Page 1 of Wishing Stone

Prologue

Alexander

“Alex, I’m ready. I want to try again,” Krystina announced.

My eyes widened in surprise, and my gut instantly clenched. I pivoted in my position at the foot of our custom-made king-sized bed to look at her. My beautiful wife lay naked over the satin sheets on the mattress. Her cheeks were flushed, her mane of chocolate curls tousled from sex, but I didn’t afford myself a moment to appreciate her freshly fucked look. I was too busy trying to absorb the shock I felt from her words.

“You can’t be serious,” I replied, not bothering to keep the incredulity from my voice.

“I’ve given this a lot of thought. It’s been a year. Emotionally, I’ve had time to heal. I’ll never forget what happened, but I don’t feel so raw that I can’t put it behind me. I want this—I want a family. We deserve it.”

Turning away from her, I looked out the balcony doors of our bedroom. The November weather had started out mild but was going out with a vengeance. After three days of downpours and flash flood warnings, the precipitation had changed to freezing rain. The icy droplets beat angrily against the glass, matching my foul mood. Still, nothing could match the torrent of emotions I’d felt a year ago.

I shook my head to clear it, not wanting to remember what it felt like to see Krystina’s heart-wrenching tears, knowing I was partly to blame for them. Nevertheless, the effort to block out the painful memories was in vain, and they came flooding in. The calamity was just as devastating as it was when I’d initially experienced it.

The first year after Krystina and I were married, we’d conceived a child twice, but she miscarried both times. It seemed as though I could give her anything her heart longed for—except a viable pregnancy. Then, a year ago, we conceived a child for the third time. However, just like the first two pregnancies, she didn’t carry past the first trimester. She had been so sure about the third pregnancy, which only made the loss that much harder.

“What’s wrong with me?” she had asked. My heart constricted, unable to forget the crack in her voice when she posed the question. It was as if losing our baby had somehow been her fault—like she was flawed when the reality was that the loss had been because of me. Krystina, my perfect angel, was never to blame for any of it.

I should have been more careful with her.

A few months later, she said she wanted to try again, but I had to consider how the risks had changed. A global pandemic had hit the world, and I couldn’t ignore it. The fear of bringing a child into the chaos surrounding us had been all-consuming, and the timing just didn’t feel right. In the end, I convinced Krystina to wait before we gave it another go. I’d felt good about the choice, as it had given me a tiny shred of control during a time when everything seemed to be spiraling.

But now, she didn’t want to wait anymore.

“Krystina, it’s not about whether you’ve put things behind you or not. You know why we can’t. It’s not safe.”

“Alex, please,” she said quietly. My heart constricted when I heard the pain in her voice. “I don’t think you understand how I feel. Everything was so chaotic when the pandemic first hit, and I didn’t really have time to think about much. My only focus was working out the logistics to transition Turning Stone Advertising to a remote workforce. Once things settled and we established a routine via video conference, I learned that Sara Fink, one of our graphic designers, was pregnant. It was a bittersweet feeling at first, but now seeing her swollen belly through the computer screen just makes me sad. I have this torturous ache in the pit of my stomach whenever I see her. Even seeing a newborn baby on the television gets me all twisted up. I don’t want to feel this ache anymore, Alex.”

I pressed my lips together in a tight line. The ache she spoke of was something I understood. It came from not having what you longed for more than anything. I wanted this baby just as much as she did. The mere idea of us creating life together left me feeling awestruck. But after everything I had seen, I wasn’t ready to risk her safety or the welfare of the child we might conceive without taking additional precautions. I was afraid, and I had every right to be. Krystina didn’t understand because had been sheltered from the worst of it, working from home and far away from the city’s dense population. She may have seen variations of what was happening on the news, but it was nothing like seeing it firsthand. If she had, she may have shared my concerns.

“Angel, it’s you who doesn’t understand,” I stated pragmatically. “You didn’t witness the things I saw and heard—the sounds of sirens on empty streets, the frantic calls from government officials looking to lease warehouse space from Stone Enterprise so they could store personal protective equipment. PPE, they’d called it. I’d learned all the acronyms before you or anyone in the public had even heard of such a thing.”

She shook her head, and her frown deepened.

“It’s our turn at happiness, Alex. Like I said—we deserve this. And to be perfectly honest, I think the virus has done its worst. Modern medicine has shown us the light at the end of the tunnel. I truly believe it’s safe to try again.”

I disagreed, but I knew how Krystina could be when her mind was made up. Turning away from her, I began to pace. My gut clenched from an inexplicable fear as I tried to tamp down the many nightmarish scenarios of something terrible happening to her.

Since the moment I met Krystina, she’d been fiercely independent. I tried to tame her but had failed miserably. She was determined to get what she wanted through her own efforts and means, and she’d never once asked me for anything in the process.

Until now.

I turned back to look at her. She had moved so she was sitting, her back propped up with pillows as she held a sheet over her naked breasts. There was pain in her eyes, but there was no mistaking the determined set to her jaw as well. And at that moment, I knew she’d figure out a way to get what she wanted this time too. If that happened, everything would be out of my control.

That will never do.

If I was going to consider giving in to her desires, I needed to do it on my terms.

“If I agree to this, we’ll need to establish some ground rules,” I began.

“Okay. Whatever you want,” she said, just a little too quickly.

“Don’t be so quick to agree, Krystina. Listen to what I have to say first,” I warned. “While we are trying to get pregnant and, assuming our efforts are successful, you will need to limit all public exposure for the duration of your pregnancy. You’ve already been working remotely, but you’ve been known to pop into the office from time to time for random things. That needs to stop. You cannot go there at all. Workdays will be exclusively remote from this point on.”

“That won’t be too hard to do.”

“Limiting all public exposure also means no more dining out or trips to the store. Nobody is allowed inside the house other than the live-in staff and me—no friends, no family, and certainly no strangers. The staff will also be given safety protocols.”

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