“That’s not fair.”
“What’s not fair?” she asked, stepping closer. “The world seeing you with a girl who doesn’t come from money? Seeing a woman who had to fight for every inch of her life? Or you finding out I’m not perfect? Which one is it, Zaire?”
He rubbed the back of his head. “Stop twisting my words.”
“No,” she said. “I want you to hear yourself. You walked in this house and made this whole thing about what people gon’ think of you.”
“I didn’t-”
“You didn’t even ask me if I was okay…not once.” Her voice cracked, and she didn’t hide it. “The second that camera hit your face, you made it about headlines and sponsors and how Ertan making you look. You think I have time to worry about your image when my family’s legacy is slipping through my fingers?”
Zaire swallowed hard. “I’m trying to understand.”
“No, you’re not,” she snapped, and the pain in her voice filled the room. “I am trying!” She pounded her chest. “Every day! I am trying so fuckin’ hard not to lose everything. You think I want the world knowing my family was promised forty acres and got played down to thirty-nine and really can’t even affordthat? You think I want people watching me struggle to keep the only land my blood ever owned?”
Her tears came hot and fast, but she didn’t back down.
“You think I don’t wake up every morning with one mission?” she asked. “To keep my land. To keep my Mama safe…to keep the only piece of America we weren’t pushed off of…you have no idea what it feels like to walk land your people worked for and feel it slipping out from under you because of numbers on a paper.”
Zaire just stood there.
“This ain’t about embarrassment,” Meadow scoffed. “This is about survival…this is about legacy…this is about the last gift my ancestors passed down that hasn’t been ripped away.”
The silence that followed was thick enough to choke a room.
Zaire finally spoke, but not with the calm he usually had.
His voice had heat and history in it. “You done?”
Aggressively, she wiped her face, chest heaving.
Zaire took that as his sign to say what he needed to say. “In my profession, those headlines matter,” he told her. “Not because I’m shallow, but because the people who control the tournaments, the endorsements, the future of my career…theyjudge everything. I had to clean up my name. I have to prove myself every time I touch that green.”
Meadow looked away.
He stepped forward, grabbing her attention again. “But that’s not what had me in here blowing up…that’s not what had me standing in this house feeling my whole body tighten up.” He tapped his chest with two fingers. “I’m pissed because I have the money to pay for it.”
Meadow’s eyes fluttered.
“You’re fuckin’ me,” Zaire’s words came out breathlessly because he wasn’t understanding what she wasn’t getting. “You’re praying over me. You’re holding me at night. You got my card in your purse. You could’ve said one sentence, just one, and told me, ‘Zaire, I’m drowning.’” He swallowed hard, the hurt bleeding into his voice.
“I told you to pay the bills,” he reminded her. “All of them. I told you, I got you. You think I give a fuck about sixty-something thousand in taxes? I drop more than that flying from coast to coast tryin’ to play golf in a league that barely wants me there.”
Meadow stepped back instinctively.
He followed, not with force, but with heartbreak.
“You really think I’d rather see you fold?” he asked. “You think I’d rather see you carrying this alone than swipe a fuckin’ card you already had in your hand?”
She opened her mouth but nothing came out because what could she say? He was right and she’d let her pride get in the way of a blessing she was too afraid to accept.
He kept going, voice fierce but trembling. “You think I want you drowning in silence? Nah, fuck that, cuh…you think I want you drowning at all?”
Meadow’s voice finally rose. “I didn’t want to be your burden!”
“You’re not a fuckin’ burden!” he shot back. “You’re my woman.”
She sniffled, feeling even worse for allowing her own ego to get in the way of something good.
