Page 123 of Savage Outlaw

It was as though he’d pushed all the air out of her lungs.

She’d loved Tad for years, right from the moment she saw him. It’s felt like an uphill struggle to get to this good place with him now. But they also felt brand new too. She definitely would have remembered a conversation where he said he wanted kids with her.

“Cookie, baby?” She blinked and met his eyes again. Concern on his features. He squeezed her knee. “You’re happy, yeah?”

“Tad … I.”

For real she was freaking the hell out and shouldn’t even be having this conversation now. She’d waited for him to get home so she could lose it on someone else. She’d driven home in a fog not even sure how she made it from A to B without causing a disaster on the road. That damn test stuffed into her purse taunting her with its positive result. The word pregnant was so small and so fucking huge at the same time.

His love was consuming and Roux had thrown herself into the deep end. She’d never experienced a feeling like it before. At times it felt like an impossible love but here they were, so, so happy together.

She wasn’t ready to have the status of their relationship change, not this soon.

Roux looked at him. Really looked deep and what she saw on Tad’s face caused all kinds of commotion inside.

He wanted a baby with her.

However much of a surprise she’d sprung on him, he was happy about the news.

She swallowed her words at first, but he deserved the truth. They lived in a world of lies and deceit, backstabbing and wars. She always wanted the truth between them, no matter how much it might hurt.

She covered his fingers and squeezed.

“Tad…I’m freaking out because I don’t know if I ever want a baby…”

There it was. His eyes darkened with shock … unmaskedhurt. She watched a tick work through his right jawline.

What did they do now?

What was therightthing to say so he wouldn’t look as though she’d stuck a knife into his gut?

She would do anything for the people she loved.

Him most of all.

But this felt too big for Roux to grasp while her poor overwhelmed brain was going in many directions at once.

There was no way she’d been prepared for this. Even if she were one of those women who’d known from Kindergarten that she wanted kids.

She knew she loved Tad more than anything. More than ever.

But would he love her if she didn’t want his baby?

* * *

Butcher had to push it to the very back of his mind for now.

She didn’t want kids.

She didn’t want his kid specifically.

Honest to fuck, a punch of sadness hit him when he replayed her words but he needed to shove them aside. His fucking feelings weren’t important, not when his Roux was having a meltdown before his eyes.

Pushing off the foot stool, he got onto the couch with her, tagging her hand he held it in his.

In uncharted waters meant he was playing it by ear as to what to say to her.

He knew one thing and that was he loved her. Fucking infatuated with this woman and he couldn’t see a time when he didn’t charge in to fix whatever was hurting her.

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