Free Liberty by Ginger Jamison

her skin. His lips on her body. She felt his heat even though it had been hours since he had touched her. And when she went to bed last night she could barely sleep because she knew he was across the hall. She knew that only a few steps separated them.
    He was going to make leaving hard. Instead of physical strength he was going to use mental warfare to try to get her to stay. And that was more brutal than any slap he could deliver.
    Shaking herself out of her troubling thoughts, she focused on the task ahead. There was no use stalling any longer.
    Taking a deep breath, she left her car. She needed to get on with her visit. She needed to talk to the man she thought about constantly. To explain how the past few weeks had been for her. She knew he would understand. Kyle was very sweet that way.
    “Hello, Mrs. Beecher,” one of the front-desk staff cheerfully greeted her as she walked in.
    “Hello, Janet. How are you?”
    “I’m just fine. We missed you around here.” Janet looked at her curiously as if she were waiting for an explanation of her absence.
    Lexy knew the staff of this building was aware that she had a husband somewhere, but she never talked about him and she didn’t want to talk about him now. “I missed you all, too,” she replied as she made her way toward Kyle’s place.
    The door was open when she got there and Kyle was sitting in his favorite spot. He always waited for her by the window. Today he wore the blue shirt she had gotten him for Christmas last year. He always wore something she bought him when he knew she was coming to visit. It made her smile each time she walked through the door. It made her feel appreciated.
    “Hello, handsome.”
    Kyle didn’t look up at the sound of her voice. She tried to ignore the tiny stab of pain in her chest when he didn’t respond. Part of her wondered if he might be upset with her for not being around for so long, but a bigger part of her, the rational part of her, knew that wasn’t the case.
    She walked farther into the room, placing the bag with the gifts she had bought him on the table. He didn’t stir at the sound of her footsteps or give any indication that he had heard her.
    “Kyle? Honey?” She touched his shoulder and he finally looked up at her. Her heart dropped into her stomach when she saw him. He was thin to the point of gauntness but his eyes lit up in recognition.
    “Hi, buddy.” She greeted her younger brother with a kiss to his papery cheek. “I missed you.”
    Kyle was the brother she had never known about. She had grown up thinking she just had Maybell, and then she thought she just had Ryan. But five years ago somebody contacted her from Golden Hill Extended Care facility to tell her the money from her grandmother’s trust had run out and that if she didn’t make a payment soon her brother would have to find a new place to live.
    A brother. A family. The news was more than a shock to her. Maybell never talked about her parents or anything pertaining to Lexy’s past. The old woman had kept Kyle a secret from her his entire life. At first Lexy was furious with her grandmother. Kyle was her family and she wanted to know him, but when Lexy finally met her brother she understood why her grandmother kept him away from her.
    Kyle was sick with some rare debilitating disease that literally caused him to melt away. His life expectancy was only thirty years. He needed round-the-clock care. He couldn’t talk or walk or stand or feed himself. He was in constant pain. She knew Maybell, and while the world thought the woman was tough, Lexy knew that there was no way her grandmother could see such suffering on a daily basis.
    For Lexy, seeing her brother’s suffering was nearly impossible. But she bore it anyway because nobody should live their life alone. Everything she had done for the past few years had solely been for her brother’s sake. Kyle was the reason she had stayed with Ryan for so long. For the first two years he paid for