Page 89 of Ruck Me

“Would we have kids sooner?”

“Of course not,” he answered as if the idea was preposterous. “I want you all to myself. Why? Are you saying you want me to put a baby in your belly?”

Too late, mylove.

“Say it was an accident, like Aidan and Katelyn. Say something happened and we weren’t expecting it and I got pregnant. Would you be okay withit?”

“Is that likely to happen?”

“It happens all the time,” I answered. “The failure rate for the pill is like one innine.”

“Shit, I didn’t knowthat.”

“Yeah, neither did I … Brienne told me her friend—” I faltered but quickly recovered. “—Her friend … Brienne just found out her friend got pregnant on thepill.”

“Shit, that fucking sucks. Can you imagine?”

“Yeah, it’d suck,” I answered, biting down on my lip and pulling the phone away so he couldn’t hear the catch in my voice.

When I put it to my ear again a few seconds later, I picked up the trailing end of his statement. “Maybe we should be more careful. I don’t mind using condoms, especially since I can’t imagine anything worse than getting you pregnant rightnow.”

“Dying?” I asked, trying to gauge just how high knocking me up fell of Eoin’s scale of Worst ThingsEver.

He laughed. “Of course dying would be worse, but having a baby right now is pretty high up there.” Sobering, he said, “I want kids with you Aoife, I really do. But not now. Maybe in a couple of years. Are you good withthat?”

“Yeah,” I agreed. “I’m good withthat.”

“Shit, let’s stop talking about it or we’ll jinxit.”

“I don’t think that’s how it works.”

“I know, but just in case. I don’t want to temptfate.”

“Hey,” I said, my tone falsely bright. “Brienne’s knocking at my door. We have an appointment at the first bridal salon in about an hour and it’s all the way across town. Can I call you back later?”

Taking my change of subject in stride, he said, “Sure. Have fun.” Echoing Declan’s earlier warning, he added, “Don’t do anything I wouldn’tdo.”

“You wouldn’t do anything.” I laughed to cover my tears. “You never get in trouble.”

“Yeah, I guess that’s true. Okay, do everything I wouldn’t then. I mean it, havefun.”

“I will. Loveyou.”

“Love youtoo.”

I clicked the button, ending our call on a stifled sob. I wasn’t about to head to a bridal salon. I was on my way to a clinic where I’d get rid of my baby. Our baby. The one he’d just described as being the worst fucking thing that could happen.

He was wrong, I decided. Getting pregnant wasn’t the worst thing that could happen. Getting rid of it when I was all alone was, the sound of his disgust echoing through myears.

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