Page 71 of Chosen By a Baller 3: Playin’ For Keeps

“But we gon’ fix this shit.” His hand rubbed slow circles against my side. “We gon’ find out who took that picture of you at Walmart, and whoever the fuck sent them old pictures of you and Amani?” A dark chuckle escaped him, but there was nothing funny about it. “They better pray I don’t find them first.”

I nodded against his chest, too drained to say much else.

The last thing I needed was this kind of stress. I was pregnant, my emotions were already all over the place, and now the whole damn internet was trying to make a story out of my life. What hurt the most was knowing this wasn’t just affecting me anymore. It was affecting Kyrie too.

Neither of us said another word. He leaned back against the headboard and pulled me down with him until I was stretched out across his chest. His fingers drifted through my hair while the other hand rested protectively against my back. Listening to the steady beat of his heart, my breathing finally slowed.

Somewhere between his touch and the silence, sleep crept in and took over. For the first time since that incident, my mind finally stopped racing.

The fact that somebody pulled this type of bullshit had me hot. Good thing I came out here when I did, because there was no telling how this shit would’ve played out if I hadn’t.

Ever since Sianni had come into my life, I realized one thing. She wasn’t ready for this celebrity bullshit. Cameras in your face. People making up lies, and strangers thinking they knew your life because they saw one picture online.

She was learning, though. Every day she got a little stronger, and that made me proud as hell, but it ain’t stop me from worrying.

My hand slid over her stomach as she slept against my chest. My baby was growing inside her. Stress was the last damn thing she needed. Still holding her, I heard my phone vibrating against the nightstand. I leaned over just enough to grab it without waking her, then looked at the screen.

It was my agent. I’d put his picture as the contact photo because his goofy ass and the other nigga on the team had the same name, and they kept calling me back-to-back, so I got tired of mixing their asses up.

I swiped to talk and put the phone to my ear.

“Yo, man, what the fuck is this shit I’m seeing all over the internet and these damn sports blogs?” he snapped before I could even say hello.

“Man, I don’t fucking know.”

“You don’t fucking know?” he shot back. “Kyrie, bruh, this is why we got you a wife, so it’d help clean up your image. But from where I’m standing, being with this woman done brought you more problems than when you were single.”

The second those words left his mouth, my jaw tightened. This nigga had me fucked all the way up.

“Aye, bitch ass nigga,” I growled before I could stop myself. “What you not finna do is come for my fucking wife.”

The words came out louder than I wanted them to, and that caused Sianni to shift in my arms, letting out a sleepy little sigh.

I rubbed slow circles across her back until she settled again, then put the phone back to my ear.

“Excuse me?” he said.

“Nawl, you excused. But she ain’t got shit to do with none of this. Somebody took them pictures without her knowing. Instead of blaming my wife, how ’bout you do the job I pay your ass to do and figure out who leaked them?”

“I hear you, but Kyrie… do you hear where I’m coming from?”

“I hear every fucking word,” I said, keeping my voice low so I wouldn’t wake Sianni again. “It just sound like a bunch of bullshit.”

I glanced down at her sleeping face before I continued.

“You sitting here blaming my woman for some shit she can’t control. And as far as Jamal goes, that had nothing to do with her. That was me. I lost my cool. I checked that nigga, and he shot me.”

I paused.

“Know who the fuck was there when all that shit happened?”

There was silence.

“My wife.”

My grip tightened around the phone. “She ain’t leave my side. She was the one making sure I was straight. I damn sure ain’t see your ass nowhere.”

“I know, man. I’m just saying, it seems like it’s always something tied to her name.”