Sick Heart: A Dark MMA Fighter Romance

For about thirty seconds, we are children. Stupid, happy children. She even stands up, getting all serious about winning.

And she does win. Then, when it’s all over, we do it again. And again. And again.

It is probably the most carefree moment I’ve had in… well, maybe ever.

After about a dozen games, we get tired of it. I go to the shelf next and pick Connect Four. This was always my favorite. I don’t play games much, but Rainer loves them. And he will endlessly taunt me until I give in.

She wins the first game, but I let her. I kick her ass in the next five. And then she gets up and grabs Trouble. Another annoying game. Why does she like the loud ones?

We do this for hours. I pick Risk. She picks Perfection. I pick Clue. She picks Operation. And you’d think that the batteries in these loud-ass games would be dead, but no. The fuckers still work.

I pick Battleship. She picks Mouse Trap. We smile. I laugh out loud dozens of times. She huffs a little, her vow of silence too practiced to laugh back. But she is happy, anyone could see that—her hunger this morning a long-lost memory, the gash on her head and my haphazard stitching something from another lifetime. And it occurs to me, later, after I’ve made dinner and we’re back outside, sitting along the beam eating our rice and rehydrated chicken, that I’ve never had so much fun in my life.

I’ve certainly never had a day like this out on the Rock.

I really do like this place, but when the kids are here, my thoughts are consumed with fighting. With skill levels. With the stress of who will be the next to die. And when I’m alone, I just slip into some quiet, somber life with the birds, and the moon, and the sea.

I’ve never spent time with a girl like this. For a moment I wonder if this is what dating is like.

Anya sighs with contentment when we lay our mats on the platform. Then she makes the sign for ‘moon,’ pointing at it, the way I taught her last night. But she uses three fingers and that’s not right.

I grab her hand out of the air and she looks over at me, startled. Then I position her fingers into four. We are on day four. She looks at her fingers, then the moon, and huffs a laugh, getting it.

The moon keeps time for us out here. That’s how we measure the month.

She stares up at it, fully aware that I am watching her. But she ignores me for nearly a minute before she turns her head and meets my gaze. Then she reaches for my hand and, using her pointer finger, she writes ‘thank you’ on my palm, one letter at a time.

She goes to pull away, but I grab her hand back, then use my finger to write on her palm. Why?

She watches me spell out this word. But I know, before she looks up at me and shakes her head, what her answer will be.

Not even this day filled with food, and games, and smiles, and laughter, and a perfect night under a waxing moon can make her answer that question. And for a moment, I’m conflicted. Do I even want to know?

It’s not gonna be good. It’s gonna be evil. People don’t stop talking after amazing things happen. They stop talking because they have lost all control over everything else in their life and this one act of defiance is all they have left.

But Udulf and Lazar. There is something there. Something that feels like a threat. To her, for sure, but to me as well. Maybe even Maart, and Rainer, and Evard.

And if it were just me in danger, then fuck it. I’d fight my way through it. But when I asked Udulf for the chance to fight for Maart, and Rainer, and Evard, I tipped my hand. And now he knows what I find dear.

I will walk away from the rest of them, but not those three.

So I need to know what I’m up against. I can’t afford to let Anya Bokori wrap her secrets in silence. Not if knowing them will keep me and the only family I have left safe.

But I know how to play people. I know how to get what I want when I want it. I know how to lie, and cheat, and steal with the best of them.

More importantly, I have the sick heart. I can turn that shit on and off at will.

I can stop caring. Easily slip in the skin of a cold-blooded killer. A very patient, very slow, very deliberate cold-blooded killer. And I do that now when I reach for her and pull her close, when I kiss her head and wrap my arms around her like a warm blanket.