Chapter 8 Bishop
BISHOP
Iexhaled and pushed the door to King’s office open. Rook was still seated in the room by himself, a sheet of paper in front of him that I could probably recite from memory.
I mean that made sense considering the words on that paper were liable to ruin my entire fucking life.
Rook and I had less than a year until we had to get married and I wasn’t looking forward to it.
I’d never necessarily looked forward to it, but now that I was in a relationship, a happy one with a man that supported and encouraged me, I was less prepared to bite the bullet than I’d been even a year ago.
King had reached out to the both of us to get our surveys for marriage filled out so he could start narrowing down our potential matches and the knowledge that he was already doing that made me feel nauseous.
The impending doom of the relationship I was in with Asante was a large black cloud over even the happiest of days we spent together.
I sighed but squared my shoulders as I closed in on my brother and Rook didn’t look back at my entrance even as I walked over to where he was.
“You still in here doing that?” I asked as I collapsed in the seat beside him.
“Man, I don’t know how you flew through that shit the way you did,” he said.
“I mean, my survey doesn’t really matter.” I admitted but shrugged to play off how bad those words burned in my throat.
Rook looked over at me and sighed. He tossed his pen down and leaned back in his seat, looking at me carefully and I felt my mask slip into place, unmoving and unreadable while he tried to pull my soul out through my eyes. I turned to look forward and ignored the way Rook remained staring at me.
I’d let Asante pull me in and now we were hanging in the balance.
I knew that Rook wasn’t looking forward to getting married, but at least he’d have a clean slate to start off with.
There was a good chance I wouldn’t be faithful to my wife.
I knew that. I also knew that at some point I would have to open the floor up for that conversation with King.
I would have to let him know that I was in love…
with a man. I’d have to make sure he made that clear to any wife he planned on me having.
I knew how shit worked and I knew that there were women who would marry me anyway so they could have the Barron name and family support behind them and still do whatever they wanted while I did what I wanted.
I’d do my husbandly duties. I’d protect, provide and respect.
I’d bite the bullet and eventually have children.
I just needed time. I needed time to figure my shit out and I was running out of it quickly.
I’d always known that I’d have to get married to a woman but I’d fallen into Asante so quickly I hadn’t been able to stop it. Shit. I hadn’t wanted to.
“You talk to King about it?” Rook asked and my head snapped to the side so I could look at him.
“About what?”
“Asante.”
I swallowed and exhaled.
Of course, Rook knew how serious things were between Asante and me. He was one of the few people who did. Shit. He’d been the one to encourage me to even give the whole dating thing a try so I guess he was the reason I was even in this situation for real.
“What is there to say?” I asked carefully.
“Shit. I don’t know,” Rook admitted. “Maybe he can make some moves on your behalf.”
I scoffed. “Man, he and Knight abide by tradition like that shit is religion.”
“Yeah, but they love you and you know that.”
I paused. They loved me. I knew that. That didn’t mean they’d put my relationship with Asante over anything.
Shit. They were both in their own arranged marriages.
They’d done what they needed for the family and it was my turn.
Even if we didn’t talk about my sexuality, they knew what it was.
We didn’t have to talk about it for me to know that they saw my upcoming marriage as my duty to the family.
That was the thing about my older brothers.
They were alike that way. They believed being a member of our family came with undeniable sacrifices.
I understood that. King had been thrown into his duty the second he’d married Xavia and hadn’t complained about it once.
Knight had married Novalie without a complaint or second thought and had walked into his marriage prepared to do and sacrifice whatever he needed to make their marriage successful…
and somehow that shit had worked out for the both of them.
King was in year four of his marriage and he and Xavia damn near shared a brain.
Knight was almost at year three with his wives and had not one, but two babies on the way. The women’s cycles had synced and Knight apparently had inhuman sperm with undeniable aim because they were both five months pregnant now.
I liked to think that a part of the reason my brothers thought shit would work out for me was because of how it worked out for them but honestly, I knew my brothers.
They each focused heavily on honor and the belief that not following the laws of our forefathers would lead to the demise of the lives we lived.
There had to be honor among thieves or the underworld of Crescent Falls and Millers Pointe would collapse within itself.
The same way one grain of rice could tip the scale was the same way one small infraction could lead to other people thinking shit was sweet.
Eventually it would turn to all out anarchy.
There were reasons we did what we did and I reminded myself of that often.
It was interesting to me that Rook thought either of our brothers would go against tradition for anything let alone because I was gay, the worst kept secret of our family when they didn’t even acknowledge the fact.
I tilted my head to the side as I regarded him.
“That doesn’t mean King is going to put his neck on the chopping block for me to be with a man and honestly, if I bring it up to him and he tells me something crazy, shit between us may never be the same,” I admitted.
Rook’s eyebrows knitted together but my face stayed the same.
I wasn’t joking. I respected King as the head of our family and I always would but ultimately there were certain levels of disrespect that people couldn’t come from.
We could go from brothers that weren’t all that close to coworkers with matching last names. Quick.
“You think he’d do that?” Rook asked seriously.
“I don’t know, but I’m not a hundred percent sure he wouldn’t.”
“Yeah, well I’d go to bat for you.”
I smirked at that. Rook and I were two halves of the same fucking soul and he never let me forget it. It was us against anybody walking this Earth and it would always be that way.
“I know.” I exhaled. “You shouldn’t have to.”
“Man, you’re my brother, my twin brother. I know I don’t have to do anything but I’ve got you. My loyalty to you is above my loyalty to our last name. It always will be.”
“I know.” I nodded and we sat in silence for a few seconds that felt much longer. “Sometimes I wish shit was different.”
“Like you wish you weren’t born into this life or like you wish the rules around it were different or what?” He asked.
“Like I wasn’t bisexual,” I confessed and shrugged.
Rook scoffed. “Don’t shrug. Don’t do that shit.
” He sat up and turned toward me. “I’m not fucking joking Bishop.
Don’t just throw that out there like it’s not a big statement to make.
That shit ain’t funny. Don’t ever say no shit like that in front of me.
You good just the way you are and fuck whoever thinks otherwise, family or not. ”
I grit my jaw but didn’t argue my case.
I knew how Rook was. He didn’t tolerate anybody disrespecting me, not even me.
“Yeah alright.”
“You could fuck a nigga right here in King’s office and I’d still be the bigger family disappointment anyway.”
Rook and I stared at each other for a quick beat before we both smirked. The smiles turned to laughs and Rook shook my head.
I knew that every joke Rook cracked had a lil truth to it and I knew that his place in the family was the only thing in life he was insecure about but he hid it well… from people that weren’t me anyway.
He had a temper on him and hadn’t necessarily found his footing just yet in the grand scheme of things, but shit. He was twenty-four. A lot of people didn’t have their shit together at that age. The difference was that he had a time ticking over his head.
I didn’t think he was behind on anything.
Our family just wasn’t moving traditionally.
King had taken over early. Knight was some master at crafting passports which was a big deal when it was where our family fortune came from and I’d taken over our head of security at the age of twenty-two after two years of training but shit, I was just trying to stay above water.
When I’d asked to start shadowing our current head of security at age twenty it was because the rumors about my sexuality had become more prominent and I was just trying to prove my worth to the family.
I just so happen to be a natural and love the job.
I loved playing an important role in protecting us.
I loved knowing that I was needed and making myself an asset.
Even if it was hard for me to tell my family that I loved them, I felt like I showed it to them by making sure they were always safe.
Before finding my place in all of it, I felt disposable.
A part of me could understand why Rook felt that way.
Another part of me, however, knew that he was good at a lot of shit that benefited the family and even if he had temper that always got him into trouble, I also knew that the same things he thought the family hated about him were the things King absolutely fucking adored.
King saw himself in Rook, when he was young and running around leading shootouts and fucking other men’s wives.