Chapter 12
Meadow didn’t plan to spend her day walking around the land with Zaire, but that was how life went…she planned, and something bigger rerouted everything.
It started with her trying to escape him. Zaire was resilient though. He was on their land without much to do so he helped even though she kept telling him not to.
She’d finished dragging a crate toward the shed when she felt him watching. He wasn’t loud about it, but his energy carried weight, pulling on her nerves in a way she’d been avoiding since the moment he stepped foot on her porch.
“I’m finna take a break,” she called over her shoulder, pretending she wasn’t out of breath.
Zaire lifted his chin from the far bay. “You should.”
“You should mind your business.”
“You keep sayin’ that,” he said, grabbing his towel, “and I keep not listenin’.”
She stomped off because that was the only defense she had left. She hated how he smirked every time she walked away.
Ray had gone to town, as usual, probably chopping it up with his old buddies. Magnolia was inside resting with Rena. The land was quiet. The kind of quiet that let feelings breathe when they really needed to mind their damn business.
Meadow made it to the porch and started peeling foil back on one of the plates Ray had left behind. Zaire trailed behind her.
“You don’t gotta follow me,” she snapped.
“I don’t,” he agreed, leaning against the post, chest glistening, towel over his shoulder. “I’m just walkin’ in the same direction as you.”
“Mmhmm.”
They stood there for a second - her trying not to look at him, him looking without shame.
Finally, he nodded at the untouched plate. “You gonna eat out here?”
“This is where I always eat my lunch.”
“That’s why you got them little bites all over your thighs…these bugs ain’t no joke,” he said, straight-faced.
She rolled her eyes, but a smile tugged at her mouth. “Please don’t start with me today.”
“I like ’em though,” he countered, trying to smooth out his words.
Her face scrunched. “The marks on my legs?”
“Your thighs.”
She almost choked on the small sip of water she’d tipped down her tired throat. This was why she avoided him. Zaire was all-consuming and she couldn’t resist being consumed.
“You wanna sit somewhere nicer?”
“Nicer?”
“Ain’t that what I just said?”
Meadow put her hand on her hip. “You don’t even know this land.”
He shrugged. “Then show me.”
Meadow was flustered. “Why?”
He scratched his jaw, looking away for a quick second before his eyes came back to her.
“Might be good for you to walk without working for once. Plus, I need to see something other than you huffing and puffing all day and this grass.”
She stared at him.
“Fine.” She rolled her eyes, grabbing her plate. “But keep up. I walk fast.”
“You talk fast too,” he muttered, falling into step beside her. His eyes went to her ass that moved even in jeans. Meadow was stacked.
She wasn’t like the super slim girls he usually found himself pining over. Or the ones that did the most to grab his attention. She was one of one to him. Beautiful beyond comparison. Sexy without effort. He loved that effortless shit.
They cut across the open part of the range first, then past the old barn Ray still swore he was gonna fix.
“You ever get bored out here?” Zaire asked, hands in his pockets, chain bouncing lightly against his chest.
“Every day,” Meadow answered. “But then something happens to remind me why I’m here.”
“Like what?”
She thought before answering. “Like Mama having a good day, like Daddy laughing at something stupid…like remembering this land is the one thing they worked for their whole lives.”
“That’s a lot to hold.”
“It is.”
“You hold it anyway.”
She shrugged. “Somebody gotta do it.”
Zaire didn’t say anything back. But she heard his silence…soft, respectful, truly seeing her.
She pointed toward a narrow path between tall grass. “C’mon.”
Zaire followed, quiet but present. Meadow felt him beside her like heat.
“You ever take breaks?” She tucked her lip in. Meadow was eager to know if a man like him sat down and just enjoyed life. Did Zaire Cooks have a place like her where he could just float on nothing but absorb everything?
“From what?” he questioned his brows rising at the tips.
“From worrying, from thinking, from being so damn…tense all the time.”
He smirked. “You know me, cuh?”
“You tell me a lot without even opening your mouth,” she said. “Even when you’re quiet, you’re loud as hell.”
He chuckled. “Crescent Park don’t raise silent kids.”
“You said you don’t talk to your people anymore.”
His jaw flexed. “I don’t. It ain’t the same no more.”
“What happened?”
He kicked a rock. “I started livin’. A lot of ’em didn’t want to.”
Meadow slowed her pace. “That sounds lonely.”
“It is,” he said plainly. “But bein’ dead is lonelier.”
The honesty hit her right in the chest.
She nodded toward a cluster of pecan trees up ahead. “We’re eating over there.”
“That where you go to hide?” he asked.
“No. That’s where I go to breathe.”
The grass was softer here…lush, deep green from years of shade and quiet. A small clearing opened between the tree roots. It felt private, safe…like a place built to overhear secrets.
Meadow sat first, smoothing her shorts under her. Zaire dropped down beside her, legs stretched long, body relaxed in a way she hadn’t seen until now.
“You really got a whole world out here.” His eyes swept across the scene.
“That’s what I mean,” she smiled softly. “I don’t hate it. I just…sometimes feel trapped in it.”
He nodded once. “I know that feeling.”
“You do?”
“Yeah.” His gaze dropped to his hands. “Golf saved me, for real. But the more I got into it, the more it trapped me too.”
“How?”
He breathed through his nose. “If I lose, my whole hood mad at me. If I win, the league mad at me. If I talk, they say I’m too hood. If I don’t talk, they say I’m ungrateful. I can’t win nowhere.”
Meadow felt him in a way she didn’t have words for.
His pain wasn’t hers, but the burden? The exhaustion?
The way a soul gets stretched from holding everybody else together…
that was shit she knew intimately. No one ever talked about the quiet grief of being strong for people who never asked if you wanted to be.
No one mentioned how heavy it was to live in a body worn down before it ever had a chance to be free.
Zaire wasn’t just a star.
He was a man trying not to get lost in a world that had never been created with him in mind.
She placed her plate down, twisting her body just a little towards him. “Zaire…”
He looked up at the sound of his name in her voice.
“You’re better than the rooms trying to shrink you, make you think.”
His eyes held hers…steady, hungry, grateful—unsure all at once.
“You ain’t gotta pep talk me.” He leaned back on his hands, a little humor in his voice.
“That wasn’t a pep talk,” she sassed. “That was the truth.”
He swallowed, his Adam’s apple bobbing. “Aight…thank you.”
“You’re welcome.”
The two of them just sat there, soaking in the sun and the words between them—the shared pain.
“You ever think about leaving it all?” she asked once she found the courage to dig deeper in him and herself.
“All the time,” he confessed very blasé. “But then I think…this the one thing I’m good at…the one thing I ain’t ruin.”
“You didn’t ruin nothin’,” she said. “People ruin shit for you then ask you how you became so damaged.”
His gaze dropped to her lips by accident, then lower…to her throat, her collarbone, the place her chest rose and fell. Zaire looked away with a devilish smile on his face.
He was always a man. And when fine women talked fine words, men like him started to look at them in a different way. They started to notice every little detail of them. The heart shaped face, the button nose, and plush lips he had become desperate to kiss.
Meadow felt it in her stomach and between her thighs…everywhere.
“You eat like a bird,” he taunted, clearing his throat in hopes of clearing his mind of the dirty shit he wanted to do to her.
“I’m distracted,” she countered, her teeth scraped across her bottom lip.
“By what?”
She hesitated. “You.”
His eyes slid back to her. “You shouldn’t be.”
“Why not?”
“’Cause I ain’t a good distraction.”
“That’s not what my body thinks.”
Zaire’s eyes traced her face…slow and deliberate, like he was trying to commit every detail to memory before he said something he couldn’t take back.
Meadow swallowed, her chest rising a little faster. “What?” She hated the way his eyes burned her skin.
Zaire’s tongue dragged across his bottom lip. He tucked it between his teeth like he was steadying himself. “I wanna kiss you.”
Just like that. No hesitation…no apology…just truth.
Meadow’s breath shook. “Why?”
Zaire let out a low exhale. He looked away for half a second, then back at her with a heat that slid down her spine and settled between her thighs. “Those lips…Meadow, you too fuckin’ fine to not wanna kiss.”
Her heart punched hard.
He wasn’t done.
“I been trying to chill,” he admitted more so to himself than her. “Tried to keep my distance. You got a whole life out here…Mama to take care of…real shit on your plate. And I don’t want you thinkin’ I came in your space tryna play.”
“You’re not playing,” she said, fast. It almost came out desperately.
His eyes softened in a way she’d never seen before, like she’d just handed him something fragile and he didn’t know how to hold it yet.
“Nah.” He shook his head, the sun hitting across the waves in his glossy black hair. “I’m not.”
He leaned forward enough for her to feel him. Heat rolled off him, heavy and intoxicating. “You don’t know what you do to me,” his voice was low enough to feel like a swift gust of wind. “I get around you and my whole chest feel stupid. I ain’t felt like this since…hell, I can’t even remember.”
Meadow’s thighs pressed together and her appetite left. “Zaire…”
He closed his eyes briefly, like hearing his name in her voice damn near broke him.