Sick Heart: A Dark MMA Fighter Romance

My hands are small, but not so small that fitting them through the hole of this chain link fence doesn’t come with pain. Nonetheless, I’m able to press my arm forward just enough that the tips of my fingers are able to reach the rope and pull it through to the other side.

Message received, Sick Heart.

I start skipping rope.

It takes him several more hours to appear at my gate. And then he spends at least five more minutes signing things at me—furious fingers flitting through the air, his eyebrows knit into anger and frustration, his mouth tight, his breathing heavy. I have no hope of keeping up with all his signs, but he doesn’t seem to care if I understand his words. He wants me to know one thing and one thing only.

I’ve pushed his button and he’s pissed.

I roll the events back in my mind as he continues his silent rant, trying to figure out where exactly I crossed that line. Of course, throwing water in his face was definitely over the top. But that wasn’t his breaking point. It was before that. And that’s why he poured the water out.

Finally, his fingers shut up. Then he opens the gate, points at me, frowns at me, hisses his silent words at me with his fingers, and then he points upward.

Finally.

I push past him, go up, and if I think that he might feed me, or give me a drink of water, or do anything other than instruct me to jump rope, I’m mistaken.

I jump rope and watch Cort van Breda dance with his. One foot, two foot, skip, skip, skip. Figure eight, straddle, cross, scissor, scissor, spin. He does things with that rope that I can’t even begin to describe.

He does have a rhythm, I will give him that. And watching him really isn’t that boring. In fact, there is no way to not watch him. And it’s not because he’s the only thing on the platform. There are at least a dozen gulls getting up to things. And one huge albatross is wandering around poking his beak at the door leading to the kitchen, like he’s thinking about grabbing some breakfast.

Nice try, buddy. If anyone’s getting breakfast around here it’s me. I’ll fight you for it.

But even with all that distracting me, Cort has my full attention.

We don’t jump for long. Not like the other day. He stops, walks over and takes my rope, then drops them both into a pile near the kitchen door. He chases the albatross until it unceremoniously steps off the platform and glides away in the wind.

Then he turns back to me, his steel-gray eyes burning into mine. I feel very small when I become the center of his attention.

He snaps his fingers and points. And then I follow him down the line of containers until we stop in front of a green one. He opens it up to reveal—well, I don’t fucking know what that thing is. It’s a metal-frame contraption. And it’s holding a huge punching bag on a chain.

The whole thing is on wheels and under his direction, I maneuver inside the container and get behind it so we can push it out. There are dozens of punching bags stacked in the back of the container, but I don’t have time to think about that, because Cort and I are taking this one over where the other bag is hanging from the ceiling beam.

He pretty much does everything else and I realize this thing is a crane used to hang heavy bags. It lifts the bag up, then Cort climbs up the contraption, slides the bag’s chain onto a hook, and then hops off and lowers the crane.

For a moment my stomach sinks. Because I’m thinking he’s gonna make me do this. This is my punishment. He’s going to make me hang punching bags all day.

But when we push the crane back to the container, he slides it inside and closes the door. Then he opens another container, drags out a mat, and positions it underneath the new bag.

Then he looks at me and smiles. And that’s when I realize my punishment is going to be way worse than hanging bags.

He walks over to the new bag and then demonstrates a few punches and kicks and points to it.

I huff. Right. But I’m too hungry to argue. If I piss him off today and he decides not to feed me, I don’t know what I’ll do. It’s been a long time since someone starved me. I’m not used to it anymore. In fact, I might have let myself go over the years. I might’ve forgotten what it was like to be a girl in this world I live in.

I might’ve gotten… soft.

I can’t afford to be soft. Not then, not now, not ever if I want to survive. So I suck it up and start kicking and punching.