Liberty (12 page)

Immediately the worst possible thought flew into her head. Ryan was cheating on her in their home. She wouldn’t stand for that. They may not have been a conventional married couple, but sleeping with another woman under her nose was going a step too far.

She would leave him as soon as the first rays of light crossed the sky.

She listened more. The moans grew louder but not passionate. There were no creaking bed springs or the heavy breathing. There were no sounds of a woman in bliss. They were moans of pain. Suddenly she heard the bed shift under Ryan’s heavy weight and then the crash of his lamp hitting the floor. Before she could process the sound she was on her feet and at his bedroom door.

“Ryan,” she called to him, but he was already there.

“It’s okay. I just knocked over the lamp.”

Something wasn’t right—his voice was strained, as if he had been yelling for hours.

“You were having a nightmare.” It was too dark to see him clearly but she felt him. His pained silence spoke volumes.

“I saw their faces again and the explosion. I saw the kid I was talking to get blown away. I remember we were talking about his girlfriend.”

“Do you remember? Do you know who you are?”

“No...” tore from his throat. “I just remember my unit. The way they looked— They’re all dead, Lexy. I survived.” He smacked his chest. “Why didn’t I die?”

The doctor had warned her about this. He said he would have flashbacks, that he would have visions so vivid that he would think he was there again. This was posttraumatic stress and without help he would suffer for years.

She turned away from him, leaving him alone in his doorway.

“Come to me,” she said softly. She lay back in her bed waiting for him. Her feelings were an indistinguishable jumble. She didn’t want him to hurt. She didn’t want him to be alone with his thoughts tonight.

“Are you sure?”

Her heart skipped a beat at his question. He was suffering and still respecting her wishes. This was not the man she married.

“Come.”

That time he obeyed and slipped under the covers beside her. His skin was damp and cold. He was eerily quiet. This wasn’t the good-natured, passionate man she had come to know. The man beside her was damaged.

“Do you want to tell me?”

The doctor had said that if he talked about the event that it would be better for him.

“I can’t. I’m sorry.”

She wrapped her body around him, burying her face in his neck. She kissed him there, needing to comfort him and herself. He relaxed slightly and she felt herself giving her kisses freely, softly, slowly finding his throat and his ear and the scar on his face. It was when her lips touched his that she realized that she had climbed on top of him. Her nightgown bunched at her waist. Her body was rubbing against his. He was hard but not demanding. All he did was lightly caress her thighs, nothing more. He was incredibly sweet in that moment.

She cupped his face in her hands and kissed him deeply, touching her tongue to his. He reciprocated, letting their mouths mate in a sea of sweet moisture.

She didn’t want him to change. It was selfish and wrong, but she needed him like this. Now he was hers. She could touch him and bear his contact. She could find pleasure without fear.

Her hands were wet. Tears were falling fast and hard from her husband’s eyes.

“Oh my God,” she whispered. “Am I hurting you? Is it your ribs?” She tried to crawl off him.

“No.” He held her tightly to his body. “I need you with me tonight. I can’t go back to being alone.”

“You don’t have to.” She kissed his wet face, gently rubbing her hands over his hard body. “Tell me how to make you feel better.” She felt almost frantic. This was new. This was not the husband she knew and the feelings that ran through her body were completely foreign to her. She wanted to comfort him.

“I’m fine.” He wasn’t. He was tense and hurting.

“Let me touch you.” She rubbed her lower body against his, feeling his erection between her legs.

“Lexy, I want to be inside you.”

She wasn’t ready for that yet. In order for that to happen she had to trust him and she didn’t yet.

“Let me touch you. Teach me how.” She moved to his side, resting her hand on his lower stomach. “I don’t know how.” She slipped her hand onto his hard large penis. She touched him gently there, amazed by how smooth something that felt like steel against her could be.

“Lexy.” He sucked in a ragged breath.

“I was never allowed to touch before.” She kissed under his ear. “It’s crazy. I’ve been married ten years and never was allowed to feel my husband in my hand.” She ran her hand down his shaft and cupped his heavy testicles in her hand. “I want to make you feel good. Teach me.”

He looked at her, torture in his eyes. He wanted to make love to her. It was simple and for the first time in a long time she felt like she wanted to make love, too.

“Rub it,” he said after a long moment.

“Like this?” She ran her fingers over his head, playing with the drop of moisture that seeped from it.

“Yes,” he moaned. He grabbed her hand and stroked himself with it. She felt a shot of heat between her legs. “Like this, baby.”

She shook his hand off and stroked him the way he showed her, finding her own rhythm, adjusting her strokes to his moans. And then it was over. His whole body jerked off the bed and he called out her name in the form of a growl. She felt strange, triumphant in a way.

“Do you feel better,” she asked, giving him a long lingering kiss.

“Lexy.” He stroked her face with his thumbs. “I—”

“Did you know that when a camel is thirsty it can drink up to twenty-five gallons of water in three minutes?”

She wasn’t sure what he was going to say but she had a feeling he was going to tell her that he loved her. She couldn’t hear that. Not from his mouth. Ryan had regularly claimed he loved her before they got married, and then he said it only after he hit her. In the past few years he hadn’t bothered to say it at all. Lexy, like anybody, wanted to be loved but she didn’t want it to be a lie. And she didn’t want to hear it from a man who couldn’t remember who he was.

“Is that true?”

“I don’t know. A little girl who comes for story time at the library told me that.”

“Does she tell you a lot of things?”

“Yes. She comes in every day with a new fact to tell me. She makes me laugh.”

“I want a little girl one day,” he said softly.

“You want a girl?” She looked down into her husband’s face to see if he was serious.

“I want a lot of kids, Lexy. I want a little girl I could spoil and boy I can roughhouse with and teach to be a man.”

“I can’t have kids, Ryan,” she said as tears suddenly filled her eyes. “After I lost the baby, I—”

He cut her off. “I want a bigger house, too, and a yard that’s not filled with cars. And maybe we can find one of those wooden swing sets. The ones with the yellow slides.”

She was too stunned to speak for a moment. After she had miscarried, Ryan felt guilty and tried everything in his power to get her pregnant even though the thought of being intimate with him made her ill. He forced himself on her every night, but she was never able to conceive again. She had bled a lot when she miscarried, so much so that she had been in the hospital for two days.

Her body was broken and Ryan never forgave her for it. He turned cold to her and looked at her as if she were no longer a woman. She felt like a failure, too. She hadn’t done anything right in her life. She had even messed up the one thing a woman was put on this earth to do.

But this new man didn’t seem to care. He glossed over it as if any obstacle was surmountable.

“We could take them to Disney World.”

“I’ve never been before,” she said, playing along. “The kids would like it.”

She was planning a future that would never happen. She was leaving soon. Or he would remember, or turn back to his old self—and she couldn’t bear that. There was no saving this broken marriage. Her new memories with this new sweet man wouldn’t be enough to make her forget.

* * *

The next morning Lexy woke up much later than usual. Ryan was gone, but his scent still lingered on her pillow as well as the knowledge of what took place between them last night. What the hell was she doing to herself? She couldn’t blame him. He wasn’t the one who invited him to spend the night in her bed. She was off today, and instead of getting out of bed and preparing herself to go visit her brother she grabbed the pillow that he slept on and hugged it to her chest. She almost wished that she hadn’t woken up alone that morning. She felt empty.

“What is wrong with me?” she asked herself.

The last thing she was supposed to be doing was liking her husband. This was the man who nearly beat her to death in a drunken rage. How on earth could she want him near? She rolled over, frustrated, and glanced at the clock. She needed to get out of bed and make the long trip to see her brother. But today she wasn’t looking forward to the drive because she knew she would spend it thinking about how badly her life had gone off track once again.

When she arrived at Golden Hill, Kyle wasn’t in his usual spot by the window. He wasn’t even out of bed today. She knew something was wrong the moment she walked in and Dr. Andreas met her by the door. Dread rolled over her. He only waited for her when he had bad news.

“He had a very long seizure this morning when the nurses were trying to get him ready. I need to warn you, Mrs. Beecher, that he looks unwell. But usually within a few hours the paralysis goes away.”

“Paralysis?” Her heart stopped beating. “Are you sure he didn’t have a stroke?”

“I am. The part of the brain that the seizure took place in affects the left side of his body. Mostly his face. We have increased his medication to try to prevent another one from happening, but as you know his body becomes exhausted after these episodes. He may not realize you are here today.”

“I still want to see him.”

“Of course you do. I just wanted to warn you first.”

She swallowed hard as she walked into the room. Kyle was blankly staring up at the ceiling. She had to grip the back of a chair because her knees had gone weak.

A hand touched her shoulder. Dr. Andreas hadn’t left her side and she was glad for it. She didn’t want to be alone right now. Kyle was almost unrecognizable. The left side of his face drooped. His eyes had that drugged, glazed look. He didn’t know she was there. She wasn’t sure he knew the world existed in that moment.

She wanted to weep for him, but she held her tears back. Crying wouldn’t help. He was twenty-four. His life expectancy was thirty. For some reason she expected to have all of those remaining years with him. She wasn’t prepared to think about him going early. She wished her husband was here. She had taken such pains to keep Kyle a secret from him, but she wanted him here. She wanted him to hold her. She didn’t want to carry this burden alone.

“Talk to him, Lexy. That might help.”

Another doctor had told her the same thing, only that time he was talking about her husband. That time it worked. Ryan came back to life. She took her brother’s soft hand in hers, kissed his cheek and talked to him about anything she could think of. None of it helped. He didn’t look at her once.

* * *

Ryan went into work early that next morning even though he didn’t want to leave Lexy’s side. She had done something special for him. She had given a little part of herself to him. He wanted more of that. More time with them together as husband and wife. But he knew that if given the chance to overthink things she would. He couldn’t bear to go backward with her now. They were so close to making things between them right.

He was going to spend every day with her showing her how good things could be.

He had finished most of his work by the time the last mechanic rolled in at ten. “You were supposed to be here two hours ago,” he told the young mechanic who looked like he was still recovering from a bender. “Go home. You’re not working today. If you think I’m going to allow you to work on people’s cars while you stink of alcohol, you’re dead wrong.”

“Why not? You used to.”

He wanted to argue the point but he couldn’t, even though he knew deep in his gut that he wasn’t the man Liberty thought he was, he didn’t know for sure. “Well, I’m not a drunk anymore. The marines knocked that right out of me. Get out of here and expect a write-up tomorrow morning. You may be able to find another job, but this shop is Pep’s life and you should respect him enough not to mess up his good name.”

“Whatever,” the kid said and walked out, slamming the door behind him.

Lance stood there staring at him, his mouth slightly open. “Holy shit, Mad Dog. Don’t you think you were a little rough on him?”

“No. It’s time for him to learn how to be a man. I wish somebody would have done that to me when I was his age. I probably would have turned out better for it.”

Lance shook his head. “Georgie’s right. You sure are different.”

He nodded. “I’m not the same man.”

He left the shop and headed to the library. He was anxious to see his wife. Pep had left all the responsibility of running the shop to him, which meant he was now in charge of all the mechanics. He had to crack down hard on a lot of them. It didn’t earn him many friends—and while he knew he was doing the right thing for the business, the lack of friends sometimes got to him. He didn’t remember much about his time before he woke up in the hospital, but he vaguely remembered feeling bonded to the men in his unit, of feeling like he belonged to something bigger than himself. He tried not to let it bother him. Everything happened for a reason.

“Ryan!” Jemma greeted him with a smile. “Are you here to take out another book? We just got the new Walter Mosley title. I think you would like it.”

“No, thank you, ma’am. I’m here to see Lexy. I was hoping I could take her out for lunch.”

Jemma frowned at him. “You’re here for Lexy? She’s not working today.”

“She isn’t? But she told me...”

“Maybe she meant she was working at the Calloway. Sometimes she picks up a lunch shift when they need her to.”