SICK HEART by Huss, JA (non fiction books to read .TXT) 📕

as one of my drills. So now, on day thirty, I don’t get slapped anymore. I have bruises all up and down my forearms from blocking, but it has been eight days since his fingertips even got close to my cheek.

Every afternoon we look at that tank on the roof and he decides if we can afford the water for a hosedown or a shower. And every few days, he decides we can. But on the other days we just jump into the ocean and swim around the reef, washing off the sweat but picking up salt from the sea.

We eat dinner with our bowls propped up on the beam and watch the birds, and the waves, and when it’s dark, the lights far, far off in the distance. I think it’s land. Like, real land. A coastline. And there’s a shipping lane too. We’re too far away to really make out the ships, but at night we track the running lights across the dark-blue horizon.

My skin burns, but then darkens to a golden brown as my hair becomes wild and tangled from the salty air and streaked nearly white from the sun.

Then, when the day is finally over and we’re lying on our mats, Cort will point to the moon and flash his fingers. We are counting up, not down. And who knows where that count ends. Could be tomorrow, could be next year.

And when I think about this, I find that I don’t care if we stay here forever. I know that’s not possible. We don’t have enough water to last much longer. But if we could stay, I would stay.

I like this pause.

We haven’t had sex again. We haven’t kissed, or held hands, or even sent each other longing, meaningful looks. When Cort looks at me, his look is hard and filled with expectations. He’s training me. I am a student to him right now. And at first, I felt a little hurt and maybe even a little used, but now I see that I am earning his respect. When he smiles at me now, it’s because I blocked a punch or a kick. It’s because he didn’t get the best of me.

And that’s new. Every man I’ve ever known has wanted the best of me. They want to take things from me. They want me to give myself to them.

But not Cort. He wants me to stop him. Everything we do is about me stopping him.

Sometimes, in the afternoon when it’s raining hard enough for the water to blow in onto the training mats, we’ll go inside and play a game. Or sometimes I will read a book and he’ll just lie on the couch and stare at the ceiling. He never naps or even closes his eyes. He just stares up at that ceiling.

It rains a lot, at least once every day. In the mornings and then again later in the afternoon. Most of the nights are clear and we can see the stars as well as the moon. But there have been a few rainy nights and we’ve had to sleep on the mats on the training floor.

He doesn’t like sleeping down there and I’m starting to get the feeling that Cort prefers to be out in the open as much as possible because when I tried to sleep in the game room, he just shook his head and pointed to the roof.

I don’t know what that’s about because we don’t talk. We don’t even sign anymore. He hasn’t taught me any new ones since that moment he realized I was picking them up on my own.

I don’t think he likes that I understand his language. And not because he’s got some ego about the signs, either. I think it just took him by surprise, and I get the feeling that Cort van Breda hates surprises.

I didn’t have to show him the signs. I could’ve kept that secret. But I wanted him to know. It felt like something he should know.

We ran out of food seven days ago. Unsurprisingly, no one came to pick us up or restock our pathetic pantry. But that morning Cort got up before I did and when I went down to the training level, he was messing around with a giant net. It was pretty obvious that if we wanted to eat, we’d have to get that food ourselves. We had nothing left. Not even a cup of rice. It was all gone.

We spent the entire day fishing with that heavy net, casting it out and pulling it in over, and over, and over again, hoping for fish.

We caught lots of tiny ones. And we didn’t throw them away. But tiny fishes aren’t enough and it doesn’t take a genius to realize that there is no way to fillet a two-inch fish. You just have to eat it whole.

I want to hurl just thinking about it now. But that’s exactly what we did that night. Cort ate like thirty of them. He was so full that night, he sighed and patted his belly in satisfaction. I only managed one and it was so disgusting I puked it back up.

The next day, we did it all again. It was easier that time because I settled into Cort’s rhythm with the net-pulling. But my body was still sore from the day before. And that night, even though once again we only caught the tiny fishes, I forced myself to swallow five of them.

I clutched my belly that night, just like Cort. Only I was sick, not content and full.

It took two more days to finally net three large fish that could be filleted. And by that time, I was swallowing those little fish like a champ. I even ate a tiny fish that one of the birds dropped at my feet.

This made Cort smile like a boy. They do that a lot. And he eats them too. Every single time. I get the feeling this is something he’s done for years.