A Mother's Prayer

Chapter Twenty Two

Chapter 22

It's been a month since everything happened. Everything was actually different. Claudette had moved back to Houston, Texas. She said that she was only here until things got resolved. According to her, finding out Rihanna was lying ultimately resolved everything. Jermaine was in the beginning stages of his club. He had a place, and was already mentoring children, Julian being one of them. Shawn surprised me, and everyone else when he offered to help with the club.

I pushed myself off the bed with my daughter in my arms. She had a cold with a fever, so I had been busy with her. Shawn was coming today to help, but we had a therapy session. The two of us hadn't been to therapy together in a while, but I had something that needed to be said.

I laid her on the bed so that she could continue to sleep before getting up to go shower and what not. Everything was extremely hectic. My sister? She eloped. The day she dropped Danny off was when she eloped and married Kendrick. As far as everything else goes, I don't know. I don't even know why she eloped, but I won't even bother with it. As I said before, she's a grown woman.

My mother is doing better. She has an in house nurse that's helping her, so I was happy with that. Flat ironing my hair, I looked over to see Shawn entering my bedroom. There was a faint smile on my face as I finished.

"You ready to go?" He asked with Ari in his arms.

"Not yet, she needs to change."

"I'll do it. Has she had medicine?"

I nodded my head and went to get dressed. It didn't take long since I already had everything out. Shawn soon came back with a fully clothed Ari.

You could tell that she was sick, simply because she wasn't running around terrorizing everyone. We left and went straight to the therapist's office. We both decided to simply use Dr. Raymond, my therapist.

"Beyoncé, Shawn," he greeted us after bringing us into his office.

"I see we have someone joining us today," he said with a smile to Ari.

"Yeah, she's sick, so she's hanging with us today," I explained.

"That's perfectly fine. How are the two of you doing?"

"Great," Shawn answered.

"I'm fine."

"That's good. Well, I don't know if you know Shawn, but Bey and I actually had a conversation a week ago. Bey, did you tell him?"

I shook my head.

"Alright. Well, tell me how things been since the incident with Rihanna? I'm aware of the lie she told, but has anything changed?" He asked.

"With us? Not really. I still love him to death, but he's busy with his tour."

"And she's being a mother and relaunching her career," Shawn said.

Dr. Raymond and I exchanged looks. "Bey."

I let out a deep breath. "I won't be relaunching my career," I said lowly.

Shawn immediately looked at me with a frown. "What?"

"When we first discussed the whole industry thing, I told you that I didn't want to do it. I didn't like the lack of privacy, and I had a son. Now? I have a daughter and son. That situation alone was...the final straw. Granted, you cleaned the mess up with that interview, but it doesn't fix what I had to go through. What we had to go through."

"Shawn, do you understand what Bey is saying?"

Shawn shook his head.

"I don't want to be in the spotlight anymore. I don't want to be this celebrity anymore. I'm so tired of having to leave my emotions at home just so I can go buy my child some medicine. I liked normalcy. I liked being able to be a human, and not a fish in a fishbowl. I don't like people critiquing every single thing that I do and everything that I go through."