Black Hearts Red

by Leigh, Anne

  Gen would no doubt be wanting details, but by now she’d be sleeping.

  She always had to wake up early, and Kansas was two hours ahead of Vegas.

  I walked up the stairs leading to the guest bedroom, willing my body to finally wind down for the day. I had a great time with Deckard. He was a nice guy.

  He would definitely be a good friend to have.

  I went inside the bathroom, just a kitty corner from the bedroom, to wash away my makeup and get ready for bed.

  I should have gone into the bedroom first, but I had to pee. All those watermelon frescas were now doing a number on me.

  As I washed my face free of makeup, my mind wandered to Matteo.

  I knew he was upset with me.

  He told me not to go out with Deckard tonight.

  But he should know better, I did what I wanted.

  But then again, he hadn’t been in my life for years, so maybe he forgot what I was like.

  I slipped on a comfy blue pajama set, one of the many that Aunt Ava had given me when she learned that I was staying with them for the summer. She always gave the cutest and softest pajamas. My sister and I always looked forward to her Christmas gifts, they always included sleeping clothes.

  I finally turned my phone on and saw the missed texts from Matteo. There were seven of them, ranging from Where are you to If he does anything bad to you, I’ll kick his ass.

  I also had a missed call from my mom which included a text asking for the recipe for the banana peanut butter cake that she’d finally mastered. It was Aunt Brynn’s recipe, but Aunt Brynn was out of the country with Uncle Kieran, so Mom was desperate for it. I clicked on a picture and sent it to her. She’d see it tomorrow. Mom didn’t look at her phone after eight since it was her and Dad’s time. We called the home phone and Dad for emergencies.

  I bent down to attach my phone to the charger against the wall when I heard a soft snore coming from my bed.

  There were at least ten rooms in this house. I knew because this was where we spent a lot of Christmases growing up.

  Who would be in my bed at this time?

  I clicked on the switch for the soft lights on the far side of the room, hoping not to disturb the person sleeping in my bed.

  I wasn’t scared.

  No one could get past the security by the gate, so I knew that this wasn’t a thief or an unsavory character.

  My breath hitched as I recognized the muscular legs that were showcased in a pair of long black shorts. He was wearing a dark grey t-shirt and his hands were wrapped around one of the pillows.

  He didn’t like to rest his head on fluffy pillows even back then. He said that it hurt his neck so he slept without a pillow.

  I’d seen him in his suits and I often forgot how young he was.

  Now under the cloak of sleep and a light yellow pillow hovering against his chin, I was reminded that he was only twenty-four.

  His eyes fluttered in peace and I didn’t have it in my heart to disturb him.

  He could have stayed in his room, a fact that Aunt Ava had brought up when Matteo picked me up after breakfast the other day on his way to the office.

  He’d replied with a, “Mom, I have my own place. It’s all good.”

  Apparently his own place wasn’t good enough for tonight.

  I didn’t feel the buzzing of energy when Deckard was around.

  I hadn’t felt the surge of attraction for anyone in years.

  But they were all coming back to me now –

  He was sleeping, yet he affected my body in a way no man had ever done at their most awake state.

  I walked to the side of the bed that his form hadn’t managed to conquer and the bed dipped as my body lowered.

  I could have gone to another bedroom and slept there.

  I was tired and tonight I just wanted to rest and think about everything else tomorrow.

  I gazed at his furrowed brow and hard jaw. Even in sleep, he was intense.

  But I already knew that fact. I’d stared at his sleeping state many, many times before.

  We’d been apart for years.

  Half of it was by circumstance, but the other half was something that I didn’t have the mindset and the strength to delve into right now.

  The world knew him as the strong-willed boy who’d turned into a formidable figure in the business world.

  He was resolute in his decisions and his confidence didn’t waver whenever he spoke.

  But right here, in this moment, he was Matty.

  The rugged child who never showed anyone his tears.

  The one who didn’t break when everything around him was falling to pieces.

  And the boy I loved for as long as I’d known him.

  For as long as I could remember, stepping inside the mat had given me comfort.

  It’s the place where nothing in the world made sense and yet everything about me had meaning.

  My bestie didn’t care for it and she often checked my head if I had any screws loose, questioning why I’d want to get hit over and over again and consider it a workout.

  I’d tried explaining to her that the objective was to evade and not get hit, but there was no way in the immediate future where she’d be fighting next to me.

  “Ouch!” I heard Khalil, the guy I was practicing with, yell.

  I raised my hand, “Sorry, I wasn’t focusing.”

  “Damn girl, you’re wicked with those things.” Khalil was one of the younger fighters that Supreme Fighting World had hired. He was an excellent boxer, but he was unfamiliar with how to use weapons aside from his body. I’d managed to bribe him into hitting the mat with me.

  “Alright, let’s take a water break,” I supplicated, he was one of the three guys who worked out this early in the morning and I was taking advantage of him. I could practice with a female fighter, but the truth was, I got along with guys more than women. Maybe it had a lot to do with the fact that the few girls in my high school were so catty and the guys were less dramatic. The only females I considered close to me were my sister and Gen.

  He nodded his head, took his gloves off, and walked off the mat.

  “Matteo’s gonna kick my ass to homeless when he finds out I’ve been sparring with you,” Khalil grumbled as he chugged water. For an MMA fighter, he was huge. His Samoan-Nigerian ancestry, a fact that he’d divulged to me the other day, made him a standout in a crowd of Mexican, Russian, Korean, and American fighters.

  Apparently, Matteo had blacklisted me from fighting anyone from his father’s fighters. I hadn’t known about it until a week ago.

  A week where he’d been unavailable because he was traveling to Europe for business.

  Imagine my surprise when I’d asked at least seven of the guys who were training in the state-of-the-art gym complete with rock climbing and American Gladiator-worthy obstacle courses, if any one of them would step into the mat with me. They shook their heads before I could even say “Please.”

  Niro, the Japanese fighter, who I’d locked in a room so I could do the exhibition match with Matteo, had forgiven me. He’d smiled at me, but he said that he wasn’t going to have another mark against him, I’d made him look weak in front of his peers. Being locked inside a highly secured room wasn’t really weak, but I had to give him latitude. He could’ve easily ignored me and not accepted my apology, but he was nice enough to listen to why I locked him in – that I just wanted an audience with Matteo and it was the only way I could’ve gotten him to talk to me. My method was lame at best, but it happened and I didn’t want to look back.

  I’d learned a lot by watching Matteo in his element. He was always sure-footed. He didn’t waver on his decisions, but before he decided on anything, he listened to the pros and cons and looked at all the facts and figures. I’d been in the shadows during his board meetings, sitting in the periphery acting like an intern to his secretary, and his emotions were always hidden. He never let anyone in on what he was thinking.

  I thought he was going to agree
with the plan to talk to State legislators about the possibility of opening up a resort near Lake Mead. Matteo listened to the whole presentation and waited two minutes after his staff was done to say, “No.”

  The buts started to come, but Matteo expunged them with, “It’s protected land. We’re not going into a long winded legal war on something that should be kept as is. Let’s leave it alone.”

  Another staff member tried to sway him, but Matteo merely responded with, “That’s the place where my father learned to swim. Where he and my mother had a lot of history. For that reason alone, even if we were given the approval, I wouldn’t touch the land.”

  He’d said it stone-faced, his voice unrelenting, the square of his jaw solid as the decision he made, that if you were to take his statement at face value, you’d think that he was merely a boy honoring his parents’ history. But underneath his words, if you peeled it layer by layer, you’d know just how much he loved them.

  I didn’t know much about Auntie Ava and Uncle Milo’s love story.

  I was born thinking that they’d always been together, that they always looked so in love just like my parents.

  The fact that their son was keeping a piece of their history intact and untouched was a testament to the loyalty of the principles that Matteo held dear.

  I should feel guilty that I was bribing the fighters season tickets to the sport of their choice. I was going to dig deep into my savings to keep my promise, but it would be worth it.

  Khalil threw the empty water bottle straight into the trash can from across the room causing me to gasp, and bringing me back to now, “You should’ve been a basketball player.”

  He laughed heartily, “Nah, they’re a bunch of pussies.”

  “Really?” I said as I shook my head.

  “Running around the court for a ball isn’t my thing. I’d rather armbar a donkey.” He smirked and the gap between his teeth showed. He was a cool guy. He didn’t volunteer to spar with me right away. I had a feeling that he felt sorry for me. After I found out that there was an email going around with my name on it and the words, “Do not engage with her” as the subject line, I’d tucked my tail between my legs and sat on the bench a few feet away from the fighters who were busy getting their morning workouts done.

  I doubted that Fisher, one of the fighters on rotation, wanted to blurt out that piece of information. He’d done it after watching me ask fighter after fighter to train with me.

  I could have just hired a trainer at a private gym, but I was given this chance – a buffet of seasoned mixed martial artists were presented before me – and I wanted to see how my skills matched up with theirs.

  My philosophy in life was to take advantage of what you’ve been given.

  Here I was, given the opportunity to spar with the best of the best, and I didn’t want to look back, while I was tucked away in college, a month from now, regretting that I could have sparred with any of them but I didn’t.

  Since Khalil took pity on me, I’d agreed on training before I’d really given myself a chance to wake up. Matteo being out of the country was also a reprieve for him and for me. For him because I wanted to scream at his face for telling the fighters not to fight me. And for me because being close to him made me think of things that could never be. The night he slept in my bed was a fluke. Maybe he wanted to ask me something, and he fell asleep because he was so tired, not because he wanted to be near me. I woke up that morning with the cool air drifting from the side of the bed he’d occupied. His lingering scent was the only proof that he’d been there.

  He hadn’t bothered to text me or say anything to me.

  I’d learned about him leaving for a week from Aunt Ava who’d eaten breakfast with me every morning since I’d been staying at her house. Uncle Milo was traveling to Ukraine to interview a fighter so we’d been alone at the house.

  The past two mornings I’d borrowed one of their cars and excused myself from our breakfasts, telling her I had to go exercise to burn all the croissants I’ve been indulging myself with. Aunt Ava had looked fondly at me and said, “Just ask Perry for the keys. You can use any of our cars anytime you need them.”

  She was the complete opposite of her son, as Matteo didn’t want me driving anywhere. If he was here, the key to the Range Rover would not be inside my workout bag. Actually if he was here, I wouldn’t be in his gym, practicing my skills on Khalil.

  “Ready for another round?” I stood up and stretched my legs.

  I always brought my arnis with me. It was one of my most prized possessions. When I took interest in this style of fighting, I looked all over Minnesota for a Kali master. There weren’t a lot of them. Judo, jujitsu, taekwondo masters were everywhere. But Kali fighters were a dime a dozen in my state.

  The one I’d found was 35 miles away from our house, but as soon as I met Master Emilio, I knew that he was a gem. I trained with him on the weekends, Mom and Dad were on board with everything – they wanted us, their kids, to learn how to defend ourselves. I didn’t think they’d be okay though if they got wind that I’d been fighting with men who made submitting their opponents a livelihood.

  Master Emilio taught me how to become an effective striker before blocking. A skill that was evident in the way I was hitting Khalil’s arms with exact precision. I wasn’t merciless, but I wasn’t going to be gentle either.

  He didn’t say anything as I targeted his ribs and I struck forward.

  Khalil reached for my sticks, but I was fast enough to retrieve them, pulling them closer to my body before he could get ahold of them.

  He moved two feet away from me and I watched as he put his right foot forward to set up his kicks, his hands closing and forming fists. He was a boxer first and foremost. He’d gotten a few hits to my arms, but nothing that would have me crawl away in pain.

  I lowered my sticks to the mat, garnering a raise from his eyebrows.

  “I want to check if my kicks would work on you,” I shrugged, I’d been using my sticks all this time and now it was time to appraise if I hadn’t lost my kick catches.

  I set out to look for a Kali fighter.

  But Master Emilio wasn’t just a follower of one form of martial arts.

  He was also a skilled Sanda warrior.

  Khalil’s face changed to a smirk, mocking me.

  Now that I put my sticks away, he thought that I’d be defenseless.

  I weighed one hundred thirty pounds, add five more if I had too much pasta.

  Khalil would easily be eighty pounds more than me.

  But I’d learned early on that it didn’t matter how much bigger, how much heavier, how much more skilled the other fighter thought they were.

  What mattered was that you remained true to yourself and capitalized on your strengths.

  As Khalil inched forward in attack mode, I took a deep breath, watching, waiting…

  He threw a right hook that hung in the air and I grabbed the seconds where he was left wondering what happened to keep my toes straight forward, rotating my hips completely around, generating enough power –

  A loud smack smashed the quiet, still room.

  The blade of my right foot hitting his left leg had him falling to the mat.

  The element of surprise in his eyes was one of the main reasons why I would pay for the season tickets.

  “Fuck!” The hiss of pain in his voice had my knees falling on the mat beside him.

  “I’m so sorry.” I meant it in every way, I didn’t want to hurt him, I just wanted to see if my kicks were still powerful.

  Master Emilio thought that my best assets were my quick reflexes and strong kicks.

  Khalil raised his right hand while clutching his left leg with his left arm, “Don’t. Just don’t.”

  I nodded my head, giving him a few seconds to compose himself.

  “Is this why Matteo didn’t want you fighting us?” His voice drizzled with agony, and I felt extra remorseful.

  “He doesn’t want me to get hurt.” I was upset
that Matteo banned the fighters from sparring with me, but the more I thought about it, the more I could see why. His fighters were conditioned to break their opponents and make them surrender, amid broken arms, broken bodies, and broken breaths.

  “Lati. That’s bullshit, girl.”

  “It’s true.” Matteo might be an emotionless asshole sometimes, but he was protective of me, my well-being. It didn’t mean that I had to listen to him, but still, I couldn’t deny that he was.

  “If you fought like that on a daily basis, you’d leave a roomful of fighters nut-less. Lady, you have a hell of a kick,” Khalil said as a smile spread through his face. “Gimme a few minutes and this time, I want you to kick me harder than that.”

  “You sure?” I asked, “I wouldn’t want to send you to the ER.”

  “Is that a challenge?” He chuckled. At first glance, he was a mountain of a man who you’d judge to be all about himself. But I’d caught glimpses of his teddy bear heart. He caved to me because he felt bad for me. He’d slipped about sending money to his family in Indiana so that his sister could go to a better school, that maybe she could attend college.

  I offered him a hand and I found gratitude when he accepted.

  I was born into a landmine of privileged wealth, where expectations, even if not voiced, laid heavily in me following my parents’ footsteps. That I have the same successes as they’d garnered.

  Everyone looked at me as the baby princess.

  That I remain sheltered and protected, that someone else could fight my battles for me.

  But I never believed in what people thought of me.

  Sure, I was my parents’ baby.

  Sure, I held my father’s last name and my mother’s looks.

  But I was also me.

  I was me inside the cage, fighting with men who were stronger, more powerful than me.

  I was me studying the ins and outs of the business world.

  I was me laughing with this guy who thought he could break me into ten different pieces if he showed me how he fought.

  I was me shattering his preconceived notions, of what a fragile lady I could be.

  I was me emerging from the cocoon I’d been safely buried in so that my heart wouldn’t be tasked too much.