Sick Heart: A Dark MMA Fighter Romance

All of this bothers me. He can read my mind these days.

Like it or not, Udulf van Hauten knows me intimately.

I follow him up and stand on the platform with my arms crossed, flanked by my giant white guardians as Udulf’s helicopter lifts off.

I stay that way until it’s long out of sight. Then I walk back down the steps to get Anya. She’s waiting for me at the gate, her blue eyes locked with mine, filled with questions she will never ask.

Why? Why don’t you talk?

If it were something as simple as she saw too much, she’d be dead.

That’s not it. That can’t be it. It’s something else and I need to know what that something else is.

I need her secret.

I open the gate and wave her forward. Then I follow her up to the training level. She pauses there, waiting for instructions. And I’m not being mean when I think this, but Anya Bokori is weak. So fucking weak.

She cannot be something special. She simply doesn’t have it in her.

I have locked eight-year-old boys on the lowest level of this rig—barely ten feet above an angry ocean—for days at a time, just for being little dicks. They got one cup of water a day, if they were lucky. And they didn’t cave. They didn’t cry. They didn’t beg. They didn’t give up.

Anya had to skip a little rope and miss a meal and she throws a tantrum? I should’ve just let him take her. She’s going to be trouble. And I don’t want to fuck her.

I don’t need her here to ease my loneliness, because I don’t even understand the meaning of that word. I like it here. I fucking love it here. I hate it when I have to share this place with others.

I point to the bag. She doesn’t balk at all. Just walks over to it and starts punching it like a stupid girl. No, that’s not even true. I have eight girls at my camp who punch like girls. And half of them can knock out a full-grown man.

Anya’s punches are weak.

And yet she’s here, Cort. Why? None of this was in the plan. You were allowed to fuck her, you were allowed to tattoo her, and that’s all you were allowed to do.

But you brought her with you. Over everyone’s objections. Why?

I don’t know. I really don’t.

Anya whines and when I look over at her, she’s cradling her hand. Her knuckles have split open and they are stained with blood.

Fucking great. I walk over, grab her arm, and tug her into the little building, then lead her into the clinic. I point to a stool in the kitchen and she sits. Then I hunt down a roll of wrap, a mostly used tube of antibacterial ointment, a bowl of hot water, and a clean rag. I place it all on the counter, grab another stool from the other room, slide it over to her, and then start washing the blood off. I’m about halfway done wrapping her second hand when I feel a soft tap on my shoulder. I look up, surprised.

She motions with her hand. It’s not a sign. She’s making shit up. But I’ve gotten good at interpreting made-up hand signals. She’s asking me why.

Why what? I sign back. And even my signs are irritated. Because she draws back at their quick sharpness.

She points up.

I point to her. You tell me.

She sighs, then lowers her eyes and doesn’t look at me again until I’m done with her hands.

But when I get up and put the wrap stuff away, I find myself smiling.

She talked to me.

She didn’t use her voice and those weren’t really words.

But she talked to me.

Me.

CHAPTER ELEVEN - ANYA

His care in tending to my wounded knuckles doesn’t continue back out on the training floor. I don’t know this man very well, but here’s something I’ve picked up on. Sick Heart is a control freak. Also, he likes a tight schedule. In other words, he’s not very flexible. His world revolves around things he can predict.

I continue fighting with the heavy bag as I ponder this. It’s not surprising. The world he lives in can’t be much different than mine. I mean, he’s got a lot more than I ever did. And he could do a lot worse than this abandoned oil rig as far as time-out space goes.

When Lazar was unhappy with me—back when he cared about such things—he would leave me in a dark, windowless room until I was so weak from hunger and thirst, he had to either let me die or bring me back.

But this place. I pause my punching and stare out across the ocean. It’s peaceful today. No wind, either, which makes the endless flat, blue surface of the water appear deceptively innocent. Of course, under the smooth water there is a whole world of natural-law violence.