JACKSON

 

LUCIEN HAS HAD several days of rehabilitation with a full-time therapist, who has taken up temporary residency on the island.  He's walking with only a slight limp with the assistance of a cane, which is more than I could have ever asked for.  Hell, the guy should be dead right now.  The fact that he's even alive and breathing is a medical marvel.

With continued extensive therapy and treatment, he might even be able to return to completely normal someday.  Well, Lucien's version of normal anyway.

I enter his office after punching in the code, and he's sitting at his computer, scowling at the screen.

I know he's upset that he hasn't found any leads to Adeline's whereabouts.  He misses her like crazy.  Hell, we all do.  She charmed her way into the hearts of all of us.

What started off as a complete misunderstanding — Lucien purchasing Adeline from her ex-fiancé, Giovanni, under false pretenses without her knowledge — slowly morphed into true love.

And now Giovanni has her again.  I'm sure of it.

Who knows what the fuck he's doing with her?  He could have sold her to someone else…or worse.

I shudder at the thought.  That's the kind of shit that keeps me up at night well into the morning hours.  And if I'm barely sleeping, I know Lucien isn't getting even a wink of sleep.

"Anything new?" I ask him, my tone dripping with hopefulness.

Shaking his head, Lucien grumbles, "Nothing.  Like always."

I go into the bathroom to wash my hands and collect what I need to clean and bandage his shoulder wound.  When I reenter his office, I tell him, "Don't worry, Luc.  She'll turn up."  Then I add softly, "She has to."

I can't envision a world where Adeline doesn't exist.  It makes me physically ill to think about it.  And even though I love the girl, I don't even love her one-tenth of what Lucien does.  I can't even imagine how much pain he's in right now.

I sit down in a chair beside him and gingerly start to unwrap the bandage around his right shoulder.  I squirt some saline solution into the wound, and Lucien grits his teeth, closes his eyes and breathes deeply through his nose.  I'm sure it's tender, but he's so damn lucky.

Clean in-and-out wounds, fractured clavicle and some soft tissue damage in his shoulder…only minor nerve and tissue damage in his thigh.  A millimeter to the right or to the left, and he wouldn't even be here right now.

It could have been worse.  So much fucking worse.

"How's your thigh doing?" I ask him.

"Fine," he answers with a huff.

I'd been tending to his thigh wound for a few days before Lucien adamantly announced he was tired of having me so close to his junk.  After laughing for several minutes, I taught him how to dress the damn thing himself.  And I'm sure he's keeping it clean.  I mean, fuck, this is Lucien we're talking about.

But I continue to dress his shoulder since he physically can't.  I know he doesn't like to be touched, but his phobias have calmed down significantly as of lately.  I think his brain is so focused on finding Adeline that he doesn't really concentrate on all the other shit that used to bombard him on a daily basis.

"Looks good," I tell him when I finish up.  "No sign of infection.  It's healing really well."

"Good," he mutters.

I carry everything back to the bathroom, put it all away, discard of the used supplies and wash my hands before walking out.  "The watch is still a dead end?" I ask him.  Lucien had gifted Adeline a watch with a GPS tracker inside.  The only thing is — the watch runs on body heat.  Doesn't need a battery.  Lucien's brilliant creation, of course.

But somewhere along the line, Adeline either took the watch off or it was taken from her.  And so the GPS stopped tracking her once she got back to New York City.  We could only track her that far.

So, she could still be in New York or halfway across the world right now, and we would have absolutely no idea.

"The watch hasn't been activated since it first went offline," he says solemnly.  "I should have installed an emergency battery.  I can't believe I was so stupid," he growls, clearly blaming himself.

I hang my head.  Even though I always try to keep positive for his sake, it's so freaking hard.  I clap a hand on his good shoulder.  "Don't worry.  Something will turn up," I tell him.

"I hope so, Jax, because I'm going crazy thinking about all the things that could be happening to her," he confesses in a whisper.

Me too, I think to myself, but don't dare say the words out loud.