"I'm glad you killed his sorry ass," Joyous states.

Everyone is quiet except him. He goes to the old bar and brings out my dad's old collection of scotch. He sits at the table and starts drinking by himself while the rest of them just take in what I just said.

Jamila looks over at me, "Dead ass?"


Dead ass. Seriously. I feel this heaviness as she says it like wondering what my own sister really thought of me. Did she think I would really lie about something like that? I find myself tearing up a little bit at that moment not knowing how to really face this.

"Did you know about this?" Joshua asks my mother.

My mother remains quiet. I don't expect Joshua to be as aggressive as he is and am actually happy that he is upset about this.

"You gone back to being quiet?" Joshua asks my mother, "I asked you a fucking question Ma..."


She looks at me dead in my eyes.

"No."


She's lying. She's lying right between her fucking teeth. I didn't have the proof but I always had the feeling. I always had the feeling that back then she knew that what my dad was doing to me. It was her idea after all for him to just take me. A mother should protect her children. Our mother never protected us when it counted. She never cared. All she cared about was him and maybe that is why she is so mad that he's gone.

For such a beautiful woman she had such low self-esteem. My father was the cause. He probably did it on purpose. He probably knew how beautiful my mother was and figured the only way he could keep someone like her was to break her down mentally. I felt sad for her but still angry at the sametime. There was so many emotions I didn't know how to express.

I turn to the right and see English looking at me. He's just staring at me. He doesn't seem to know how to react either. I can tell he just wants to somehow communicate with me but right now probably isn't the time.

I tuck my emotions in hiding them like Joshua would at this time.

"Why don't we all sit down and eat," Uncle Regis states, "As a family...and we can discuss some of this."


My mother is back to being silent already. She doesn't stop me from sitting at the table. She just fades into the background again as though she was never here in the first place. All of a sudden, no one seemed like they were in the mood to be sticking up for my dead father anymore. Funny how that works.

"Can we have a minute?" English asks.

He doesn't wait to be excused. English grabs me. I feel almost like a piece of his property when he takes me into the bathroom. Not in a bad way though. I feel as though the relationship that English and I have at that moment almost did feel a little more than co-parenting. English cared about me. Deeply. He wanted to see me be OK.

He grabs some napkins for me as I wipe off. I can almost feel how awkward the other room is while we are gone. No one knows what to say.

"You want to stay here?" English asks me.

"You told me to face my truth. That's what I'm doing."


English pauses.

"Damn I just had no idea it was that kind of truth," English explains.

No one would know. I had kept it to myself for so long. It was the only way that I really knew how to deal with that kind of pain. I had to bottle it away and act like it didn't exist. I had to pretend like I didn't know that pain. That was the only way I could get through it.

"How would you look at me now that you knew?" I ask him, "I'm the damaged brother."


He probably should have stuck with Joshua. That was the brother who did everything right. That was the strong one. That was the one who would have told my father no and raised all hell if my father ever tried to do something like that.

"Nah bro...you're beautiful to me."


I laugh. Then I realize English isn't laughing with me. English leans in to me and presses his lips up against my lips. The soft touch of his lips sends shivers down my spine. He seems to almost sense it because he brings his hand behind my back.

He touches my spine slowly. Delicately. I felt so broken when I came into this bathroom.

It's almost as though he is putting me back together.

"That feels so good..." I find myself whispering.

His tongue circles around my neck slowly kissing it and teasing me. Both of our dicks harden between us. His dick presses up against my inner thigh. I find myself kissing him back puling at his shirt and pulling at his pants in a wild attempt to get them off and have him fuck me right here and right now. I'm so desperate to have English inside of me.

"I've never done this before," he whispers before adding to be precise, "With another guy."

He looks down. Somehow I managed to get both of our dicks out. His dick is slightly bigger than mine and curved to the right. It is a thick, circumcised dick with a head that looks like a rocket launcher. The longer we stare at our dicks the more I realize how turned on I am. I begin to precum out of no where and it oozes out way more than I expect. It drips all over the shaft of his hard dick that is right underneath mine.

"Sorry..." I state.

"No...I...like it," he tells me, "A new start."


Is that why he decided to switch to guys after Shantelle died? Another start. I could imagine how hard that would have been for someone.

The way he looks at me though makes me feel like something new. He rubs my precum all over his dick until it is nice and smooth. I show him what to do, leaning over the sink in the bathroom. We have to be quiet. We don't have a lot of time.

English pushes his dick in me. I squirm, "Fuck..."


He uses his other hand to cover my throat in a real aggressive way. I don't expect this really from English, the gentleman, and maybe that's why it turns me the fuck on even more. He starts choking me from behind until I can barely breathe and starts pounding my ass out. I grab onto the sink, grasping for it feeling his meat fill me up aggressively.

"Shhh baby," he laughs, realizing how loud I'm getting.

He called me baby. I smile at the thought of that and start backing it up. I stop groaning making sure I'm as quiet as possible even though I really want to scream at how good English's dick is. I'm grasping for his skin and he's kissing me as he fucks me. His tongue circles me. There is so much passion. This isn't about sex. I need to feel a real emotion right now. I need to feel how real passion between two consensual adults feels like.

And this is it.

"I'm going to nut."


I pull out. I get on my knees. I open my mouth and English covers me with his nut. He showers his semen all over my face and I suck up everything that remains.

He lifts me up and starts kissing me.

"Damn a part of me just wants to leave with you and do that again and again all day," he tells me.

I turn to the door. It sounds nice but I hear someone screaming in the background. The loud sound of clashing makes me want to almost run outside of the bathroom.

"My family might just kill each other," I tell English.

I had to be here. He knew that. After that revelation it was clear that there were a lot of secrets that my family had and we couldn't move forward until we got past those secrets.

We clean up silently and walk outside of the bathroom...holding hands.

I notice Joshua sees it. He doesn't say anything. He just takes a sip of wine and I wonder what is going on in his mind. Luckily Joyous is going off at that moment so the tension doesn't seem to last too long at least.

"What's going on here?" I ask.

"This motherfucker was laughing...he was laughing at you..." Joyous states.

Joyous has a broken wine bottle in his hand. He has the other end pointed at Jax. I guess Jax was the one laughing at my story whenever English took me in the bathroom. Uncle Regis and Lionel are standing between Joyous. They are trying to stop him. Maybe that's why Jax feels comfortable at this moment. The guy still has a little bit of a smirk on his face. There is something so sick about him. Who laughs at a kid getting taken advantage of? Joyous had a temper but in this I think he is right.

"Sorry. Nervous reaction," Jax states continuing to smirk.

"You like to smile how about I cut your fucking face open?" Joyous asks.

"Yo how you going to blame him for some shit like that?" Sheila asks, "He's new here. What you should be worried about is if the story is true."


"Excuse me?" I ask.

My heart is thumping.

Sheila looks around the table, "Jamison is a liar. We all know that. Let's be honest. He goes around starting shit and lying. Remember when you told everyone Joshua had AIDS?"


Why would that bitch bring that up now?

"Joshua are you telling the truth here?" Jamila asks, "Seriously..."


I can't believe them. My own fucking family. For a moment I could understand why Joshua got up and left this shitty ass family behind. The fact that they think I was lying was ridiculous.

"The boy who cried wolf," Sheila adds in.

Joyous puts down his bottle as though realizing that I haven't been truthful in the past. Jamila is giving me and obvious cross-eye listening to the same cousin she was so sure she hated. Then I look over at my mother. She'd never tell the truth. She'd never turn on her dear husband.

"He's telling the truth."


I think at first it's Joyous but it's actually Joshua. Joshua can sound like Joyous when he is serious and talks really low. I'm surprised that Joshua is coming to my defense at that moment in front of the family. I'm shocked it's happening.

"How do you know?" Uncle Rodney asks, "Did my brother touch you too boy?"


The way he calls Joshua, "boy" is annoying. I think Joyous is annoyed by it too, but Rodney must feel like he has some weight now that my dad is gone. He's talking in the same condescending tone my father used to use back then.

"Dad and me never talked," Joshua explains, "I hated the man. Deep in my mind there was a relief that he was gone. I didn't have to feel disgusted with myself for how I felt about the man who I called my father. We spoke one time though. It was before I came out of the closet to everyone else. I had a conversation with him."


"I had no idea," I state.

I don't think anyone did even though no one else says anything.

"We talked about decision. He told me I could choose to be quiet. Bottle things up. Get married to a woman. I could choose to go to church every Sunday and maybe be a deacon like him."


"Being gay isn't a choice," Jamila adds in.

"That's not what he was getting at. He knew I didn't choose to be gay. He was saying I could choose to hide it. You understand? He asked me to live a lie. He asked me to be him. It's at that moment I suspected our father was gay. His problem was never me being gay. His problem was me being open about it. His problem was me being me."


"So sad," Rodney states.

"What?"


"So sad you all want to gang up on a dead man," Uncle Rodney states.

Gang up. Gang up?


I get so heated that I want to scream. I would if English isn't there to grab my thigh and give it a quick, hard squeeze.

"Uncle Regis," I state, "I wouldn't lie to you about this. I always respected you. I always respected our father..."

"YOU KILLED HIM!" my mother barks at me.

She points at me, angrily.

"And it's something you'll never get over," I state, "And that's fine. I killed the man but the man was flawed. The man HURT me..."


What part of the game was that?

"And the pathetic part is you protect him," Joshua tells my mother.

My mother looks up.

"You'll never understand."


"Understand what?"


"The role of a wife," my mother tells Joshua, "Because you two are not a real women. No matter how many times you get fucked or pretend to be a sassy, strong black female. To your dismay you were born with dicks. Fags can never understand the role of a wife."


Joshua laughs at the fact that my mother is opening up again.

It's Jamila who looks at mother for who she really is at that moment, "OH please tell us what the role of a wife is, mother? Is it a slave or a doormat?"


"When you are sober enough to find a man who doesn't remember you as the crackhead Wallace maybe you'll know," my mother states.

Joshua and I look at each other.

Who the fuck put the battery in this woman's back?


"Someone told you to say that?" I ask, "Didn't they?"


This shit was sounding real suspicious. I knew my mother. I knew my mother too well.

"Why would you say that to your mother?" Rodney asks, "You children have no respect."


"Because we know our mother. And we also know she's not smart enough to form her own sentence let alone come at her kids like this."


Someone put my mother up to it.

"The truth is...the role of a wife is...the role of a wife is...the role..." my mother tries to continue but gets tripped up on her own words.

Almost as though she couldn't remember the lines to say.

"The robot short-circuited," Joshua says.

I realize he turns to me to say it. Directly. It's a brief moment and a weird moment but my brother and I laugh together. Genuinely laugh together. It has been a long time since we did that. Years actually. But right now it was actually entertaining.

Uncle Regis seems so irritated that he jumps up and says, "The role of a woman is to be supportive of her husband in order for him to maintain the quality of his name. It is becoming increasingly clear that the four of you are unable to carry on the Wallace name. Because of that we believe that you should turn over the club to Jax."


So that's why we were here.

Uncle Regis finishing my mother's thought makes it clear that he was the one who put the battery in her back. I feel bad for my mother. She was such a weak soul. Someone who didn't have an identity outside of being a First Lady. She would sit in the front row of the pew listening to her husband like she was the 2^nd coming of the Virgin Mary. You couldn't tell my mother shit as first lady. Her shit didn't stink. Right? These first ladies ignore their husbands flaws and trespasses because someone told them that it meant something to be a wife. Someone told them that the only way to be anything was to be a married woman. What role was better than First Lady? I couldn't understand though according to my mother...or should I say Uncle Regis. I was not a woman.

"You all live in chaos," Lionel states, "Maybe it's best..."


"Stay the fuck out of this Lionel," Joyous warns him.

"It's not Lionel," Joshua states, "This is all Uncle Regis."

"It's time you turn the club over to Jax."


"How do we even know he's a Wallace?" They wanted us Joshua to turn over the club to Jax.

My mother jumps in, "He's a Wallace. I know my own son. I did a DNA test."


She throws a piece of paper on the table. Joshua is the first one to read it. He grabs it, reads through the sheets and then passes it along to Jamila without saying a word. I can't read Joshua's face. He's as cold as ever. I have no idea of knowing what the results are.

Jamila is the one who finally explains what they are, "These are legit."


My heart drops. How the fuck could this be possible?


"How?" Joyous asks our mother.

"He was the oldest. We couldn't afford him," My mother states.

"You couldn't afford him?" I ask.

She wasn't going into detail. My mother was being short. Real short. I didn't trust it. I look over at my siblings and they all look puzzled except of course Joshua. He didn't have a reaction. I just feel so fucking blown away.

Jax was really my brother.

"If you guys care about this family you would step down," Uncle Regis explains, "You four have run this family name into the dirt with all your drama. We want to bring back the credible Wallace family."


"Credible?" I ask, "Didn't you steal the money Big Mama left to open the club?"


"This is about me. This is about Jax."


Funny how he wants to change the subject.

"Tell that little bitch to come take it," Joyous threatens walking forward towards Jax.

Joshua grabs him.

"I'll need to talk to my siblings about this."


Joshua grabs the three of us. I feel weird leaving English with those fucking people but I had no choice. I follow Joshua into the kitchen. When we get there all of a sudden he doesn't have much talking to do. He immediately is in his head thinking. Jamila is pacing back and forth. Joyous looks like he's ready to take it to the streets on Jax. Maybe that's not a bad idea at this point.

"Some stranger comes in with rights to all our shit and we can't say nothing?" Jamila asks.

"I ain't giving up shit," Joyous states.

I roll my eyes.

"You got something to say?" Joyous catches it immediately.

"It's not like we had much say in the club anyway. Everything is Joshua. I don't mean to be a dick but the rest of us don't really have a horse in this race. Joshua made sure of that."


We all look over at Joshua.

"So you aren't going to support me with this?" Joshua asks me.

"Give me share of the profits and I'll support you with anything you want brother."


"Jamison...now's not the time to be separating," Joyous tells me.

Jamila nods, "We need to stick together."

I think about it. Joshua was supportive today. I did want to start a new chapter with him but at the same time we still had that underlying issue. Joshua wanted to be controlling. He wanted to run things. He wanted to take over and I wasn't having it.

"We can all sing Kum Ba Yah and stand as a family against this fraud but that happens after the promise of money."


"You blackmailing me?" Joshua asks.

"I'm negotiating..."


"Fine."


I'm actually shocked when he says that.

"Fine?" I ask.

"Fine. You support me and I'll reset the table. You'll get shares of ownership and profits that Big Mama intended. Split four ways like Big Mama intended."


I look at Joshua. For the first time he was folding to me and I was confused. Was he really that desperate for my help? Sitting there and thinking I was kind of confused he wanted my support here. What was Joshua up to? I was kind of confused that was so easy.

"Yo that's dope man," Joyous all of a sudden says patting me on the back, "So what's the plan?


"The plan?" I ask.

I didn't have a plan.

I was just talking shit hoping that I'd come up with one. Hell I was just thinking I'd curse out Jax until he decided he had no need to pursue this any longer.

I was wrong though.

"You demanding all this shit without a plan?" Jamila asks me.

She rolls her eyes. I have to admit I'm a little embarrassed.

Joshua sighs a little bit and I'm so sure he is going to take back his offer but instead he checks his phone, he smiles and actually pats me on the back, "Jamison would you mind getting the door?"


"Whose at the door?"


"The plan."

~

When Marcella walks into the apartment Joyous can't take his eyes off of her. He's not the only one. It's Thanksgiving and I had no idea why the girl was fucking here but I knew when Marcella showed up shit usually came to light. She walks in with a briefcase, laptop and a projector. Everyone is confused while she silently sets this shit up.

I look over at Joshua confused. If he already had a plan then why take my deal? Why take my blackmail and give me a part of the club?


"What's the point of this?" Uncle Regis asks.

Joshua stares at him, "I think you know, Uncle Regis."


"Excuse me?"



"You've always pulled the strings in the background haven't you?" Joshua asks, "We all thought our father was so fucked up when he stole Big Mama's money but I had to put two and two together. Who benefitted from him stealing the money? You..."

There is silence.

Pictures show up in Marcella's powerpoint. These are pictures that I remembered from the past. The last time Marcella dug into Uncle Regis she found out that my father had been stealing our inheritance and giving it to Uncle Regis and his kids. The powerpoint scrolls through. I see my mother slowly get up from the table like an animal who knows a storm is coming. I watch as she slides out of the room or at least tries to. It's Jamila who runs after her and stops her, holding her like a prisoner in her own home. Jamila does it with a smile too. I'm sure no one knows why my mother is clearing out but it has to be a damn good reason.

"What's your point?" Uncle Regis asks.

"So I had Marcella use get into my father's email..."


"That's Illegal..."


"Maybe so but I doubt you should be the one pointing the fingers," Joshua states, "Do you want to know what we found in those emails?"


Uncle Regis grunts, "You have nothing."


"You convinced my father to have the gay redemption service for Jamison. It was you who convinced him to steal that money. It was you who convinced him to disown me. You've always been so jealous of your brother haven't you? And our father was so proud and so easily manipulated. You just planted the right seeds. Your mother never loved you like him. She left everything she had to his kids and not yours. And you hated it. You resented the pastor with the big family and beautiful wife. We all thought the gun belonged to Joyous but it didn't. Did it? The gun was bought because of your resentment. So in the end when it was time to destroy your brother, it was you who bought that gun for Jamison."

A receipt shows up on screen.

He had given the gun to me as a gift. I had thought nothing of it. I thought he was doing it as a favor to my dad so that I can be more of a man.

"I didn't pull the trigger."


"But you wanted him dead."


My uncle gets in Joshua's face. He gets so close I think he's going to hit him but he isn't that dumb. Joyous is breathing down his throat in seconds and he steps back uncomfortably laughing as though he means nothing by it.

The sneaky salesman just laughs, "So I convinced him to do a few things? So I bought Jamison a gun. I didn't pull the trigger did I?"


"But you wanted him dead."


"Why would I want my dear brother dead."


The way he says "dear" just stinks of sarcasm. It's so clear he doesn't mean it.

That's when Marcella populates something else that she was able to get. All of our eyes bulge out of our eye sockets in a matter of seconds.

Joshua is the one who explains it, "Because Jax is a Wallace. He's even my mother's son...but he is NOT my father's son, is he? He's yours..."

To read the next chapter in advance go to www.crushedcrown.com