Hiding Behind Beauty

HIDING BEHIND

BEAUTY

SHAUNDELL PACE

Copyright © 2023 by Shaundell Pace.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted

in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying,

recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system,

without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the

product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance

to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models,

and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

Rev. date: 01/30/2023

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CONTENTS

Dedication

Acknowledgments

Preface

Chapter 1     The Good Girl

Chapter 2     Love and High School

Chapter 3     The Gentleman

Chapter 4     From Paradise to Dystopia

Chapter 5     Fuck Surprises

Chapter 6     The Breakup

Chapter 7     The Fling

Chapter 8     Get Rid of It

Chapter 9     The Heart Seeks

Chapter 10   I’m Leaving You

Chapter 11   Angel Baby

Chapter 12   Who’s Next?

Chapter 13   Florida Boy

Chapter 14   Lies Should Not Be Told

Chapter 15   No More Apologies

Chapter 16   Never Coming Back

Chapter 17   By Any Means

Chapter 18   Déjà Vu

Blurb

DEDICATION

To my children, Antonio Hardin Jr., Jordan McNeal, and my deceased son Anthony Pace-McNeal. I love you guys!

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

First, I would like to thank God for never leaving me. Thanks for being my light through my dark tunnels. Thanks for giving me the strength and courage to write this book. I love you, God!

To my Mom and Dad I Love You both so much! Without you two, I wouldn’t be here, so I want to say thank you. Thanks for always loving me no matter what I have done. Mommy, you have been my best friend my entire life, and thank you for listening to me at all times and teaching me how to be a lady. Daddy, thanks for showing me and my brother what it’s like to have a family. You always made sure we knew the Pace family, and it is a family I wouldn’t trade for the world. Shout-out to my entire Pace family. We are the best! #DemPaceGirls

To my sister LaQuita. I love you forever, girl, and I want you to know I’m so proud of the woman you have grown into. I thank God for how close we are now. My best friend forever!

To my brother Norman. You know what it is, twin. We have a bond that can never be broken, and I want to say thank you for pulling me out of the darkness when I didn’t want to live anymore. I’ll never forget that! I love you!

To my brother Darian Lamont. I love you, and thanks for being that great big brother who loves on his sister every time I’m in your presence!

RIP to my sister Aretta. I miss you so much. If it wasn’t for you being you and having your own style, I don’t think I would have had such a big imagination, its because of you I started my clothing line Grumpy Inc. because of your love for fashion! You were such a smart, beautiful, strong black woman. I remember I used to write poems every day when I was younger because I admired you for going away to college. I always thought to myself, My sister is doing a lot of writing in school. I figured I should write too so I could be like my big sister. That was why I was determined to go to college: because I watched you do it. I love you and miss you!

To all my family: I love you all. There are too many to name, but I love y’all. To my true friends: I love y’all too!

I said I wasn’t going to acknowledge the jealous people (HATERS) that was around me but I have learned so much over the years from you all. Some who I thought were with me but was against me. I want to thank y’all for showing your true colors. The journey with y’all has been real as well!

To my sons’ fathers, thanks for always loving me and giving me these loving men that I have in my life. We have great kids. I’m proud to say we have never had baby mama and baby daddy drama—something we can all appreciate. We are one big family. Love y’all.

Shanel Poole (SP), thanks for our long talks and prayers together, sorry for all the bad shit I showed you (smiles). We have been through a lot together, I love you dearly, cousin. You are and have always been a smart, strong beautiful woman. Keep pushing G.L.A.M. because it is truly helping young girls today! Aunt Rochelle, without you, there would be no SP. I love you too!

To all my loved ones I’ve lost. This book is for y’all too! Especially My Grandaddy Lewis Pace Jr., my heart. I still listen to our last conversation we had that I recorded on my phone two days before you passed. I miss you dearly!

To my real Mr. D, you know who you are. Thanks for believing in me and supporting me with this book and anything else I’ve said I wanted to do with my life. Since we have known each other, you have always told me, Go for it, and I appreciate that. I love you so much. You have definitely put up with my bullshit and mistakes, and you still show me that you love me! Thanks for forgiving me! Thanks for loving my kids as well. We will forever be friends, and I will love you forever!

Last but not least, to my sons, Antonio and Jordan. I can’t thank you two enough. I am so strong because of the two of you. When you have kids, they are a reflection of you, and I can say I’m proud of my reflections. I have no shame when it comes to y’all. Thanks for letting me guide your lives. Both of you are intelligent men, and I want to thank you for making it easy for me to raise two black men by myself. It is not always that easy for some. You both have always been respectful not only to me but to others; thanks for that as well! Keep chasing your dreams, my boys. You definitely made me chase mine. I would have never finished this book without the push from you both. The love I have for you is infinity! Don’t forget to keep putting God first and stay prayed up; it’s the only way!

PREFACE

I’m Mia. Sit down with me and dive into some of the craziest, scariest, and most important times of my life. I wrote this book to express how pain can make you stronger, and for us woman to know you don’t always have to fuck for a buck but when you do make it worth it. We woman and men, have to learn to stop letting people come into our lives and waist our time. We only have one life to live and life can be short so lets make the best of it. Some of you may read this message and think I’m a terrible person, and some of you will read this and say, Wow, she is brave for even sharing these moments of her life. I made it this far, and has done so many great things in my life that I cant sit and write all of them down. But, through all my depression and heartache, the good times and the bad times I can say I’m blessed and God has made me into a warrior. Life is about going through some things. If you never go through anything, you will never have a story to tell or feel you have anything for which to thank God. I want people to know the real Mia and understand why I have done some of the things I have chosen to do. It has taken a decade to finish this book, but it’s finally here. It’s so scary telling your story to people, let along writing it down, because it brings so many emotions and memories back to life, some of which you wish you could erase, and some of which you can be proud of and grateful you made it through them. I could write an entire book praising God, but for now, I will let you read why.

***

CHAPTER 1

The Good Girl

Mia has always been considered the good girl and the big brat of the family. Everyone would congratulate her mom on how good of a job she had done with raising her. Even though Mia was a good girl in her friends and family’s eyes, in her own eyes, she was a bad girl trapped with a pretty face and a smile that was so innocent, she could persuade anyone to believe anything she said.

Mia grew up in a household with three siblings. She also had a stepsister and stepbrother who would come over quite often. Mia’s oldest sister was Trina, and she was eight years older than Mia. Mia’s sister Vickie was six years older than her. She and her brother, Cory, were a year apart. Her stepsister was Tamika she also was 6 years older than Mia, and her stepbrother, Carter, was younger than Mia, so she was overprotective of him. Mia also had another brother by her dad who lived in another state. His name was Maurice, and he was the same age as Vickie.

Mia looked at her mom, Ms. B, as a hell of a lady because these were not her step kids by marriage but by Mia’s dad’s girlfriend. Even so, Ms. B loved them like her own. Ms. B invited Mia’s Dad’s girlfriend into her home one day when Mia’s dad had left her out in the car, and ever since that day, they had become one big family. The two mothers even called themselves sisters and hung out all the time. Mia’s mother was like a mother to so many children. The kids in the neighborhood called her Ms. B, and she looked at all of them as her kids. Ms. B was one of the sweetest and coolest moms in the neighborhood. She stood about five feet tall, and her skin tone was a caramel color. She had beautiful sandy brown hair, her eyes were the color of a new penny, and she was a jazzy little lady. She was sweet but didn’t take any mess, and she would say whatever was on her mind and to whomever.

Mia’s dad was also around. He never lived with them but would come get them on some weekends, even though he would leave them with his girlfriend while he ran the streets, he still was a cool Dad. Mia sometimes blamed her dad for her choice of men because he wasn’t a good example of what she should expect out of a man. Mr. Johnson was a player. Actually, most of the men in the Johnson family were players. Mia knew that being a cheater was wrong, but she saw how happy the men in her family would make their wives and girlfriends—that was until the women found out the men were cheating. In Mia’s mind, men cheating was normal, and she figured that was simply what they did. Mr. Johnson was a cool dad and always had a way to make people laugh. He was very short and chubby with a silver beard and gold teeth, all the ladies loved him. Mia could talk to him about anything, even though he most of the time wouldn’t show emotions behind it. Mia could still count on him to listen.

Mia was always the child who listened to her mom and dad. No matter what, she didn’t back talk, and she stayed in school and made good grades so they could be proud of her. One thing about being the baby girl of the family was that she wanted everything her way and would snitch on her siblings if this didn’t happen.

Mia could clearly remember all the times of picking up the phone and calling the county jail, where her mother worked, to tell on her sisters and brother. She would always say that her sisters were sneaking boys in the house or hadn’t cooked for her and Cory. Then there were days she was bossy and felt like things should go her way and her way only. There was a time when Mia and her brother were supposed to head to the bus stop, but instead they played with an axe on the porch, trying to chop up the gravel. Mia kept telling Cory, It is my turn. Give me the axe! Cory ignored Mia and continued breaking up the gravel. Dude, it’s my turn now. Let me see it, Mia kept telling him.

Cory continued to chop on the gravel to break it up, so Mia snatched