Hidden Gem (The Travelers Book 1)

by Gaia Octavia

  The thought of Jade snapped me back to reality and I finally felt something inside of me break. I sagged down the wall of rock, ignoring the bite of the rough stone as it scraped my back, and quietly wept. I cried for Jade, for my family that I missed so much, for needing Ma, and for not being strong enough on my own. But mostly, I wept because I knew that no matter how attracted I was to Jade, how much I loved him, I had no idea how to navigate the treacherous waters that separated us emotionally. Or if it was even possible. How could Jade, after so many years of being tortured and abused, ever trust anyone enough to love and be loved? How could he ever want to experience sex again?

  And why was I such a selfish shit to even be thinking about it?

  I wrapped my arms around my legs as I let my tears drain out of me. I needed to be completely empty of them before Jade woke up. It didn’t matter that I wasn’t strong enough or that my heart broke at the thought of being unable to love Jade the way he truly deserved to be loved. I was all that Jade had. And given the fact that he’d never let me down, fuck if I was ever going to let my own weaknesses stop me from being everything Jade needed me to be. I got back up and redressed, leaving my shirt off my still-stinging back. Grabbing the waterskin, I headed back to bed. Back to Jade.

  Where I belonged.

  ⸙

  When I felt Jade stir, my eyes snapped open. I hadn’t slept soundly but I was glad for that. I had been worried that I would wake him up while having a nightmare of my own, but sleep had been a blessed, empty darkness. Jade turned his head and looked at me, smiling that sweet smile that always made my insides go warm.

  “Hey,” he whispered.

  “Hey,” I returned.

  “How did we get here?” Jade asked, pointedly glancing around.

  “I, uh, brought you here after you fell asleep,” I offered lamely, “I figured you would be more comfortable here.”

  I looked at him.

  “With me.”

  I hadn’t needed to say it, but I wanted him to know that I was still right here, where I’d always be. Jade blew out a breath he’d been holding.

  “Thank you, Em. For still being here.”

  I leaned over and brushed my lips against his forehead, hoping the contact wasn’t too much for him.

  “Always.”

  I started to sit up as I mentioned getting something together for us to eat, but his hand went to my chest and gently pushed me back down.

  “Wait, Em,” he said softly, “I can’t eat anything right now and–”

  Tucking an arm under his head, he shifted to look at me. “If I don’t finish my story now, I don’t think I ever will.”

  “Okay.” I forced a smile and draped my arm across his chest. “I’ll be right here with you for as long as you need me to be.”

  Jade smiled, but there was a heavy sadness within it–almost as if he didn’t believe me.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  ⸙

  JADE

  I watched as the light between the leaves, hanging over the cliff above, marched steadily across our camp–marking the hours as they passed. I talked to Emit about my fears, about life at the camp, and about things I swore I would never tell anyone. During a particularly long pause, Emit drifted into a restless sleep.

  I suspected he hadn’t slept much the night before, so I held him and whispered words of how he was safe with me, until he settled into a quiet slumber. It felt good to be the one to help Emit for once. Even if he wouldn’t ever know, it felt like I was repaying him for one tiny thing out of the countless things he did to make me feel safe and calm. I let him sleep, his arm wrapped securely around me. I knew that when he opened his eyes, I would have to finish my story. And I was in no hurry to do so.

  I watched Emit as he slept. He wasn’t wearing a shirt and the feel of his skin pressed against my side made mine feel like it was on fire. His muscled stomach rippled under each heavy breath and his skin smelled fresh, like earth after the rain. Despite everything being a complicated mess inside my head, my cock still stiffened at the sight of him.

  Despite my best effort to ignore it, being so close to him had my cock weeping and me wishing I could stroke myself until I was spent, forgetting everything other than the sight of him and the feel of him against me. Whatever had happened between us by that tree had changed something inside of me. But I still had no clue as to what had changed or what it had changed from. We still hadn’t talked about it, and my spontaneous confession guaranteed that we wouldn’t be talking about it at length any time soon. Especially not after I told Emit the reason why something like that could never, ever happen between us again.

  I was thankful for the quiet. For the time to gather my jumbled thoughts and memories so that I could tease out the things I needed to tell him. There was no reason to go into detail about all the different ways the man had tortured me, how he’d terrorized me for seven endless years. Emit didn’t need to know all the gory details. And in truth, there were things I couldn’t relive even if I’d wanted to. I still didn’t know how I’d lived through them the first time.

  I could feel the shame that had settled at the base of my spine, how it was practically bursting with gleeful anticipation for the moment I had to tell Emit that I was broken. Unalterably, unendingly damaged. My heart felt heavy with the knowledge of what I couldn’t tell him–that no matter how much I loved him, no, because I loved him, if we found his family, I would be gone.

  “Jade?”

  I blinked back the moisture that had begun to pool in my eyes, hoping that he hadn’t noticed.

  “Feeling better?” I smiled.

  “Sorry I fell asleep,” Emit murmured as he nuzzled my hair.

  When had Emit started feeling so comfortable touching me? Had it happened over time, without my noticing? It felt like everything was happening all at once. For so long, I wanted nothing more than for Emit to hold me and wrap me in his arms without the awkward unsurety that invariably came with those kinds of moments between us. But now that it was happening, it terrified me.

  One more story.

  I just had to make it through one more story and then Emit would finally see me for who I truly was, and he would understand.

  He would let me go.

  Emit’s hand began to rub the upper part of my arm as if encouraging me to finish. He knew I wasn’t going to get up until my confession was complete.

  I drew in a breath.

  “I used to beg him,” I began, “I’d beg him to stop. To stop hurting me. But–”

  I closed my eyes.

  “He liked it. It made him beat me more. Eventually, he started demanding that I beg him to stop on the nights I didn’t have it in me. I knew that if I did, the beating would get worse. But it wouldn’t end unless I begged. So eventually, I always did.”

  Emit pressed his lips to my temple and just held them there.

  “One night, after a few years, I was so desperate for an end to the pain that I began to provoke him in hopes that he would finally beat me to death. I just wanted it to be over. He told me to beg him, but I refused. I swore at him and I told him to hit me. I…”

  My voice hung on the edge of a precipice, but I knew I had to force the rest of the words from my throat. I felt Emit’s tears before I got them out. My temple was bathed in warm liquid that cooled as it continued to move down the back of my ear, dripping onto the mat. I knew that all I had to do was stop talking. To turn my head and let Emit kiss me, hold me, and that he’d never ask me to talk about my time in that camp again.

  Maybe we could even make it work. Maybe I could learn to stomach sex. Sex with Emit. Maybe after a while, when I said that I liked it, I wouldn’t be lying. But I knew I couldn’t stop. It was as if the moment I started telling him the truth of who I was, I’d started tumbling downhill. And now there was no way to stop myself from falling off the impending cliff.

  Not if I really loved Emit.

  He deserved the truth. He deserved to know that I wasn’t like him. That I
would never deserve him or be able to love him the way he deserved to be loved. Not romantically at least. And I was far too in love with him to just be his friend. To watch him grow and meet someone who made him smile, who made him scream their name when he came. Someone who was everything that I wasn’t.

  The thought of having to walk away from Emit was so painful, I rarely let myself think that far ahead. But to watch him love someone else would be a kind of torture worse than any I’d suffered back in that tent. It would be like watching my family die all over again. So, I forced my head to remain where it was and willed my voice to remain steady.

  “I told him I liked it.”

  I felt a skittering along the base of my spine; my demon was awake and ready to play.

  “I thought he would kill me. But instead, he stopped beating me. He kept doing more and more things to me. To my body. Asking me if I liked it.”

  Emit leaned back a bit, so I turned to him.

  “It was better than the beatings, Em,” I pleaded, “I swear I didn’t really like those things he did to me. I was just so tired of hurting.”

  I closed my eyes again, swallowing thickly and forcing myself to continue.

  “After that, the beatings happened a lot less. I figured out that the more I pretended to like the things he did to me–the more I performed for him–the emptier and number I felt. And I liked that. I liked not feeling sick, not feeling like one giant bruise that never healed. I liked feeling nothing.”

  Emit had gone quiet. I knew the truth was beginning to sink in for him. It must have been nauseating for him to realize just what kind of person he’d been palling around with all this time, but I ignored his pain and selfishly continued–wanting it to be finished.

  Wanting it all to end.

  “The things I did. The things he did to me,” I choked out, “You can’t imagine.”

  I shifted away from Emit to put some space between us, so that he wouldn’t have to.

  “It was like that for the next four years. Whenever they brought new boys into the camp, I would block my ears to their screams as they circulated through the tents. Some were younger than I was when they took me. And I did nothing to help any of them.”

  My spine began to sing as my shame rode it–spinning around and around–riding it from top to bottom before digging into each vertebra as it climbed to the top to do it again.

  “Until you.”

  And we were finally here–the point of no return.

  “But yesterday, when I took advantage of the situation. When I grabbed you by your shoulder to hold you in place like he used to do to me. I was just like him. I forced…”

  I was too much of a coward to say it.

  “And then,” I whispered, my voice sounding strangled, “you told me you liked it.”

  Finally, I tore out the last bit that I needed to say.

  “It can’t ever happen again, Em. It can’t.”

  I hung my head.

  “I liked it too much. I can’t turn into him. I can’t hurt you.”

  I was silent after that.

  “Why?” He asked quietly.

  My shame had crawled its way up to my neck, creeping closer to my brain where it would take root and fester.

  “Why did you save me?”

  I was quiet for a long time, searching for the best answer to something I didn’t really know the answer to. I finally settled on part of the reason why I had risked my life to save him that night in the camp.

  “Because, Em, you remind me of home.”

  With that, I quietly got up–Emit making no move to stop me–and disappeared into the woods at the edge of our camp.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  ⸙

  EMIT

  It’d been hours since Jade had left camp and I was still right where he’d left me. I felt like I’d been chewed up and spit out by the giant croc he’d saved me from the day before.

  “You told me you liked it.”

  Gods.

  Of all the things I could have said.

  How was I ever going to tell Jade what that moment meant to me when it was so marred by horror and shame for him? My cock twitched at the thought of Jade’s body pressing mine into the unforgiving bark. At how he’d taken control, rubbing himself against my ass in search of release.

  It had been in that moment, feeling him shamelessly wanting me and realizing just how much I wanted him in return, that all my paper-thin walls and ridiculous excuses had shattered around me. I’d heard them all crash and had felt the wave of love and desire they’d been holding back flood over me.

  It hadn’t been terrifying at all. It’d been beautiful.

  And warm.

  Suddenly, everything I ever needed or wanted was sitting right there in front of me. Well, behind me, and it hadn’t mattered anymore that I was afraid of what I barely understood myself. I’d fallen asleep waiting for Jade to come back to camp, ready to tell him everything. To hold him and kiss him deeply so that I could show him just how much I truly felt for him.

  Then I’d heard his screams, and now it seemed like it’d been years since last night. And even though I’d been closer to him today than I’ve ever been in the last two years–lying with him and holding him for hours as the feeling of tiny firelights sparked between us–Jade had never felt so far away.

  I’d spent the time since he left cycling between pain and sorrow and rage. I wanted to find the man who hurt Jade and make him wish he were just as dead as Jade had wished himself to be. I wanted to flay his skin with my teeth, to dismember his body with my bare hands and make him tell me that he liked it.

  Then I would think of Jade.

  Of how everything he’d been through had made him into this perfect imperfection. Of how his strength, his hope, his love was endless, and I’d cry at the unfairness of it all. I wept for the loss of what Jade could have had and who he could have been. Someone who understood his worth, who believed in himself.

  Someone who knew peace.

  Then the pain would shatter me into a thousand pieces as I realized I didn’t know how to–may never be able to–make him see all the things that were so obvious to me. All the reasons why I’d fallen so deeply in love with him, despite my best effort to deny it.

  The look on Jade’s face as he’d pleaded with me to believe he hadn’t enjoyed the terrible things the man had done to him, had broken something deep within me. I’d had no idea of the kind of pain and torment Jade was drowning in every day. I had no idea how his brain worked or how we could experience the same exact thing and yet have our experiences be nothing alike.

  Then the rage would come again.

  I desperately tried to think of what to do or say if he came back–when he came back–because he was coming back. I needed to show him that I was still here. That my feelings hadn’t changed since he’d told me about his life. Though that wasn’t completely true; he still didn’t know that my love for him had become as undeniable as my need to breathe.

  But how could I tell him now without him thinking the change had come from wanting to protect him after hearing his story? Or out of pity? I couldn’t let my love be diminished like that, but I had no control over how he would interpret the things I said and did. No matter how much I told him or showed him how I felt, if he didn’t believe me, there would be nothing but pain and misery for us both.

  I had to stay strong for Jade. I had to let go of what I desperately needed to tell him, to show him. Instead, I needed to listen to what he’d told me he needed–a friend.

  Someone who didn’t have to hide getting rock hard every time he bathed with him. Someone who didn’t long to be pressed up against another tree and taken until we were both dripping with sweat, sated and huddled together in a boneless tangle of limbs and love. Someone who didn’t dream of fisting Jade’s hair to pull his head back and fuck his mouth with their tongue, tasting every inch of it and his warm, lush lips.

  It was as if the dam had burst and there was no way I could shove a
ll my liquid feelings of love and desire back behind it. But if I wanted to keep Jade in my life, and I had to keep Jade in my life, then I needed to get control of myself and be whatever it was that Jade needed me to be for him.

  And it started now.

  I finally climbed out of bed–my body feeling like one giant ache from lying motionless all day–and began to look through our rations to see what I could put together for us to eat. I would leave Jade’s for him on his own mat, which I would lay out for him and stay away from.

  But I wouldn’t lay it too far away from my own.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  ⸙

  JADE

  Things had been feeling a bit forced for the past few weeks, ever since telling Emit almost everything I swore I’d never tell another living soul. For his part, he tried really hard not to treat me any differently. But all too often, I caught a look in his eyes that hadn’t been there before that night. It wasn’t a look of disgust or pity, thank the gods, but it was a look that Emit had never given me before. So, whatever emotion was behind it, based on the timing, was either about my past or what had happened back by that damn tree. Truth be told, Emit stayed rather quiet, and when we did talk, he carefully weighed every thought before voicing it.

  We were finally almost to the next settlement that sat farther north. Other than the silence and the looks I’d catch in his eyes, things had pretty much gone back to normal. Except that Emit no longer insisted I join him after my nightmares. It was just as good that he didn’t. At least that’s what I kept telling myself as I laid awake, unable to fall back asleep after breaking free from the terror.