Finding Strength (The Searchers Book 5) Read online

Apollo’s sparring partner, a guy about his size named Otis, swept his legs, and he hit the mat hard.

  “Fuck!” The word was garbled because of his mouth guard.

  “What’s wrong with you today?” his trainer asked. “You’re slow. Are you getting sick?”

  Apollo spit the guard into his hand, and went to the corner of the ring. He gripped the water bottle between his wrists and lifted it to his mouth, squirting the water in. He rolled it around, and spit it into the spit bucket before squirting it again. “No.”

  “You’re also moody.”

  He shot a glare over his shoulder at Otis. His partner crossed his arms and looked pointedly at their trainer. “See? Moody.”

  “I’m giving up time with my family on Thanksgiving to train you, Apollo. Don’t waste my time.”

  His shoulders sagged under the reprimand. “Sorry.”

  Marco sighed and jerked his chin toward a corner of the gym. “I want a hundred double-unders. Unbroken.”

  Apollo only nodded. He lifted his wrist to his mouth, biting the tape holding his gloves on. Marco was right. His head wasn’t in the game today, and he was wasting everyone’s time if he couldn’t concentrate.

  He found his jump rope in the corner and dropped his gloves on the floor.

  “Ready?”

  Apollo nodded and at his trainer’s go, started jumping. This was better. Normally, the fighting was enough to distract him. He had to anticipate his partner’s moves and plan his own. But today, his head wasn’t in it.

  The double-unders were more his speed. All he had to do was jump. And breathe.

  What was Nora doing now? He tamped down the urge to look at the big clock on the wall and kept his gaze straight ahead. They’d probably eaten, and Nicole was serving pie.

  He almost laughed aloud. No doubt Nicole was giving Nora the lesson about how to pronounce pecan. God, he’d been so embarrassed the first time Nicole had told him, “You pee in a can, and I’m not going to eat that, so I prefer to eat a peh-khan.”

  Of course, she’d said it in the nicest possible way. Apollo tripped on the rope.

  “Again.”

  Damn. He should have been able to do this. Breathe. Jump. Breathe. Jump.

  When he was done here, all he had to look forward to was a cold apartment and a bland dinner. He was counting calories and dinner was chicken and vegetables. Some quinoa. Water.

  And he needed to have a protein smoothie after the workout. It’d be nice if one day food could just be food. Something he ate for pleasure and not for survival.

  He tripped again as the word skated through his head. Survival.

  Once upon a time, he hadn’t had enough food, and if it hadn’t been for school, he very well may have starved to death.

  “Again.” Marco said. But Apollo tripped again, and a glove flew at his head. “God dammit, Apollo! I’m missing Thanksgiving for this! You’re wasting my goddamn time!”

  He spun on his heel and left, ignoring Apollo’s hastily muttered apology and slammed his hands into the bar that opened the door.

  For a moment, the sun snuck inside the windowless building. It was a beautiful day today. Blue sky. Mild.

  “If he’s going, I’m going,” Otis announced. “I only came here because he guilted me.”

  “Sorry,” Apollo called after him, but he merely lifted his arm and grabbed his bag, leaving him alone in the big room.

  The door shut with a final-sounding slam, and he looked around. “Fuck.” He’d let down Otis and Marco, wasting everyone’s time today. And on a holiday. They weren’t like him. They had family and better things to do.

  Marco would be gone tonight, and Apollo would be alone in a stranger’s house. He picked up the jump rope again. Homework and baked chicken.

  God, his life was pathetic.

  But this was what he wanted, wasn’t it? He couldn’t handle competing for Nora’s affection, and now look at him. He wasn’t competing for anything.

  But he’d never felt worse.

  And she’d only been gone two days. How was he going to feel when the days turned into weeks?

  The thought alone made him sick.

  Nora was so far away right now. There had been something reassuring when she was here. If he had to get to her, he could have. But if something went wrong while she was in Matisse’s hometown, he was too far away to do anything about it.

  He tripped over the rope again and flung it with a yell. This wasn’t what he wanted! He didn’t want to be away from her, but he was tired of being someone’s afterthought. He wanted to matter, really matter to someone.

  No. Not someone. To the most important someone.

  He glanced at the clock. It was early yet, and he was wound up tight. If he left now, he’d be stuck in the apartment, staring at someone else’s walls while he slowly went insane.

  “Fuck it,” he muttered. At least if he was here, he could hit something.

  Hours later, Apollo still hadn’t returned to the apartment. Instead, he found himself driving through Brownington, past the youth center and finally up the hill to his—Seok’s—house. He parked in front of it, staring at the peeling paint and new door. Seok talked about painting this summer. Apollo planned on helping, but now he wasn’t sure.

  It felt like home, and he wanted nothing more than to go inside, go into his room, and fall asleep in his bed.

  Apollo put the car in park and got out. It was dark now, and the motion sensor lights came on when he walked up the driveway. He didn’t know what he planned to do, he couldn’t very well go inside, could he?

  “They kick you out?” a voice called to him.

  Apollo spun on his heel, squinting to see who’d spoken to him. A woman, pale and slim with long red hair, approached him. Her heels clacked against the pavement, and she pulled her camel hair jacket more tightly around her.

  “Do I know you?” Apollo asked. She looked familiar, but he couldn’t place her.

  “No,” she said, giving him a small smile. She held out her hand, and before Apollo realized what he was doing, he shook it. “I’m Jessica Chase. I worked with Nora in Dr. Murray’s lab.”

  Immediately, he dropped her hand and stepped back. “What are you doing here?”

  “I was driving by,” she said. “Saw you. Thought I’d stop.”

  “Why?”

  Jessica laughed. “Fair enough. I don’t know, honestly. Nora spoke about you, and I saw you and thought, what the hell?”

  Apollo studied her, and she held his gaze. Something about the way she observed him, her eyes darting to his neck and then back to his face, made him take a step back. Every cell in his body whispered, danger.

  He may have had a hundred pounds and a good number of inches on her, but Jessica Chase stared at him like he was prey.

  “Well,” he said, trying to find his calm. “Now we’ve met. Goodnight.” He thought about going to his car, but he’d have to pass by her to do that, so he strode toward the back door.

  “Goodnight, Apollo. It was nice to meet you.”

  He shivered and shoved his key in the door, pushing it open as fast as he could before slamming it shut behind him. Standing in the cold kitchen, inexplicably out of breath, Apollo couldn’t help but feel like he’d had a near miss.

  Dr. Murray and his buddies should have long since lost interest in Nora. The man’s name had been splashed across the papers as people tried to make sense of what they’d learned about his study and the role it had had in a series of very public tragedies.

  Apollo didn’t know Jessica Chase. He hadn’t heard her name, and he hadn’t seen her picture associated with Murray’s, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t part of the whole terrible thing. He didn’t know what she’d done, but he was certain of one thing, her visit hadn’t been spur of the moment, no matter what she said.

  Leaving the lights off, Apollo walked through the empty house to the living room. Someone had closed the curtains, but he flicked one aside. Another car was parked behind his, and he watched
Jessica get inside and drive away.

  He let the curtain fall back into place and pulled out his phone, shooting off a quick message to Seok. Until his friends got back into town, he’d stay here. The house had already been broken into once; there was no reason to leave it empty.

  His phone buzzed, and he glanced down at it. Stay as long as you like. We’re home Sunday.

  He typed back his thanks, but before he could press send, another message came in. It was a photo. Nora sat at the table, her chin in her hand as she listened to Nicole. Matisse’s mother sat across from her but leaned over the table. Her hands were blurry, probably because she was using them to talk.

  It made him smile, and then it made his chest hurt. He expanded the picture so he could see Nora’s expression. She had a tiny little smile, but she seemed distracted, like she was only half-listening.

  Was she thinking of him?

  But why would she be? If Nora thought about him at all, it was probably to reflect on how much he’d hurt her.

  What was wrong with him?

  Apollo wished he could stop the negative thoughts bombarding his brain. In the beginning, he had, but as he’d watched Nora’s relationship with his friends evolve, and theirs had seemed to remain stagnant, he couldn’t help himself.

  The negativity overshadowed every moment he was with her until he’d finally exploded and said things he hadn’t meant.

  He needed to get his shit together. One way or another. But how did he do that? It wasn’t like he hadn’t been trying his entire life to be better. And he thought he’d managed it. He was in school, on his way to doing what he loved.

  Sure, he had to get the shit kicked out of him on the way, but it was a small price to pay when he was earning a degree with minimal debt.

  Apollo left the living room and went upstairs, leaving the lights off. Each room was dark as he walked down the hall, but the doors were open.

  It was so strange. The house felt like a museum, the rooms frozen in time. Matisse, surprisingly, was his neatest friend. Everything had a place, and he knew if an item was moved even an inch.

  Ryan messed with him sometimes. He’d pull the chair out from under the desk, or put a pencil on top of his laptop. He’d called it “desensitizing.” Matisse called it “being an asshole.”

  He stood for a moment, staring into the room. Since the burglary, his friend had a lot less stuff in there. His bookshelf had been tipped over, and when they’d righted it, it had been wobbly. Now it sat in Seok’s workshop, waiting to be tightened.

  That gave Apollo an idea. He wasn’t skilled like Seok, but surely he could bang a few nails into some wood. There were a few things in the workshop that they were waiting on, actually.

  An end table. A second bookshelf. The coffee table was scratched to shit, but he could use a sander.

  Energized by having something to do, he hurried back downstairs, through the kitchen and into the basement.

  Flipping on the lights, he stared around the room.

  Seok was not the neat one, but generally he wasn’t this messy. He always took care of his tools. But they seemed to have been dropped in the last place he was using them. And he’d left the sander plugged in.

  Apollo walked over to it and yanked the cord out of the wall. As he stepped back to put it on a wire shelf, his heel crunched against something.

  Huh. It was a wooden circle. He bent down, and as he did, he caught sight of a trail of broken pieces.

  Apollo collected them all and laid them out. He was definitely missing pieces, but he could make out the general shape. Each circle had been glued to another. Some pieces had chunks of dried glue stuck to them. When placed together, they made a sphere.

  It must have taken his friend forever to make. And then to have it shatter…

  Apollo left the pieces on the table. Perhaps Seok had been so discouraged, he hadn’t bothered to find the pieces. If he left them here, they could be put back together. But that wasn’t something Apollo could do. It was beyond his skill set.

  The bookshelf, however…

  It had been placed horizontally, so he righted it and gave it a nudge. Yeah. This wasn’t going to hold anything if the screws weren’t tightened. Funny how they just relied on Seok to take care of things like this.

  He determined which type of screwdriver to use and walked to the toolbox. This should take him about two minutes. It would take any of them two minutes, so why hadn’t they done it? It wasn’t like Seok didn’t have enough on his plate with his business and side work with Brownington.

  Apollo tightened each screw and nudged the shelf again. This time it was steady.

  He spent the rest of the evening and into the night fixing things. One of the legs on the end table had split, but he found some wood glue, and with that, and a clamp, he was able to repair it. It would be a two-day job, because according to the bottle, it would take twenty-four hours to dry, but he’d made some headway.

  The coffee table had a gouge across it. Seok had made this piece, and Apollo hesitated to touch it. What if he screwed it up beyond fixing?

  Gently, he ran his thumb over the scratch. It was deep, and he didn’t want to sand so much that the top of the coffee table was bowl-shaped.

  For fuck’s sake, he’d spent enough time with Seok down here, surely he must have learned something by osmosis.

  Hands on his hips, he studied the walls and shelves. He moved closer, read the labels, and smiled to himself when he found what he needed. Wood filler. Seok had it in all colors. He grabbed a few and brought them to the table to find the best match. Then, using his best label following skills, he pressed the filler into the gouge and stood back.

  He’d fixed it. He’d actually fixed it.

  It wasn’t done. That part of woodworking was sort of annoying. He had the time to put into it now, so it was irritating to have to wait for things to dry and set before he could move on. But a little patience never killed anyone.

  And it certainly wouldn’t kill him.

  He always wanted to get things done right away. Be first. Be the most important.

  Can’t blame me. Apollo shut off the lights and trudged upstairs. He was surprised to see the sky lightening to navy. He’d worked all night.

  Exhaustion hit him hard. Fuck. It was nearly six, and he was supposed to meet Marco at the gym by seven. He’d been slow yesterday, but today he was going to be wrecked.

  Now that he was aware of the time, he realized he hadn’t even eaten yesterday. That meant no fuel for the workout today, which meant he’d bonk. And if he couldn’t do the reps that Marco wanted, then—

  Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Apollo threw open a cabinet and went about making a shake. It was just going to hurt today, but he’d hurt before. He’d push it aside like he always did.

  He shook the blender bottle and chugged the mixture. This is a mistake.

  It was the first time the thought occurred to him, and it stopped him cold.

  He was going into a fight, and he was unprepared. He admitted it. His head wasn’t in it. His heart wasn’t in it.

  Compartmentalizing, something he’d always been able to do, seemed impossible.

  The bright green numbers on the microwave changed, and he forced himself to move. Today, he’d train harder than he ever had before.

  3

  Seok

  Nora tipped her head back to the sun and shut her eyes. “Tell me the temperature again.” Rolling her head toward him, she smiled wickedly. “And say it slowly.”

  Seok laughed. “Seventy-four.”

  She sucked in a breath through her teeth. “Ooo. That’s it.” But she couldn’t keep up the ruse and started to giggle. Laying back on the towel, she stretched her arms above her head and pointed her toes. “No wonder people move to Florida all the time. I could get used to this.”

  “Yes,” Matisse answered. “But it’s a hundred in the summer with a hundred percent humidity.”

  “Sounds like bliss,” she mused, and Seok shook his head.


  “I’ve tried it. It’s not,” he told her.

  Nora rolled onto her stomach and pushed her sunglasses down her nose. His gaze trailed from the braid resting over one shoulder, down her smooth back, to her bikini-clad ass.

  She was beautiful. And he was getting hard. An awkward state when he was out by the pool with his friends, and his friend’s family. He turned over onto his stomach carefully, adjusting himself so he didn’t break his dick.

  Nora’s skin glistened. She’d slathered sunblock all over herself, and then offered it to him. He’d declined since he didn’t usually burn, but now he was thinking he should have accepted the gesture. What an idiot he was to say no to her small hands spreading cool lotion all over his body.

  “When did you stay down here?” she asked.

  “It was after we met,” Matisse called. “In between moving to Vermont and living in Montreal.”

  “I didn’t know you lived in Montreal,” Nora said. She pushed her glasses onto her head and rested her head on her arms. “Tell me about it.”

  “Well.” Seok mirrored her posture. “I was doing business for my dad and needed a roommate.” He left it there. He didn’t really want to get into the business and all that. “The rest is boring. It’s a timber business. Mostly based out of Vancouver, but I’d sort of migrated east by that point.”

  “Your family is in Vancouver?” she asked. Leave it to Nora to find the very thing he wanted to talk about least.

  “Not anymore,” he answered, hoping he sounded blasé.

  She held his gaze before her eyes dropped to his lips. Sighing, she shut her eyes. “The sun makes me sleepy.”

  “Take a nap,” Matisse said. “Seok can roll you over if you get too toasty on one side.”

  She smiled. “Okay.”

  Seok watched her for a little longer. It didn’t take long for her breathing to even out and her cheeks to get rosy. A shadow covered him as Cai walked by to drape a towel over her back. He eyed him as he sat at the edge of the pool. “You should really put some sunblock on. You’re going to burn.”

  Seok glanced at Nora again.