Sick Heart: A Dark MMA Fighter Romance

I don’t speak sign.

I don’t speak anything.

And I am certainly not going to suddenly give up on a silence I have been perfecting for over a decade to communicate with the likes of you.

Except I am communicating with him, because I say all those things with my eyes and Cort van Breda speaks eyes.

Because he laughs.

And then he points to something out of my line of sight and his skipping resumes. He turns in his little circle. Snick, snick, snick. Keeping his back to me.

I stay on the stairs. Just sit there as the ocean below me crashes against the steel pillars below, sending up a salty mist that irritates the wounds on my body, making them sting.

But he doesn’t ever look at me again. Just… jumps his rope.

Eventually, I get up and walk—carefully, very, very carefully so as not to slip again—down the remaining steps and enter the level.

This is a gym. That is very clear. There are containers lining the perimeter. Multi-colored, but mostly an ugly red, or green, or simply rust. The beams above have lots of hooks where things might hang at some point. But only one heavy bag hangs now. And there are no mats. But it is a gym.

I look towards the ocean, wondering if there are people on the lower level, but I don’t need to go explore it to know that there aren’t. I can feel the emptiness. Emptiness and I are old friends. Even suffocating in a crowd of thousands, emptiness and I would recognize each other immediately.

The skipping stops and when I look over at Cort, he is pointing again.

I am now in a position to see what he is pointing at. It’s a line of chalkboards affixed to a wall to my left. Not a wall of containers, but a real, cinderblock wall. There is a door in the middle and when I study the space, I realize it’s a building. And inside there might just be promising things. Living quarters, toilets, and showers. A kitchen. There must be food here. There must be water.

My stomach growls at the mere thought of eating and I suddenly wonder—in a very serious fashion—how long I was out. Because I am starving, and parched, and my muscles are weak and achy. Very, very achy.

Cort walks past me and over to the line of chalkboards. He stops in front of the one with the name ANYA printed in neat, white chalk capital letters at the top.

He points at my name. Then he points at what’s written underneath.

Jump rope. It’s a command.

I say the words over and over in my head for at least a thousand years before I realize he actually expects me to jump some fucking rope.

I shake my head before I can stop it. And then I am fuming. I am pissed. I am nothing but anger.

Because for fifteen years I have perfected the art of non-communication. I have withstood beatings over this choice to not speak.

They have spit on me.

They have slapped me.

They have burned me.

They have raped me.

I have bled buckets of blood and endured volumes of hate and insults for my choice.

And after less than thirty minutes of being stuck with my new owner—and yes, that’s what he is. A fucking slaveowner. Let’s not mince words here—I have just shaken my head no.

He laughs. Out loud. The way I do not.

And he reminds me with that laugh that I am his slave, and he is my owner, and if he tells me to jump rope in the middle of the ocean while my body is still caked in yesterday’s blood, and my stomach is rumbling with the pangs of hunger, and my throat is dry with the lack of water, then I will goddamned jump that fucking rope.

And not only that, I will like it.

He picks the extra jump rope up off the ground and holds it out.

I walk over to him, snatch it from his hand, and proceed to jump rope.

I don’t even remember the last time I jumped rope. I might, in fact, have never jumped rope. It’s probable that at some point, once, when I was very small, I did this. But it’s equally probable that I did not. I just think I did because that’s the kind of thing a normal little girl would do, and I have always wanted to be just a normal little girl, and I never was.

So my display, especially next to his, is pathetic and sad.

He one-foot, two-foots his way around his circle again. I am doing some weird double-bounce thing with my feet that I can’t quite explain.

Every time his circle comes back around to me, he’s laughing with his eyes. And he lets this go on for a good long while.

And even though jumping rope is something children do, it’s no joke in the cardio department. I am huffing, and wheezing, and barely able to breathe by the time he stops his stupid rhythmic snicking, walks over to me, takes the rope from my hands, drops it on the ground, and points to my eyes. Watch, that point says.