SICK HEART

in that sex scene. It is playful. She is drunk, yes. They all are. But this is not a frat-party-drunk sex scene. This is a we’re-still-fucking-alive-celebration sex scene. And even though her permission was given in Cort’s point of view, she has no regrets afterward. She doesn’t complain about being taken advantage of. She makes a decision during the fight to help Cort win. She CHOOSES HIM in that moment. She joins HIS team. This happens before HE chooses HER. This is part of Anya’s permission as well. Furthermore, when they arrive at the Rock and Cort hands her the hose to wash him off, Anya understands this is an act of trust. That he is trusting her not to hurt him. He literally hands her a way for her hurt him and she rejects it. I she were feeling taken advantage of in the first sex scene, she would’ve missed that subtle act of trust he was showing her. She would not have cared if she hurt him with the water hose. And she did care, because she says, very clearly, at the end of that chapter, “I won’t.”.

Now. Perhaps Anya SHOULD’VE felt taken advantage of. That’s another topic. I get that. Maybe she should’ve felt that way. But it doesn’t matter. The only thing that matters is that she DIDN’T feel that way. And the reason she didn’t feel that way was because she has no fucking feelings about sex anymore. It has lost all meaning to her. She does not care how her body is used. Her strength comes from her silence. She is a mental ninja. She cares about her words because her speech is what she controls. Her silence is a way to make sure no one ever really knows if they have hurt her or not.

So this dubcon thing. I don’t know where this person came up with this, but it certainly didn’t come from the actual text in this book. I have some guesses though, and I’ll get to that in a sec. I’m still making my list about why Cort will never apologize for his actions…

2. Cort didn’t choose his path in life, he was forced. It’s either let them win and kill you, or kill them first. And in my mind—and Cort’s mind too—it would be a greater sin to give up without a fight than it would be to rise in the ranks and take your place as winner. He killed people. A lot of people. But he’s not a killer. He’s a fighter. And not only is he a fighter – he is a survivor. He owns that word. He has been through hell and he’s still here. He’s still fighting. He didn’t make the rules, he just lived within their boundaries. Could he have escaped before this moment in time? No way in hell. He got out in the end because he was finally in a place where he had no other choice but to put it all on the line. He and his friends finally had some control over things and everyone played their part. At what other point in his life would his camp all have put their lives on the line to break free? There was never a reason to rebel before now. They could always fight back, take out a few people here and there, and then what? Nothing would change. They would not get away, they would all be killed. It is not until Cort has earned his freedom that they finally see a way out and that way out is through Cort.

3. The darkness in this book has nothing to do with Cort. The darkness in this book is all about the evil people who run the world that Cort and Anya live in. They were used up as children. Both of them should be dead by now, but they aren’t. They fought. They survived. Yes, all the vicious scenes in this book that deal with the sick ways in which they were used are a part of my fiction. But unfortunately, child sex trafficking isn’t a fiction. It’s a real thing. And if me writing a love story about two survivors of that dark world creates the perfect storm of conditions for you to rail and rage against me, then that’s all you. Not me. It’s got nothing to do with me. All I did was write a book to highlight the fact that child sex trafficking exists and it’s the victims that get left behind who matter.

In Sick Heart – I made the victims matter.

And I did that by turning them into survivors.

And if my greatest sin in this book is that I gave these two survivors a love story, well…

This is where I usually say…go fuck yourself. But I’m gonna show some restraint today and say something else instead. Because I understand how sick the premise of this book is. I get it.

But this is why I put a trigger warning on it, bitches. OK? I did my part. I hate trigger warnings. I almost never use them. But I did this time because I understand how disturbing the back story of Cort and Anya is. This world my characters live in is sick in the heart. And I wanted to give readers the chance to opt out. If you picked up the story and read it and then got angry because I wrote a love story about two people who survived the most horrific childhoods imaginable, that’s all you.

Don’t blame me. I didn’t do anything wrong and I will never apologize for the words I wrote in this book.

OK. Now that that’s all out of the way, I’d like to say one more thing:

If you hate this book for reasons other than those listed above—the writing, a plot hole, the pacing, my unusual use of paragraph spacing (my editor tried to change that but I changed it back, so it’s