Chapter 30 Crown Gravehart #3
I slowly nodded, the truth settling into my bones.
"This must be the kind of understanding Xscape was singing about 'cause as fucked up as this shit is—" I exhaled, slow and controlled. "I understand."
After a few seconds of silence, I asked, "You ever think about telling me?"
"Every day," Honor quickly answered.
"Then why the fuck didn't you say shit?"
"Because if you knew… really fucking knew you would've had to carry it, and I couldn't do that to you."
I pressed my fist to my chest like I could hold my heart in place.
"You don't get it. You keeping shit from me ain't protection. That's you deciding what kind of pain I'm allowed to survive."
"I was trying to live up to my name and trying to bear the weight of the shit I brought you into."
"Maybe you were," I said. "But two things can be true at once.
You also wanted to be alone. Shielding those you love from shit don't mean we don't bleed, my nigga.
We all felt the weight you carried, whether it hit us directly or bled into our lives some other way.
What you did in the name of protection was turn martyrdom into your religion… and dressed that shit up as love."
Honor's head bowed. His shoulders shook, not dramatically but honest. In front of me was a man coming apart, fighting tears like they were another enemy he had to keep away from the people he loved.
"I didn't want y'all to see me weak," he rasped.
"None of this shit makes you weak. It's just the cost of carrying everything alone."
I pushed off the wall and stepped closer to my brother.
"Showing us this would've been you letting us see you as human. You taught us how to survive, my nigga, but you didn't let any of us teach you how to live."
I looked at Honor, like really looked at that nigga, and for the first time since I've known him, there was no command in his eyes. Just vulnerability.
"I hear you… I do, but I don't know how to let go. I feel like if I stop holding everything together, there won't be anything left of me."
I swallowed the knot rising in my throat. This was the kind of shit meant for my couch lady. I wasn't equipped to fix Honor, but I wasn't leaving him alone in it either.
"There's still you. The nigga who stood between Lucian and a couple of boys who were ready to give up. The brother who took every hit so we could stand up straight."
I paused to choose my next set of words carefully.
"But you gotta stop deciding you're the only one strong enough to suffer."
Honor nodded and, in this moment, standing in the mill, I realized something that hurt worse than anything he'd confessed.
Honor didn't just protect us from Lucian.
He protected us from himself, from the rage he kept caged behind discipline, from the fear that dictated his decisions, and from the man he was scared he'd become if he ever let the control slip.
He wore control like armor, convinced that if he stayed necessary, stayed needed, the damage would stop with him.
That if he carried it alone, none of it would spill into the lives of the people he loved.
However, all that shit did was teach him how to suffer quietly, how to bleed without asking for help, and how to turn love into duty and pain into purpose.
And looking at him now, head bowed, shoulders heavy, I understood the cruelest part of it all.
Honor wasn't afraid of Lucian. He was afraid of becoming him.
"I don't say this shit enough," he muttered. Honor wiped his face with the heel of his palm, shaking his head as if he were embarrassed by the moment, like vulnerability still felt unfamiliar to him. "But you're my brother. There's no blood thicker than what we survived."
"I know," I affirmed. "I love you, nigga."
"I love you too, Crown."
That was it. No theatrics or speeches. Just truth. I exhaled slowly, nodding once like I was sealing something inside myself. Then the warmth faded, and something colder took its place.
"Lucian's gotta die," I declared.
Honor didn't flinch.
"It's already in the works," he replied calmly, like he'd been carrying that plan longer than the grief.
"I want in."
Honor studied me, not as a shield but as a brother weighing the cost.
"This can't get outta hand," he finally said. "It can't be sloppy, and it can't reach Navy, Chosyn, River, or Wolfe. Everybody's gotta stay safe and out of the way if we're gon' pull this off."
"It won't," I said without hesitation. "This stays between us… on one condition."
"What?"
"You gotta go see my couch lady. I won't say much, but that stunt you pulled in my basement isn't lost on me. You go see her, and what we 'bout to do stays between us."
Honor held my stare a second longer, then nodded.
"Ight," he agreed. "Set up the appointment, and I'm there. But once you step in this shit with me… there's no stepping out."
A slow grin tugged at my mouth.
"I been standing in the fire since I met you. I just didn't know who lit the match," I exhaled. "Now that I do… I'm ready to choke a nigga with his own smoke."
Honor's lips curved. "Fuck it, let's put it out."