Sick Heart: A Dark MMA Fighter Romance

“What are they now?”

I huff a little air. “You.”

“Me?”

“I know it’s not really you. You’re way too young.” I pause, then say, “How old are you, Anya?”

She hesitates. “Eighteen.”

“Liar,” I whisper back.

“They tell me I am, anyway.” I feel her shoulders shrug against mine. “How would I know?”

“Well… OK. Eighteen is too young. They tell me I’m twenty-seven and I’m pretty sure that’s true. So you’re nine years younger than me. You were born five years after Udulf took me into his house as a slave. There is no way you were there. So I know it’s not you. But there is a girl there.”

“And you think it’s me… why?”

“It just feels like you.”

“It’s not me.”

“Maybe not.” But I say it like I don’t mean it.

Because I don’t mean it. I know that girl isn’t Anya, but I also know, she is.

That’s dreams for ya, right? They never make sense and they only ever give you a glimpse of the truth. Never the whole picture.

“That’s like… projection,” Anya says. “Or something.”

“Close,” I say. “It’s called repression. It’s when you rearrange shit in your head so you don’t have to see the truth. And in my case, I have suddenly attached you to the face in my memory, even though it can’t possibly be you.” I pause to look at her. Then I smile. “I think it’s because you are very fucking pretty, Anya Bokori.”

She blushes, even though I know this is not any kind of revelation for her. She has lived in Lazar’s clutches for nearly two decades. There is no telling how many times she has been used. And most of those people Lazar gave her to would have said something similar. But the blush is real.

“I want it to be you. Get it?”

She nods.

“I want it to be you, because if you were that person, then what I think happened… never happened.” I sigh a little. “It means it was just a dream. I want it to be a dream.”

“Yeah,” she sighs. “You do want it to be a dream.”

And… is that a weird response? Or am I just overthinking shit?

But before I can ask her about it, she says, “Don’t you ever think about revenge?”

I turn my head to look at her. Then shrug. “Don’t we all?”

“Then why not go get it? I’ve heard you’re the most dangerous man on this planet, Cort van Breda.”

I smile. “I’ve heard similar. But maybe I’m just holding out for the fairy tale ending, Anya Bokori.”

She huffs. “Happily ever after?”

“Among other things.”

“What’s that look like?”

I pause there to think about it. Then sigh. “I don’t really know. I guess I never thought it through, but just off the top of my head I’d say… a rescue would be nice.”

“A rescue?” She scoffs loudly and turns her body towards mine. “Since when does the Sick Heart need a rescue?”

“I guess I don’t. And I’m not expecting it. But it would be so sweet if, just once, someone would show up at the last minute—right before the bomb ticks down to zero, like in the movies, ya know? And someone—I don’t know who. Someone I don’t expect though. They show up and save my ass in the nick of time.”

She’s silent for a moment. Imagining the picture I just painted in her head. Then, she says, “You could just save yourself, Cort.”

“I probably could. But I’d have to bite the hand that feeds me to make it happen. And then what? I’m on the run for the rest of my life? Hiding in favelas. Lurking in jungles. That’s not an ending I can live with. So I don’t know. I guess I can’t answer your question. Or maybe I can, I just don’t want to.”

She looks down at her fingernails. Picks at them a little. “It’s better that way.”

And now I remember what she said. “Why do I want it to be a dream, Anya?”

She shrugs. Her shoulders bumping against mine. “Because then it’s not real.”

We’re silent for a little while. I kinda wanna keep talking. I kinda wanna tell her more. I’m not sure why, because it’s not going to do anything but drag us both deeper into the dark depths of this fucked-up world we’re living in and then make us both remember what that fight was about earlier.

I’m leaving. She’s not. And I guess we just have to live with that.

We stay on the platform, but we settle back into a world of silence. Like that little side-trip into the spoken word never happened. We doze off, leaning in to each other, and then wake up just before dawn and climb back into the real world.

Putting everything about last night behind us.

Because it’s fight day.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE - ANYA

One by one the kids are called to the mat to test out of month two. I’m only half paying attention to who is winning or losing because I’m still busy thinking about last night with Cort.