Chapter 8 #2
The next day, the sun beat down like spring hadn’t just broke out and summer was here before it was supposed to be.
By noon, Meadow’s shirt stuck to her back and her edges gave up on pretending to lay down. She had grass stuck in the grooves of her boots, oil smudged on her thighs, and a headache brewing behind her eyes.
Her Daddy called it a “light work day.”
She called it everything but that.
She wiped her forearm across her forehead and squinted out at the range. Flags fluttered in the stubborn breeze. A couple of the regulars had already come and gone, old men who liked to hit a bucket before lunch and gossip about town politics.
Now, the space was mostly quiet.
Except for him.
Zaire stood off near the far bay, shadow long across the grass, working his way through a bucket. His shirt clung to his back too, showing how ripped his body was. His green shorts hung just right off his hips and his calves flexed every time he shifted his feet.
She watched him from the shade of the cart shed for a little, hands on her hips. No matter how much his presence seemed to disturb her peace, she had to admit, Zaire’s body was sick and his brown skin looked lick able. Her center pulsed, thinking about having him there instead of her rose buzzing.
Her heart fluttered thinking about all the tabloids she’d read about him once he showed up on her land with all that west coast swag she never even knew turned her on.
He didn’t fit into their box but there was no denying his talent.
Meadow wondered what had him so off his game lately and why the hell golfers found solace in their thirty-nine acres.
Her thighs tightened until her pulse stuttered. Zaire had the kind of beauty you didn’t touch unless you were ready to tremble – Black, chiseled, wounded, and sensual in a way that made her center ache like he’d already called it by name.
He moved differently when he thought nobody was looking. Less performative, more… whatever his real self was. There was this relentless focus that wrapped around him every time he swung. It was like he folded himself up and poured everything he had into that one motion.
She didn’t know a lot about pro golfers outside of the ones on TV and the White ones that showed up to Green Driving Range, but she knew enough to see the difference between someone who played and someone who lived for this.
Zaire lived for this.
And from the way he was beating those balls to death, it was the only thing keeping him from falling apart.
“Stop staring,” she fussed at herself, tearing her gaze away. “You got work to do.”
She bent down, tugging at the hose connected to the back sprinkler. The old plastic coupler stuck again, refusing to twist loose. Meadow grunted and put her shoulder into it. “Come on… come on…”
Nothing.
“You gon’ let it beat you?” a voice called from behind.
She didn’t have to turn to know who it was.
“I got it,” she snapped, grip so tight her knuckles turned white around the hose.
Shoes crunched on gravel. Slides, actually. She’d peeped that about him. For somebody with money, he kept it simple most days. Slides, shorts, tees - expensive though. She knew quality when she saw it, even if she pretended not to.
Zaire stepped around to face her, head tilted, sweat glowing across his forehead. His chest rose and fell steadily, not nearly as tired as he should’ve been considering how many balls he’d just knocked into the horizon.
“You obviously don’t got it,” he dismissed, nodding at the hose. “You been fightin’ with that since I came over here.”
“How long you been watching me?” Meadow asked, narrowing her eyes.
He smirked, lips barely tugging. “Same amount of time you been watching me.”
“You must have eyes in the back of your head then…”
He laughed, “Hell yea…the hood’ll give you that.”
That little pull inside her chest showed up again…annoying.
“Go finish your bucket,” she snapped lightly. “This thing just old and stubborn. Like most men.”
His brows jumped. “Damn. I ain’t even do nothin’ yet.”
“You breathed.” She hunched her shoulders, then turned her attention back to the coupler.
He shook his head, but she heard the quiet laugh he tried to hide. It did something strange to the air around them.
“Aight,” he said. “Move, cuh.”
She bristled. “Excuse me?”
“Move, Meadow,” he repeated, more patient than she expected. “Let me try.”
She considered telling him to mind his business on principle. This was her domain… her land… her hoses… her busted irrigation system she knew better than anybody.
But his wrist was still taped under that brace. She’d seen the way he flexed it after certain swings…The way pain flashed across his face before he smoothed it out.
“You don’t need to be grabbin’ nothin’ with that hand,” she pointed out. “Doctor probably told you to rest and here you go tryna wrestle hoses.”
“You don’t know what my doctor said,” he argued, stepping closer anyway.
The doctor hadn’t said anything because the pain didn’t come until after his upsetting loss. After he got so mad, he punched the wall in his bedroom.
“You don’t listen to doctors,” she shot back. “You give hard-headed.”
“You give bossy,” he countered.
“Somebody gotta be.”
His eyes did that thing again, searching her face like he was trying to figure out what lived behind her words. It made her throat feel restricted in a way she refused to analyze.
“Move, let me handle it,” he grunted. That breathy curl of his words tickling her clit.
She huffed, but stepped aside, and crossed her arms, watching him carefully. “If you hurt yourself, I’m tellin’ your mama myself.”
He snorted. “Lesha don’t care ‘bout no hoses. She care about me gettin’ my head right.”
Lesha…
She wondered what kind of Mama he had…wondered what the hood had done to him to make him have eyes in the back of his head, but she asked none of that.
Instead, she folded that into the growing folder in her mind labeled ‘Things I Know About Zaire Cooks’.
Mama named Lesha, from the hood, plays Nar, talks to her Daddy with respect, has a wrist he pretends ain’t injured and lost his footing somewhere back there even if he didn’t admit it. She observed him closely.
He crouched by the hose, braced his good hand around the coupler, then used his taped wrist just to stabilize, not twist. The veins in his forearms jumped.
Meadow’s mind took her back to the gutter wondering if his dick was just as thick, dark, and veiny.
The coupler turned with a loud creak. Water sputtered then stopped, drips turning into a trickle.
“There,” he said, standing back upright. “You just needed some help. Ain’t no shame in that, cuh.”
She made a face to hide how good that small victory felt. “I loosened it.”
He grinned. Lips so sexy, it hit her dead in the chest.
“Yeah, aight,” he said. “You loosened it.”
Meadow’s pulse kicked up for no damn reason. “Thank you,” she forced out, because her parents raised her right.
“You’re welcome,” he replied, not making a big deal out of it.
He glanced back toward the bay where his club rested against the stand. Something heavy flickered across his face for a second. She caught it before he smoothed it over with another small smirk.
She could tell golf was his comfort but also his demon - that twisted bond, only Black men carried, along with the whatever thing that saved them and destroyed them in the same day.
And it messed with her how quick her body warmed for him, how fast her loyalty grew for a man she barely knew.
Just loyal enough to hate every suit and camera that ever made him question the power he walked with.
“You always out here?” his voice interrupted her thoughts of wanting to pull up on people she didn’t know.
“Middle of the day, sweatin’, fightin’ hoses?”
“Who else gon’ do it?” she answered like it was obvious.
“Your Daddy.”
“He over there,” she nodded toward the far end of the property where Ray was hunched over messin’ with the mower, “and Mama can’t. So…”
He watched her for a long beat. “You ain’t never tired?”
In Zaire’s mind, Meadow had to be exhausted because he was and his plight was mental while hers seemed more physical.
“I stay tired,” she admitted with a shrug. “But it doesn’t matter. Work gotta get done.”
Something in his expression shifted…less teasing, more understanding. “Yeah,” he murmured, “I feel that.”
Because Zaire understood carrying shit that made you proud and pissed you off at the same time.
She looked away first. The hold of his gaze was too damn intense. Meadow was a flirt on most days but with Zaire, she stumbled over that fire she had for other men.
“Go drink some water,” she ordered to change the subject and give her body a reprieve. “I ain’t tryna have you pass out on my grass.”
He chuckled. “Your grass, huh?”
“Who you think keeps it pretty?” Meadow raised a brow. “It sure ain’t the golf fairy.”
He laughed again, richer this time. “You’re funny.”
“Be thankful, I’m letting you witness it,” she shot back, but the corner of her mouth twitched.
He started to walk away, then glanced back. “You check the back right sprinkler yet? Pressure sounded low when I was over that way.”
Her head tilted. “You know about irrigation now?”
“I know what soft turf feel like under my feet,” he countered. “Feel a little off in that corner. Thought you should know since you’re the grass queen.”
She stared at him for a second, begrudging respect slipping in. He’d only been here a day and already noticed details she usually caught before anyone else.
“I was on my way,” she lied.
“Aight, cuh,” he hummed, unconvinced, then headed back toward his station.
Meadow watched him go, fighting the urge to stare at the way his back muscles moved under the thin fabric. She busied herself coiling the hose so her Daddy wouldn’t fuss, but her mind kept wandering back to what Zaire said.
You just needed some help. Ain’t no shame in that.
Help wasn’t something she had the luxury of asking for.
Every time she got close to leaning on somebody, they reminded her why she shouldn’t.
Men loved to talk about partnership until it came to the hard parts like bills, sickness or late nights of worry.
Zaire didn’t know her like that. He didn’t know about past due notices sitting in a stack on the table…
didn’t know about the nights she sat on the floor beside her mother’s bed, rubbing Magnolia’s legs while the pain meds refused to work fast enough…
didn’t know about the way the bank lady’s voice sounded when she said the words “final notice” in that too polite tone.
He didn’t know about any of it and she wasn’t planning on telling him.
But his presence…something about him pressed on the cracks she’d learned to ignore.