Finding Unity Read online

  Finding Unity

  The Searchers Book 6

  Ripley Proserpina

  Copyright © 2020 by Ripley Proserpina

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Content Edits by Heather V. Long

  Copy Edits by Jennifer Jones at Bookends Editing

  Cover Design by KD Richie at Storywrappers

  Created with Vellum

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Afterword

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Books by Ripley:

  Dedicated to Everyone who allowed me three years to finish this series.

  And to Lia, who was the first person to publish me,

  Heather, who took me seriously,

  Jennifer, Becky, and Annie, who helped me say what I wanted,

  Rebecca, who never doubted I could do it,

  Crystal, who helped with inspiration,

  and to the girls who loved me first,

  Steph, Kristine, Bethany, and Melanie.

  And always, always, Brad, Jake and my mom.

  Chapter 1

  Nora

  “You want me to what?”

  Nora stared at Matisse, Seok, Ryan, Apollo, and Cai. They sat at their round kitchen table, gazes steady.

  She’d been hoodwinked. Erik Bismarck, her lawyer and Ryan’s former professor, said he was stopping by to check in on her. He didn’t say that while he was here, he was going to lob a bomb.

  Narrowing her eyes, she studied her boyfriends, none of whom seemed surprised.

  Bamboozled. They’d bamboozled her.

  Professor Bismarck folded his hands on the table. “I want you to do an interview with Lucy Merrill for the online paper The Digger. In the months you were gone, things with Dr. Murray escalated. Charges will more than likely be brought against him and the other doctors. His medical license has already been suspended, but he and his lawyers have been in the forefront of every paper and online journal there is.”

  “Why me?” she asked. “There were other people in his study.”

  “All of them were still enrolled in the study,” Ryan answered. His green eyes were kind and serious and held hers. “The court has ordered them not to speak with anyone. You, on the other hand, are sort of a free agent.”

  “An easy target, you mean.” Nora rubbed her forehead and dropped her hand to the table. On the back of her hand, purple lines crisscrossed her skin. She stretched her fingers, watching how her pinky and ring finger didn’t really straighten. After her motorcycle accident over Thanksgiving, they probably never would, no matter how much occupational therapy she did.

  “If you want to call it that.” Bismarck didn’t mince words. “He’s trying to deflect attention away from him and his study and put it back on you. It’s not fair. It’s not right.”

  “All of this will come out in a trial,” she argued, gaze landing on each guy.

  Matisse shrugged one shoulder. “One would hope.”

  “Yes,” Bismarck agreed. “We hope. But there’s no guarantee. And not to sound crass, but shit rolls downhill. Ryan is about to start law school at CCSL—”

  “Erik,” Ryan interrupted. “I don’t need her to do an interview for me. That wasn’t what we talked about.”

  “Well, you should have thought about that, Valore. You have to think about perception now.”

  Seok stood so fast his chair scraped against the floor. “I am the only one responsible for my actions. Nora owes us nothing. Relying on public favor is foolish. Their opinion changes from one second to the next, and nothing she does will change that. We stick to the facts. Nora is a hero. During a school shooting, she saved lives. After that, people with more power than her tried to take advantage of her position. The end.” He pushed his hands through his hair, leaving them linked behind him as he glared at the rest of them.

  If she had been in Seok’s position—if he were the one being asked to talk to the public in order to salvage their reputations—she would say the same thing. She would say, “Don’t worry about me. I can handle it. All that matters is you.”

  But that wasn’t her position. In her position, she actually appreciated Bismarck outmaneuvering her and the guys.

  She’d do whatever it took to make sure the guys weren’t affected by the poor choice she’d made when she agreed to join Dr. Daniel Murray’s study.

  “I’ll do it.” Forcing a smile she didn’t feel, she met all their stares. Ryan shook his head, Matisse leaned back in his chair, arms crossed, and glared. Apollo pulled his glasses off his face and flung them onto the table. Cai showed no emotion, but the muscle near his ear ticked, a sure sign of his discomfort.

  And Seok. Seok watched her with the saddest expression she’d ever seen. “You’re not responsible for what people think, nae sereang.”

  No. But she was responsible for them. They were a gift, and she’d do anything to make their lives easier—better. Just like they’d do for her.

  “Your foster brother worked with Dr. Daniel Murray. What sort of work did he do?”

  The lights were hot. So hot that the back of Nora’s neck burned. She stared at the woman, —a journalist who wrote for an online paper and had broken the news about Dr. Murray’s study months earlier—trying to formulate her answer. Lucy Merrill was trustworthy. Nora and Ryan had given her the USB drive where Matisse had saved all the information he could find on Dr. Murray’s study.

  She’d published it, and everything had changed.

  Nora’s entire world had turned upside down, but not just because of what the public knew. After the motorcycle accident, for a while, Dr. Murray and the fallout he’d created had gone to the back burner.

  But now she was back in Vermont and people were clamoring for her attention. Journalists, the police, the university—everyone wanted to talk to her. They wanted first-hand accounts of what she’d experienced.

  At first, Nora had let the guys run interference. Matisse, Ryan, Seok, Cai, and Apollo had taken messages and made excuses. They’d sat with her while the Brownington PD interviewed her. And now two of them, Ryan Valore and Seok Jheon stood outside the bright lights and watched right along with Professor Bismarck.

  “Nora?” Lucy prompted.

  Her leg ached. The walking cast was off now, had been for a few weeks, but she was still weak. She pointed her toes, stretching, but it did little to ease the throbbing.

  “I don’t know what Reid’s work with Dr. Murray turned into,” she said, “but I imagine it started the same as mine.”

  Lucy nodded. “I know you’re no
t able to go into much detail about Reid, given that you’re under a court order not to say anything until—or if—the doctors in this study are charged, but I’m curious about what happened to you in the beginning. I think a lot of people are.”

  Over Lucy’s shoulder, Ryan nodded, signaling that this was a question she could answer. “In the beginning, all I had to do was answer questions about how I saw the world. Was it a hopeful place? Did I believe in fate? I had to take an IQ test. A Rorschach test—is that how you say it?”

  “Yes,” she answered. “The inkblot test.”

  “Yes.” Nora clasped her hands on her lap, entwining her fingers and squeezing. She resisted the urge to crack her knuckles. “Those sorts of things.”

  “Those are all pretty typical tests in a psychological study.” The reporter glanced down at a notebook on her lap. “Were the results of those tests ever shared with you?”

  She shook her head. “Sometimes one of the doctors would share a detail or two they gleaned from the tests, but I was never shown anything comprehensive.”

  “How do you feel about knowing all of this information will be public knowledge if charges are brought?”

  Nora swallowed. Ryan wasn’t looking at her anymore. His gaze was trained on Seok Jheon, his expression unreadable. Lucy’s question bothered Nora in a lot of ways, but the main one was this—if all of the details of Dr. Murray’s study were revealed, then all of the details she had shared about her personal life would be shared. And the main detail, the one that affected more than just her, had to do with her relationships.

  “Nervous,” she admitted and cleared her throat. “Terrified.”

  “Probably because of the experience you had after the shooting at Alexander Twilight High School. You were named a person of interest after Reid’s identity was known. Police cleared you, but you suffered some fallout. What happened after the shooting?”

  Before Lucy had even finished her question, she’d begun to shake her head. “What happened to me was nothing like what other people had to deal with.” Losing a loved one… she’d had years of not being close to Reid and she’d still mourned him. Mourned the boy he was. The brother he’d been. But it was nothing like what had happened to the parents, siblings, teachers, children of the people who were killed that day last fall.

  Leaning forward, Lucy pinned her with a kind but intense stare. “Nora. You lost your home. Your jobs. You had no money and nowhere to go.”

  “It all worked out.” She couldn’t help smiling as two of the five men she loved faced her. They’d been her port in a storm. “I wasn’t alone.”

  Chapter 2

  Seok

  Seok Jheon stared out the window. He held his kerchief, wrapping it around and around his hand distractedly.

  Outside, his best friend, Apollo Morris, and his girlfriend, Nora Leslie, walked up and down the sidewalk.

  Their lips moved as they spoke, but he couldn’t hear them. Next door, one of the apartments had their music blaring. It was March and a sunny day, the kind of day that came after months of snow and rain and grayness.

  It was the kind of day people turned up the music and rolled down their windows, just so they could breathe. The traffic was constant.

  Nora laughed at something Apollo said. She stopped, head thrown back, gripping his arm for balance. Apollo smiled, and though he couldn’t see his eyes, Seok would bet they were trained on their girl.

  Just like his were.

  Things had changed the past few months—some things were obvious—like Ryan’s graduation from Brownington College and Cai’s new job as a youth counseling supervisor.

  Other things were subtler—Nora’s slight limp, her short hair that covered her scars like the fine dark brown line that wove through one eyebrow. The way her pinky was permanently bent now. The accident that had wounded her was a memory, but for Seok and his best friends, it still felt like yesterday.

  A car went by, someone yelled out the window, and Apollo whipped his head toward it. Seok stilled, waiting, but Nora only waved her hand, like there was no reason for anyone to pay attention to whatever the driver had said.

  “Hovering?” Matisse leaned against the windowsill, gripping the edges with long fingers. His hair had gotten so long it touched his shoulders.

  “Yes.” Seok didn’t even try to deny it.

  They’d gone to Mississippi over Thanksgiving break, and Nora and Matisse had been in an accident, hit by a drunk driver while riding Matisse’s motorcycle. Matisse ended up with some broken bones and road rash, but Nora, who’d been in back, had borne the brunt of the force. She’d been placed in a medically induced coma when her brain had swelled, but she’d come through it all.

  Physical therapy, occupational therapy, speech therapy. It had taken over their lives for a while, but now things were back to normal. Or as normal as they could be.

  Nora glanced toward the house, caught him staring, and waved. Matisse waved back and Seok lifted a hand.

  “Let’s go out there.” Matisse was already headed for the door. He opened it, waiting for him, but Seok shook his head.

  “I have some things to do.”

  “It’s too nice to stay inside.” His friend waited, hand on the door, and glared. “Go for a walk. Hold Nora’s hand.”

  From the corner of his eye, he saw her wave again. Then came Apollo’s voice, loud, demanding. “Get out here, Seok!”

  Despite the worries causing his shoulders to slump and the responsibilities piling up in his inbox, he smiled.

  Matisse grinned in response and held the door open wider. “Come on.”

  He hurried down the front steps after his friend, careful because the winter had pushed and heaved chunks of the pavement.

  Glancing up, he met Nora’s gaze. No one looked at him the way she did. Her lips were already turned up in a smile, the corners of her eyes creased with happiness. She held out her hand. “I’m so glad you’re outside. We all need some sunshine.”

  Wasn’t that the truth? He didn’t want to admit it, but he’d been hiding lately. Physically and… mentally. He supposed it was his turn to have a bit of a crisis. Since Nora had come into their lives, it seemed each one of them had a mini-breakdown.

  Apollo, whose crisis had made him break up with Nora, was in a better place that he’d ever been before. At least since Seok had known him.

  But all of them were relatively independent. They didn’t have the anchor Seok did. They didn’t have expectations and responsibilities to anyone other than themselves.

  Not fair. Seok recognized that he wasn’t giving his friends credit. Each one of them had a past that had an impact on the paths they’d chosen for themselves.

  But that was the thing. They’d had choices.

  Apollo had chosen to share Nora—accepting that while he wasn’t going to be the only love in her life, what he could offer her was utterly unique.

  Ryan had chosen to become a lawyer. He’d worked tirelessly, starting volunteer programs and support groups in an effort to make amends for sending his best friend to jail. But he’d had the luxury of making that choice.

  Choices. Choices.

  Everyone had choices.

  It was part of the culture here in the States. There was this vein of self-determination. In Nora’s interview today, she’d spoken about what Dr. Murray had asked her when she first started the study.

  “Do you believe in destiny or can you make your own path?”

  He wondered how she answered.

  If he’d been asked, he would have said, “The path you take is determined from the moment you’re born.”

  He’d been foolish to think he’d be able to choose his destiny. After Nora’s accident, his destiny had begun to gently, but relentlessly, prod him.

  “Where are you?” Nora’s voice was quiet, running like a brook beneath a bridge compared to Matisse and Apollo’s roaring white-water voices. She reached for him, accepting his arm when he hooked it around hers.

  He couldn’t lie
to her. “A thousand miles away.”

  She nodded, gaze going to the sidewalk. He walked slowly next to her. Her stride wasn’t even, and with each step she leaned into him. He loved the way she relied on him—not just now when he kept her from tripping as she tired—but for support. She confided in him. Trusted him.

  And he was keeping things from her.

  He wanted to tell her everything, but he couldn’t. Not until he made up his mind.

  “Want to talk about it?”

  She was too perfect. Seok waited for the time she’d just give up, tell him he wasn’t worth the times he ran hot and cold, but she didn’t. “Not yet. I want to. But not yet.”

  He stared at their feet. She wore a pair of sneakers, ones Matisse had gotten her with help from Apollo. They weren’t her style. He never knew her to wear running sneakers but Apollo wanted her to have the best, and so now she walked in these fancy, gel-padded, bright pink and gray monstrosities.

  “I feel you staring at my shoes.”

  “How could anyone look away from that color?” His hair fell in his eyes, and he swept it away. “Maybe I should dye my hair pink.”

  “Is it getting to be that time?”

  He’d colored it before Thanksgiving, but the streaks of blue had grown out and lightened to a near silver. Hair had been the last thing on his mind for a long time, but a surge of rebellion had been growing and growing lately. He had to take it out on something.