Page 59 of Brown Sugar
My hands come to my face and I struggle over which direction to go in. Where do you begin figuring out a way forward when it seems everything’s beyond your control?
If it’s not the label dictating my life, it’s this mysterious entity trying to destroy me.
Tyson gathers me in his arms, enclosing around me in a cocoon of instant warmth. I let myself melt into him like I had earlier when I first arrived. His embrace has the same effect—it calms the fears quelling inside me.
The panic. The stress. All the bad things invading my head and making it impossible to think.
“Thank you,” I murmur.
“For what, princess?”
“Being the mountain I need to rest on sometimes.” I nuzzle my face against his chest, which is surprisingly comfortable. “I get why you were monitoring the camera systems. Especiallywhen Tommy made me cut contact. But I don’t get Shawn. How could he hate me this much?”
“Money talks. And resentment grows. From the emails, it seems he was growing bitter for a while. Probably pissed you were the bigger name.”
“Tommy told me it was a contract. His team and my teamstageda meeting. Which means I wasted four years of my life on him. I was convinced I was in love while he was trying to milk a PR relationship. I was so naive!”
“How would you know?” he asks. He frames my face in his large hands to force my gaze up to his. “You were young. New to fame. It sounds like it was your first real relationship.”
Though everything Tyson says is true—I was young and I was inexperienced and easily taken advantage of in an industry of vultures—it’s hard to accept the truth.
Shawn played me.
And Tommy and the label facilitated it.
They commodified my romantic life as another part of my brand.
It worked. So much of my discography are songs written about Shawn and our relationship.
“I want to take back the narrative,” I say, covering his hands with mine—or as much as I can given our size difference. “How can I take back control and make them pay, Goliath?”
“We’ll do it together,” he promises. “We’re going to catch the person that’s behind all of this. We’re going to make sure Shawn’s held accountable for his role. Then we’re going to free you from Tommy and the label. You’ll be a free woman with nobody after you.”
“All of that sounds too good to be true.”
He drops a sweet kiss onto my lips. “Not too good to be true, princess. Just gonna take some work. Are you up for it?”
20
KIANA
When you’re a celebrity, people notice when you go missing. Within a few hours of arriving at Tyson’s place, my phone exploded with missed calls, texts, and recorded voice messages demanding my whereabouts. Everyone from Amari to Tai, my makeup artist, is panicked and worried about me. Tommy and the label are most aggressive, going so far as to fill up my email inbox on top of all the other ways they’re spamming my phone.
“Kiana, I swear, you better call me back in five minutes!” Tommy rages over one of the recordings. “I’m not playing this game with you—you think it’s funny to disappear like this? This the thanks I get for giving you an extra two days after all you’ve already pulled? Call me back right now!”
I press delete on the latest voice message he’s left me as more notifications pop up on my phone.
These are from social media. From Google alerts, notifying me that a dozen new articles have been written about me in the media.
Sensationalistic headlines are used like, “R&B Diva Kiana Reportedly Missing After NYC Car Crash” and “Songstress Kiana Hit & Run? Why Has the Superstar Vanished without a Trace?”
Unsurprisingly, Messy Mandy has the latest scoop on her blog—a candid photograph submitted from an anonymous source of me at JFK airport, boarding a plane. It was taken during the two minutes I’d taken off my sunglasses and hat passing through security checkpoints.
“Our girl Kiana is going THRU IT!!!” the blog post reads, capitalized letters and all.
I sigh and quickly close out of the internet browser on my phone.
Tyson comes up from behind, his wide palms sliding over the ball of my shoulders. “Princess, let the world talk. Remember we’re in our own world right now. Me and you.”