Sick Heart: A Dark MMA Fighter Romance

Maart hasn’t cleared Ainsey for a bath, so after I help Anya in, I take Ainsey back to the game room. She’s crying and this makes her nose run, and that makes her cough, which makes her cry harder. So I settle down on the couch and pick up a book from the pile I’ve been reading to her over the past two days and eventually she settles and falls asleep.

And so do I. Because the next thing I know, Irina is helping Anya sit at one of the tables. Our games from last month are still open and Anya is sitting at the Connect Four table.

Irina moves it to the next table over, then hurries from the room as Ainsey and I take the seat across from Anya.

“Sorry. I fell asleep. Irina should’ve come and gotten me.”

No big, Anya signs. And I smile. She looks better. A lot better. She notices me watching her. Irina washed my hair.

“Oh. Well, fuck. I missed out then, huh?”

It comes out… flirty. Which is not something I do, so… I don’t know what to think of that. But Anya blushes. So apparently, she does.

Irina comes and saves us, putting a giant strawberry protein shake in front of Anya with a straw, a bowl of canned peaches and a peanut butter and jelly sandwich in front of Ainsey, and a bowl of rice and rehydrated chicken in front of me. She shrugs when I look up at her, then leaves without comment.

Ainsey is awake and excited about her peaches. She eats them with her fingers, getting the sticky juice all over me. Anya looks across the table at me, sucking on her straw. And even though her face is still swollen, she looks a thousand times better than she did just an hour ago.

Finally, once we’re all done and the silence is getting awkward, I say, “I think your training is done.”

Anya points to herself, then shakes her head, spelling out the words F.U.C.K. Y.O.U.

I laugh. I can’t help it. “You know what?” I point at her. “I’m gonna get the story about you and sign language real soon. But first, why the fuck do you want to keep going? There is no fight in your future, Anya. You don’t need to do this.”

Her explanation is simple. I like it.

“Which part?”

She thinks about this for a moment. Then shrugs. All of it.

“The black eyes?”

She points to her eye. Do you think this is my first?

Fuck. “No. But… listen. I don’t know why you’re still alive or how you managed to do that. But you did, Anya.” I reach across the table and take her hand in mine, trying not to notice her bruised and scabbed knuckles. “You did. You are. And you didn’t use your fists to get here. If you try to fight a guy like Udulf using your fists, he’ll always win. So whatever weapon you’ve been using to defend yourself, keep using that. Don’t change what works.”

She stares at me for a few moments. And at first, I think she’s taking this to heart, but then she signs, It’s not working anymore.

“What’s not working? How did you get here? Why didn’t Lazar kill you a long time ago?”

She looks away and draws in a deep breath. Then she straightens her back and signs, I understand seventeen languages.

“Really? Fuck. That’s… impressive. And I guess that explains how you know how to sign.”

But she’s shaking her head. No, she signs. You don’t understand. No one taught me these languages. I just pick them up.

“Huh. That’s… like… genius-level shit, Anya. But what’s that got to do with anything?”

I have heard things.

“Oh.”

I don’t understand everything right away. It’s not magic. It takes me a few weeks. I have to be immersed in it. And then one day it just… makes sense.

She is signing all these words in a fast and furious pace that only someone who has been practicing sign language for years would be able to do.

“OK,” I breathe, trying to put these pieces together.

So Lazar would rent me out…

“Oh, fuck.”

A month or two at a time. They were told I was Hungarian, like Lazar. And I do understand Hungarian. I think that’s my first language. But I never went to any Hungarians. They would talk in front of me. I was so small, anyway. They just did their business in front of me. Then Lazar would pick me up and make me tell him everything.

My eyebrows go up. “With words?”

Until I was seven. Then I stopped talking and just wrote it all down. She pauses, looking me in the eyes. Udulf had me once.

I think I stop breathing. “When?”

He was the reason I stopped talking.

“Why?”

Anya swallows hard and stares into my eyes. He scared me.

I feel sick. “Why?”

She shrugs. I don’t remember. I was so small. All I remember is feeling afraid. And his words did that.