Page 6 of Beneath the Fame

“When will it be my turn, Jesus?”

So on, and so forth. Many of the comments were light-hearted things like that, which didn’t bother me, but I didn’t stop reading soon enough.

“Ew. I hope Alec has more sense than that. Hasn’t she run through half of Hollywood?”

“Who booked him for this? Especially sitting beside HER. Not a good look for him at all.”

“FIRE YOUR PR IMMEDIATELY ALEC. They’re about to start casting you in hood shit.”

“I’m so sick of hearing about this damn girl’s pussy. Alec is better than this.”

“She’s for the streets, not my sweet Alec. UGHHH!”

Funny how this was the conversation, whenIhadn’t said a word about doing anything with this man. And it couldn’t even be blamed on the clip, because the only thing I’d done was smirk in response tohisclearly lustful energy.

These people just had their biases against me, for whatever reason—which, usually I could handle it, but this felt…different.

I didn’t like how people were acting as if simple proximity to me was somehow going to leave Alec tainted.

I closed my social media apps, going into my direct notifications instead—texts and such from the people who actually knew me. There was more than one encouragement to not get on social media this morning, but that ship had already sailed.

There were also several encouragements to ignore the bullshit, and not let it bother me, but unfortunately…that boat had long left the harbor too.

The truth was, itdidfeel bad, and itdidhurt. It was easy enough to put on a mask of confidence and make sure it didn’t show on the outside, but there was no such protection from the inner workings on my mind.

There was no buffer from those ugly comments making me feel like shit.

But there was no time to wallow in it.

My security and driver were both waiting for me outside by this point, and I needed to get to work. I grabbed my bag, tossed on a pair of tennis shoes, and headed out.

As always, the show had to go on.

* * *

“So ummm…yougot something to tell me, or…?”

I let out a deep sigh as my head fell back against the seat rest. For some reason, I hadn’t expected my champion-level tennis pro cousin to take time away from training to tease me about this damn interview.

I couldn’t have been more wrong.

“Tea,please,” I begged, but made the mistake of laughing as I said it, cluing her in that I wasn’tactuallyperturbed.

Mostly because I knew I was about to get any negative judgment from her.

She was—unfortunately—quite familiar with the internet blowback, since her name was consistently in the spotlight too. Everything she did was heavily scrutinized, from dancing to trending songs to posing in a bikini to dating someone everybody thought she wasn’t good enough for, and the list went on, and on, andon.

“Don’t youTea pleaseme.” She giggled. “I could swear you told me you went home alone after that interview, but Alec wasdefinitelygiving youcome spend the nightvibes. And I’ve gotta tell you, cousin, um…I would’ve been packing a bag.”

“No, you wouldn’t.”

“You right. I would’ve walk-of-shamed happily after getting dicked-down by his handsome, wide-shouldered ass.”

I gasped. “Where is Ambrose right now?” I asked, reminding her that she had a whole former-professional-football playing man of her own.

“Tending to his big-headed-ass baby, why?”

“What would he say if he heard you talking like this about Alec?”

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