Sick Hate – Sick World Read Online J.A. Huss

Categories Genre: Alpha Male, Dark, Sports, Suspense, Virgin Tags Authors: J.A. Huss Advertisement1

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If I stayed in one more tournament, I’d have been one of them. We’d have gone for drinks, or trained together, or maybe even dated.

And I couldn’t afford to be one of them. Didn’t want to be one of them. Not back then, anyway.

I do want to fight, and I do want to win, and I do want people to know who I am—but back then fighting was the only thing I knew and I didn’t want it to be the only thing I ever was.

I still thought there was another path out there for me.

I still dreamed of a life as an American girl. A husband, a dog, a house.

But I should’ve known better.

Buying the condo set my future on a very specific path. You don’t buy your dream home when you’re seventeen years old using fight-club money and still think you’ve got room for something as normal as a husband when you’re done.

A boyfriend, maybe. One-night stands is more likely.

I started life alone. I came here alone. I went to those fights alone. I bought the condo alone.

I am alone.

And it’s time to face the facts. I’ve had four years to think things through. To settle. To put my feet on the ground and take stock of things.

To face the truth.

And the truth is… I am not normal.

There is no American dream for me.

I miss the aches, the pain, and the grueling workouts.

I miss the wins.

But most of all, I miss the kill.

I go out for dinner and drinks with Nandy. We laugh, and talk, and she fills me in on her day. She’s in graduate school for linguistics and she’s working on her Master’s thesis, which is a huge project on some kind of fictitious language.

Her job kinda blows my mind. She gets to make up words. She’s inventing a language. And she is celebrated for this. Her family is huge and they all just… lift her up. She, her brothers and sister, and all her cousins too, are everything to those people. They are the future to the Jardinez family. Nandy gives me hope because her life’s work is so strange and everyone is OK with it.

It gives me hope that my strange life can be OK too.

“So how’s things?” She takes a sip of her mojito, making a face of raptured delight, as she waits for me to answer.

I hate mojitos. I had never even heard of them until I came here. I didn’t drink much in Brazil, but when I did it was always the tangy and exotic caipirinha. Lime, not mint. Cachaça, not rum. And about twice as strong. So I take very small sips. I don’t like to get drunk. I don’t like to lose control like that. But caipirinha reminds me of home and sometimes it’s enough to keep my heart from aching.

“Same old shit. You know how it is.” That’s my standard answer. I’ve been in this holding pattern since I arrived. Well, not quite since I arrived. The first year I was here was all very unpredictable. I don’t like unpredictable, but when you skip countries when you’re sixteen and land in America, homeless, you work with what you got. But after I bought the condo, I did my best to make everything about my life predictable and boring.

It still very much is, so my answer isn’t even a lie, but I can feel that there is something coming up around the corner for me. I don’t want to mention this to Nandy, though. She would be way too excited. She’s always trying to set me up with boys, who aren’t even boys, but actual men, like Maart. And I’m just not ready for it yet.

“OK, just hear me out.” And here it comes. Her newest proposal. “Will you hear me out?”

I wave a hand in the air. “Fine. Go on.” I will pretend to listen, but I’m never going to say yes to her set-ups.

I have never had sex. If anyone touched me that way when I was small, before I was bought by Udulf and taken to Cort’s camp, I don’t remember it. And nothing like that ever happened in the camp. None of the boys even looked at me. Of course, I was only thirteen when it was all broken up, so maybe they would’ve eventually. The older girls in camp did mess around with the boys every now and then, but only in secret because Maart would flip his fucking lid if he found out.

I love that expression. Flip his lid. Americans are so weird.

But this inexperience isn’t something I can explain to Nandy. She would not understand, she would start asking questions, and it wouldn’t take much to make her suspicious. She’s so smart, and her family has seen things. Her mother and father are first-generation. They came from Cuba. They know things. And they are part of things here. Big things. And since Nandy is one of them, she would see through me so quick. She would not let it go until I confessed.


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