Total pages in book: 127
Estimated words: 117363 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 587(@200wpm)___ 469(@250wpm)___ 391(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 117363 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 587(@200wpm)___ 469(@250wpm)___ 391(@300wpm)
He didn’t, really, but that wasn’t for Wymack to hear. The man left him to his thoughts, and Jean made himself dizzy chasing them in circles. The master had ordered him to stay put until Abby and Wymack declared him fit for travel, but did he mean it? Was it a literal order or did he expect Jean to find a way home regardless? Jean carefully felt his knee, but just the light pressure of his fingertips was enough to make his vision swim.
Abby showed up a few minutes later with a kitchen timer and a small glass half-full of water. “I couldn’t find a bell, but you can force the timer to go off,” she said as she set it within easy reach. The water she offered to him, and she held on until she was sure he could take it from her. “It’s obnoxiously loud, so we’re sure to hear it wherever we are in the house. Use it, okay? If you’re bored, if you’re hungry, if you’re in pain, anything.
“David’s out getting you some more shorts and boxers, but if you can think of anything else just let me know and I’ll text him.” She waited a beat to see if he came up with something before pulling a bottle of pills out of her pocket. When he didn’t offer his hand, she shook two capsules onto the sheets at his side. “These’ll help you sleep. The more you rest and the less you move, the better.”
“What is wrong with my knee?” Jean asked her.
“You injured it in a scrimmage,” she reminded him coolly before offering a real answer: “You’ve sprained your LCL.”
Wymack hadn’t been talking it up to win the master’s restraint. Between his knee and his ribs, Jean was sidelined until mid-summer. The master would yank him from the starting lineup for this, and Riko would beat him black and blue for failing to live up to the number on his face. He’d heal up just in time to be taken apart again.
Jean picked up the pills. “Leave the bottle with me.”
“You know I can’t,” she said, and left him alone with too many thoughts.
CHAPTER TWO
Jean
The week passed in a disconcerting haze. Jean tried sticking to a Raven schedule, knowing it would be hell to readjust when Wymack finally transferred him north, but without classes or practice to center him he was getting pulled out of alignment. He slept when he shouldn’t, longer than he should, dragged under by Abby’s medicine and the exhaustion of having to heal from so much trauma. Nightmares always woke him, leaving him gasping in breathless agony as he lashed out thoughtlessly.
Jean checked his pockets and the sheets for his phone every day in case Wymack took pity on him, but each successive demand for it back was met with calm refusal. Even promising that Wymack could watch him make his call didn’t sway the older man, and Jean barely resisted the urge to throw his pillows at Wymack’s face.
He looked for Zane’s bed every time he sat up, but the bedroom maintained its lonely setup. They’d been roommates for three years and Raven partners for almost two: not friends, but violent allies, at least until Nathaniel destroyed everything. January was a nightmare neither of them could recover from or move past, and as unsettling as it was to be alone Jean was so desperately relieved to be free of the other man he could hardly breathe.
Riko’s absence was considerably worse to tolerate. Jean had been promoted to Riko’s partner after Kevin walked out on them, which meant he’d spent the last year forced to stay within a room or two of the King. It was a longer leash than Kevin had ever gotten, as it galled Riko deeply to have a Moreau tagging along with him everywhere, but still short enough to choke Jean. His brief reassignment to Nathaniel over Christmas break had been a much-needed salve for his sanity.
Instead of Riko and Zane he had Wymack, Abby, and Renee cycling through to check on him as best they could around their schedules. They took him back and forth to the bathroom as needed, brought light meals that were easy to eat, and dropped off books he refused to read. Once a day—every other day? Jean didn’t know anymore—Abby locked the door so she could wash him and check his injuries.
Jean slowly learned the full extent of what Riko had done to him. The worst of it was the three fractured ribs, with his LCL sprain and twisted ankle right behind them. The bruises that covered so much of him were in varying shades of healing, with far too many of them still uncomfortably dark. Not every cut was dire enough to need stitches, and Jean’s broken nose would need a couple of weeks. It was Jean’s hair that he couldn’t get past when he refused to linger on everything else. He was vain enough to be deeply upset by how much Riko had managed to pull out, but not desperate enough to ask Abby how long it took hair to grow back.