Page 10 of Wishing Stone

“I’ll see you tonight.”

After Alexander left the room, I flopped onto my back and extended my arms over my head to give in to a good stretch. My entire body felt absolutely delicious after last night. Even a terrible nightmare couldn’t erase the heights Alexander had taken me to. As always, he’d wielded his authority over my body with flawless control. He had been on fire, taking me hard at first, then slowing to savor every inch of me. We didn’t get to sleep until well after midnight, and when my nightmare pulled us both from our slumber, a quick round of fast and dirty sex was the only way to drive the demons away. My husband was insatiable—and he was a god in bed.

Still, echoes of what had haunted my sleep were hard to shake. Automatically, I brought both hands to my stomach and rubbed back and forth. The secret in my womb was still safe. No cold dead hands had taken it away from me.

It was just a dream. The baby is fine.

Guilt over keeping my pregnancy a secret from Alexander pressed down on my chest. When I’d awoken from the nightmare last night, I knew it was my subconscious punishing me for hiding the truth. The angel and devil on my shoulder had been at war pretty regularly as of late, and the guilt wasn’t anything new. It had plagued me all hours of the day, but I’d always shoved it far into a corner where I would deal with it later.

There’s nothing to feel guilty about. I’m doing the right thing.

It wasn’t that Iwantedto keep the baby a secret. On the contrary, I was over-the-moon ecstatic about the pregnancy and couldn’t wait to tell everyone. However, I was also terrified.

Keeping the secret and carrying the burden of worry alone wasn’t easy. I recalled that day in the master bathroom when I’d found out I was pregnant for the fourth time. My hands had wrapped like a vice around the little plastic stick as if it were my lifeline, equally frightened of either a positive or a negative result.

When I saw it was positive, I immediately felt like I’d stepped onto a tight rope, and I braced for the pain of loss to happen again. I was petrified of having that incredibly lonely feeling again; when I wanted to talk about it—to scream about it—but I had no safe place to yell when my husband was hurting just as much as I was.

My three miscarriages had eviscerated both Alexander and me, but I often wondered who took the loss of the third baby harder—him or me. I’d never seen him so distraught. Alexander and I drew on each other for strength, but I hadn’t realized how much I pulled from him until I couldn’t anymore. I was scared, and I needed him, yet every day, I had to remind myself of the reasons for remaining strong.

Tears began to sting the backs of my eyes, and I blinked them away as I recalled our agonizing losses. The first two pregnancies hadn’t made it past six weeks. I’d barely known I was pregnant, but that didn’t make it any less devastating. With the third, I’d been so sure I was in the clear. At eight weeks, I’d felt healthy and strong, and I had allowed myself to get excited once again. Alexander had fed off my enthusiastic energy. In some ways, it had been a transformative experience for him. I never thought I would hear my alpha male husband talk in a cooing voice to my stomach. He was downright giddy at times. It was charming and endearing, yet so out of character for him. It just made me love him even more.

But, in typical Alexander fashion, he tried to take control of the situation. As excited as he was about the baby, he was also a little neurotic. He had created spreadsheets to document every food I ate, craved, or abhorred. He’d wanted to know if I was tired or energetic and never failed to document the slightest change in my sex drive. So typical.

I never got mad about his obsessions, though. I loved how much he wanted to be a part of the process. The level of affection he’d displayed had cut through to a part of my soul I hadn’t known existed.

When I lost the baby right before the twelve-week mark, he’d been crushed. Although he tried to stay strong for me, I saw the pain in those sapphire blue eyes that I loved so much, and I knew his heart had shattered into a million pieces. Now, I just didn’t have it in me to give him false hopes. If I lost the baby again, of course, he would know. But perhaps if he didn’t have all the buildup, the loss wouldn’t hurt him so bad.

I still wasn’t convinced I was doing the right thing by keeping it a secret, but as of that moment, only my doctor knew I was pregnant. I couldn’t tell anyone else—including Alexander—until I was through the most vulnerable weeks of the first trimester. I just couldn’t bear to break his heart again.

I took one more look at the place Alexander had vacated before I awoke, and I felt my chest tighten. Climbing from the warm comforts of my blankets, I picked up my phone from the nightstand. After pulling up Alexander’s contact information, I sent him a quick text.

Today

6:32 AM, Me:I miss you already.

Setting my phone back down, I made my way to the bathroom and turned on the taps in the frameless glass shower. I stepped into the hot stream and took my time under the water. Cranking the temperature up, I braced my elbows against the Italian marble wall and indulged in thirty minutes of pure bliss under the rainfall showerhead.

When I was starting to prune, I climbed out and towel-dried my hair and body. Then, moving to my walk-in closet, I scanned my wardrobe for a minute before settling on a pair of black stretch pants and a knit funnel-neck sweater. If there was one advantage to working from home, it was that nobody cared or knew that my bottom half was almost always sporting a pair of leggings.

After applying a touch of makeup and throwing my hair up in a semi-stylish messy bun, I made my way down to the kitchen. I wasn’t surprised to find Vivian already there, as she was an early riser and was usually the first in the house to wake. She was seated on one of the barstools at the kitchen island, her reading glasses resting on the tip of her nose as she studied the crossword puzzle in front of her.

“Good morning, Vivian.”

“Oh, good morning! I didn’t hear you up and about. Can I make you a cup of coffee? Or what about breakfast? I can whip you up some eggs if you’d like. What shall it be?” She fired off the questions as she hurried off the stool.

My stomach roiled at Vivian’s mention of eggs, and I nearly gagged. Masking my grimace, I flashed her a quick smile as I moved over to the coffee pot on the counter.

“No, no. Just relax. I’m fine. Please sit and finish your crossword puzzle. I can manage to scoop coffee grounds into a filter just fine on my own. Besides, I’m not very hungry this morning.”

Especially not for eggs.

I could feel her eyes on my back as I scooped the decaf grounds into the basket, hoping she didn’t notice my newfound disgust for sunny side up. While they used to be my favorite, I couldn’t stomach them as of late. I just couldn’t let her know, or she would tell Alexander. If that happened, questions were sure to follow, and I wasn’t ready for that.

Unfortunately, keeping this little secret had been more challenging than I thought it would be, and not just because of the strange food aversions. My emotions were completely out of whack as well. I tended to go from laughing to crying in a split second. Just last week, I had wandered into the nursery bursting with joy, only to find myself overcome with tears about the three pregnancies I’d lost. When Alexander found me crying, I nearly broke down and told him I was pregnant again. I still wasn’t sure how I maintained my resolve to keep it a secret.

My diet had been all over the board too. One minute I was starving, and the next, I was ready to vomit from just the smell of whatever food I’d craved just the day before. I’d caught Vivian giving me the side-eye a few times, but if she suspected anything, she didn’t let on. I wasn’t new to the woes that came with the first trimester. I’d already decided that the person who dubbed the nausea I constantly experienced as morning sickness was a liar. It should have been called all-day sickness. After all, this was my fourth time experiencing it, so I knew a thing or two about it—and I deserved an Emmy for the way I managed to hide it from Alexander. While I never actually vomited, the constant rolling in my stomach was trying. The only thing that made it tolerable was knowing that I didn’t have much longer to go before the nausea should start to subside. Until then, I needed to stick to the plan. Alexander would know about our baby soon enough.

I sidestepped to the refrigerator to retrieve the coffee creamer, resisting the urge to place my hand on my stomach. It was an instinct that seemed to happen whenever I was pregnant. After adding a dollop of cream and a pinch of sugar, I retreated to the confines of my office, where I could escape Vivian’s watchful eye.

---