangely comforting, just like her compassion had been back at the café. Vance knew he didn’t deserve it, but he said nothing.
“Can you get out of the car?” Guy asked. “I wil
l take you to the officer in charge of the scene.”
“The scene?” Like a crime scene? Had Guy told him something earlier that he’d missed? He paled at the thought of someone having attacked Stephanie when he wasn’t there. “Was it a break-in?” Vance finally managed to ask through his confusion.
Guy tilted his head to the side as if he were confused by the question. His eyes lifted to Natalie for an answer.
“I don’t think he heard anything you said after you told him Stephanie was gone,” Natalie said. “He just kind of crumbled after that and I had to take the phone from him.”
Sadness spread across Guy’s features, deep and tormented. “Vance, there was no criminal involved, as far as anyone knows. The doors were locked. I used my spare key to enter the apartment. Stephanie…I found her lying on the bed. There were pills…the police, they suspect she took her own life.”
“No,” Vance gasped. “She wouldn’t do that. It was just her head. Migraines.”
“You and she fought, yes?” Guy asked quietly.
Vance pressed a hand to his mouth. He couldn’t bear to speak. A nod was all he could manage, sharp and riddled with guilt. “She didn’t kill herself.”
“I do not believe so either, but the police need to ask you questions. Do you think you can do this?” Guy asked. “The police do not want to remove the…Stephanie until they can ask you about what happened. If you are not able to speak with them, I will tell them they must wait until tomorrow.”
“No,” Vance said suddenly. He couldn’t let them take her before he saw her. He had to tell them they were wrong. Stephanie wouldn’t do that. She was scared, but she was strong. Even though the pregnancy had terrified her, even with their fight, she wouldn’t have chosen to end her own life. He had to tell them that.
Pushing Guy away, he stumbled out of the car a second later. His friend was forced to regain his balance after being pushed before he could get up to follow him. The slam of a car door said Natalie was in pursuit as well. He didn’t stop to wait. He ran.
Sprinting up to his apartment door, the only thing that stopped him from bursting right in was how the officer’s hand went to rest on the butt of his gun when he saw him. Vance skidded to a stop. Breathlessly, he blurted out, “I live here. She’s my girlfriend.”
The officer looked past Vance to where Guy was stumbling up behind him. “It is all right,” Guy said in a rush. “This is Vance Sullivan. The officer in charge wished to speak with him before the coroner arrived.”
The officer nodded and gestured for them to go ahead. “Detective Castelo is in the bedroom cataloging evidence.”
“Evidence?” Vance choked out.
“The pills,” Guy explained as he set a firm hand on Vance’s shoulder. “The coroner will need them to determine how much of the pills were in her system and whether or not there were any other chemicals in her body.”
Before taking over Eli’s date shark business, Guy had been one of the lead psychiatrists at a prominent Chicago hospital, in charge of patients on the psychiatric floor. He knew a great deal about toxicology screens and substance abuse. Vance was determined to prove everyone was wrong about how Stephanie…about what had happened.
He crossed the living room quickly, but a massive wall of a man stopped him at the entrance to their bedroom. All Vance could see around his bulky frame was the fluorescent orange nail polish gleaming on Stephanie’s toes. She hated having her feet twisted up in the blankets. Almost every morning he woke up to her toes peeking out from under the blankets. The realization that this was the last time he would ever see her toes knocked the breath out of him. Guy forced his head down, his hands on his knees, all while he demanded a nearby officer let Natalie into the apartment.
“This is Stephanie’s boyfriend, Vance Sullivan,” Guy said to the huge man. “Detective Castelo needs to ask him some questions, and Vance would like to see her before the coroner arrives. Please, let him through to say his farewells.”
Slowly, Vance straightened. “Please,” he begged.
The officer stepped aside. Vance had what he’d asked for, but his body refused to move. Not until Guy put his hand on his shoulder and squeezed it did he find the courage to take one step forward. Breathe. Take another step. Inhale. Step. Exhale. Step. It seemed an eternity and a mere flash in time before he was standing next to the bed he had shared with Stephanie since moving into their apartment after graduating medical school. The idea of sleeping in it without her was enough to make his heart stop.
Vance had been to funerals before. More than he would have liked. Everyone always commented on how peaceful the deceased looked. He couldn’t hold back his tears when saw her. Peaceful was the last word he would have used to describe her. Twisted in the blankets, half-curled into a fetal position, her hands were cupped around her head. She had died in pain.
Collapsing to his knees, Vance bled out his pain through tears that seemed they would never stop. No one tried to pull him away or ask questions. The world outside Vance and Stephanie ceased to exist for him. Guilt cut through him. Remorse crushed him. Grief consumed him. No questions came. They all left him to drown in the pain of losing the woman he loved and the child he would never know.
Chapter 14
The Dark Parts
It was all an act. People kept commenting on how well he was holding up, considering everything. They hugged him and patted him on the back. They told him they were sorry while whispering about whether or not they believed the coroner’s report that Stephanie had died of a cerebral hemorrhage and not suicide. He hated thinking about the ruptured blood vessel bleeding onto her brain and how much pain it must have caused her before taking her life, but they didn’t even believe it was the truth. He thanked them and nodded and held back the tidal wave of emotions trying to bury him.
The only member of Stephanie’s estranged family that had shown up was a half-brother from Portland she talked to on and off. He was only nineteen, but he and Steph had developed an amicable relationship over the last several years. They weren’t close like normal siblings, but it was the most stable relationship Stephanie had with a family member. It meant a lot to Vance that he had come, but facing him with the guilt he carried was torture.
Guy and Eli stood on either side of him as the never ending line of people came to offer their condolences. Charlotte and Leila had come to support him as well, but Leila was off to the side rocking the baby and Charlotte needed to rest and was sitting with Warren at a nearby table. Sabine had been at his side almost constantly since arriving in the States after hearing the news, but had finally broken down after the funeral and had stepped out to get some fresh air.
The sight of Natalie walking hesitantly toward him didn’t inspire panic like everyone else did. Aside from Sabine, she was also the only other person who knew about Stephanie’s pregnancies. He hadn’t even told his parents. Vance knew it would break their hearts to find out they had not only lost the woman they considered a daughter, but two potential grandchildren. There was no chance he would ever tell them about the first pregnancy, no matter how desperate he was to confide in them and seek their support. It would taint their memory of her forever.
Vance hadn’t really meant for Natalie to know everything, but when the questions from the police began in earnest and he knew he’d have to tell them everything, he had panicked. He couldn’t let Guy hear the truth. It was too much to admit what he had done, what Stephanie had done. Confused and probably hurt, Guy hadn’t known what to do when Vance demanded he leave the apartment while he talked to the police.
He hadn’t even noticed Natalie had stayed on the couch next to him—at Guy’s request, he learned later—until he was already halfway through his explanation, but when he did realize, he only felt relief. Maybe because of the compassion she’d shown earlier. Maybe because Natalie was as broken as Stephanie had been and he suspected she would understand without judging better than anyone. Regardless of the why, he didn’t ask her to leave. She sat with him throug
h all the questions, silent, but a bubble of support that held back the worst of the pain while he talked to the police. It hadn’t lasted, but it had been enough to get him through the interrogation. Afterward…what he remembered of the rest of that night was a blurry haze of agony.
Vance was still struggling to come to grips with what Stephanie had done. Her death was too consuming to even hope to deal with his emotions over the pregnancies. He knew her and understood her better than anyone. While he could never agree with what she had done and part of him hated her for it, he still loved her. He hoped, in time, he could forgive her. That would be easier than forgiving himself. For his family, though, forgiveness would likely never happen. So he hid the truth from all of them, holding it close even though it felt like poison.
They were all there, which made it better and worse. His parents, his two brothers and sister, and their families. In true Sullivan fashion, they had all dropped everything and come to support him when he needed it most. It should have been a comfort, but hiding the truth from them only made it painful. Part of him wanted to scream it at the top of his lungs, rant that he wasn’t just sick with grief, he was angry too. He couldn’t. He would never tell them any of it. He couldn’t even bring himself to tell Eli and Guy the truth.
They would understand his pain and tell him it was okay to be angry. Not only did he not want to hear that from them, that wasn’t how things were supposed to work. When Eli fell so hard for Leila that he turned his life upside down to make her fall in love with him, Vance was the one he went to for advice. Sure, Eli didn’t really listen to him most of the time when it came to Leila, but no matter what the problem was, he knew Vance would be there.
The Only Shark In The Sea (The Date Shark Series Book 3) Page 10