Sick Heart: A Dark MMA Fighter Romance

Or maybe they are afraid of us?

We did take down a lot of very important people. Plus almost all the mercenaries died too.

But whatever the reason, we’re not taking it for granted.

The downside is that we have to find our own contracts now. And while that’s not really a bad thing, it’s definitely a lesson in the meaning of the words ‘fresh start.’

The ship is the new home base. It’s only rated to house fifty-two crew members and we’ve got a total of sixty-seven—all of us from camp, plus the ship’s regular crew—but it works for now.

Money is tight, especially since Anya and I have been paying rent in Escazú for two months. But even with all these bitter setbacks—the deaths, the injuries, the open-heart surgery, the challenge of starting a new business and taking care of thirty other people at the same time… freedom still tastes very, very sweet.

“Here she is!” I turn to find a nurse pushing Ainsey towards us in a wheelchair.

I bend down and smile at my daughter. My daughter. It feels real now.

Well, not the part about her being my daughter. That’s always felt real. The part about me being her father. That took some getting used to.

Anya bends down too. She touches Ainsey’s cheek. “You ready to go home?”

Ainsey nods, but says nothing.

“She’s got your eyes.”

I look up at the nurse. “Yep. She sure does.”

“No,” the nurse says. “I mean, yes, of course, she has the same color eyes as her daddy. But otherwise her eyes are all Mommy, aren’t they?” The nurse smiles at Anya and me. And we smile back.

Because, of course, Ainsey isn’t Anya’s daughter. But that’s not a story we’re going to tell. Ever.

“I mean,” the nurse clarifies when we don’t respond, “neither of you talk much.” She points to Ainsey and Anya. “Not with words. But your eyes…” Her words trail off and she shakes her head. “They say all the things your lips don’t.”

Anya and I stand up, agree with the nurse, and then take our daughter home.

CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE - ANYA

SIX MONTHS LATER

Lençóis Maranhenses National Park, Brazil

Stepping onto the shore of the park is exactly like stepping into the pages of a fantasy book.

It is a beach.

It is a desert.

It is an oasis.

There are almost no words to describe the beauty of this place because it’s all very inexplicable. Deceptive mounds of pure, soft sand dunes hide hundreds, if not thousands, of small freshwater lakes.

But it’s not the dark, dank, dangerous freshwater you normally find in Brazil. It’s not the kind filled with piranhas, or worse, waiting to eat your toes if you just think about taking a dip. It is the kind of lake you find at the tippy-top of mountains.

Because these lakes are the color of a perfect Fijian beach. The seafoamiest green-blue you’ve ever seen in your life.

And it makes no sense. None at all. How do these lakes get here? Rain, I guess. But why doesn’t the water just seep into the sand, the way it does on the shore?

I haven’t looked it up yet so I don’t know.

I might never look it up. I don’t want to spoil the fairy-tale fantasy of it all. I just want to enjoy it.

We are on vacation. The entire camp.

Well, we’re here for two reasons really. One, we’ve saved up enough from the supply ship runs and the legitimate fights that Sergey, Lilith, Ivano, and Kioshi—the four oldest kids in camp—have been taking in the nearby city of São Luís, and we’ve bought a small collection of nearly falling-down houses deep in the jungles north of Rio de Janeiro.

So we’re leaving this part of the continent and we might never sail by Lençóis Maranhenses ever again.

We’ve told ourselves hundreds of times, at least, every time we did sail by, that we would come out here and enjoy it up close. But we never have, until now.

The second reason we’re here is to say a formal goodbye to all the warriors who came before us. And even though I wasn’t a kid in Cort’s training camp, and never really did fight for my life, I still count myself as belonging to this camp and these people.

We belong to each other, really. All of us. And I feel the loss of the fallen warriors as acutely as anyone.

Besides, I do have someone to honor.

Someone I wish could be here, but isn’t.

We bring rocks with us. Backpacks filled with rocks. We have collected them from all up and down the beaches of Brazil. We have collected them from the beaches of Central America, from the Bahamas, and Mexico, and even some from the forbidden land of Cuba. We wrote names on them and painted them up with pictures. And we have spent the entire day erecting small monuments around the lake we’re camped next to, so that now, lying under the light of a full moon, we can see the shadows of the kids who died fighting.