Sick Heart: A Dark MMA Fighter Romance

I do this move over and over as he watches.

Then he points at me. One finger. And he does the baby-step move. I follow along and do it as well. Then he flashes three fingers at me. Which is the hip-pivot cross punch. So I do that. And when he flashes two, I’m ready to take that step back.

He claps. It’s a slow clap. One you see in movies when people are being mocked. But I don’t care because he’s smiling at me. His eyes are bright and I really think I’ve made him happy.

He has taught me something.

It’s a pretty useless thing, if you ask me. It’s not like I can use any of this to protect myself. It’s not like I can say, Hold on, hold on. Let me get my hips in the right position before I hit you with my weak, girly cross punch.

He flashes his fingers—one. Two. Three.

And I do them. Baby-step punch, retreat punch, hip-pivot cross.

He claps again, then holds up four fingers. Moving on, I guess.

This time it’s a baby-step advance with a one-two punch. And number five is a baby-step back with a one-two.

I suck at those. But he doesn’t stop to make me practice. Just ends the sequence with number six—a mid-air foot switch.

Yeah. I can’t get that one.

But again, he doesn’t care. Just goes all the way back to number one and makes me practice those moves, holding up fingers so I can’t get a pattern going.

And if someone had asked me last week if I would enjoy learning how to box, I would’ve laughed out loud at the absurdity of their question, today I find it… fun.

Maybe it’s because after about an hour, I can do these three simple moves on command and I start envisioning myself actually using them in a situation. But more than likely it’s Cort.

Even though I’ve been acting like a spoiled brat for two days, he’s actually pretty patient when he’s in teacher mode. And he smiles a lot.

So far, the Cort I’ve come to know is a broody, scowling jerk. So this is a new side to him. Perhaps even a real side to him.

He rolls his hand at me to keep going, then turns his back and walks over to the door that leads inside, disappearing without any more explanation.

I do keep going. Even though the Anya of last week would’ve taken this opportunity to slack off because there is no one around to make me work, I suddenly decide I don’t want to be that Anya anymore.

Before the fight with Cort, that was the only girl I knew. There was no other life for me. There was no future for me. Not a good one, anyway. Not one that involved being alone with a brand-new version of Sick Heart on an abandoned oil rig where I have his complete and captive attention.

He doesn’t seem interested in having sex with me. And even though he did lock me down on the lower level after my tantrum—and left me there for almost two days—he didn’t beat me to drive his dominance home once I surrendered.

And this leads me to believe that Sick Heart here has… well, a heart. Or at least a very well-developed sense of fairness.

I wonder what his life has been like. Did he start out in one of the camps? I don’t remember the Ring of Fire article saying anything about his early years. But he’s been fighting since he was a very small boy. So I bet he did live at the camps. That’s better, I think. Because if he had been a house boy…

I let that thought trail off because I don’t want to imagine strong, commanding Cort van Breda as someone’s beaten, helpless house boy. Especially Udulf’s.

Cort grips my arm and pulls me out of my introspection. He’s shaking his head at me. Signing things. You know, the most important thing I’ve learned about being silent is this: Most of the time you don’t need words to understand people. Like right now, for instance. Because he’s telling me that I wasn’t concentrating and my moves are sloppy.

He looks a little frustrated again. Like maybe he’s thinking I’m a waste of time. I might not have understood every word that transpired between Cort and his father, but I heard enough. The rest I can deduce. Cort’s ownership of me is dubious at best. Udulf didn’t retreat, his absence is only temporary.

I don’t belong to the Sick Heart.

I belong to Udulf.

This makes me shudder as my skin prickles up with the thought of what will happen to me when my time out here on this rig is over. I can think of a few possibilities. None of them are good.

I think I was supposed to die at the end of the fight between Cort and Pavo. And I lived instead. That’s not good either. When the men in my world make a plan for someone, they make it with a goal in mind.