Page 45 of Lovesick Gods (Lovesick #1)

When Danny knew Lynn and Andre would be elsewhere, he jumped into the morgue and grabbed his phone from where he’d left it with his clothes last night. He also found the pill bottle from Lynn and downed one without a moment’s hesitation.

Everyone had tried to reach him at some point—Andre, Stella, his father wondering why he’d never come home.

He spent his lunch break answering texts while avoiding actually seeing anyone.

He was fine. He was sorry. Yes, he’d talk, he just needed to get through the day, hopefully without incident or anyone showing up to blindside him. And he almost made it.

Until John came in as Danny was about to leave his office for the day and said he’d walk down with him to the morgue.

They were silent for the first few minutes, even after they reached the basement floor and no one was around to overhear them. John’s silent treatment was almost worse than his lectures.

Closing his eyes, Danny leaned against the wall once they slipped through the locked door into the old morgue’s hallways. “Andre and Lynn know. Stella knows a little.”

“Care to share with me finally?” his father asked.

I’m broken , Danny thought, but he’d just scare John if he said that. “I’m sad and angry all the time and nothing”— almost nothing —“seems to make it go away. It’s making me careless, dangerous when I’m out there as Zeus. But if I try to talk it out, I’m going to end up screaming .”

“Like you have with your friends?”

Danny opened his eyes with a sigh, but he couldn’t look at his father. “What am I supposed to say, Dad? Mom and Rick are gone because of me. I hate myself and sometimes I don’t even know why I…”

“Why you what?”

Why I keep going.

“Danny, listen to me,” John said when Danny didn’t speak. “Rick and your mother are not dead because of you. None of what happened was your fault. You did everything—”

“Can you stop lying to me, Dad?” Danny finally turned to him.

“Lying?” John’s brow scrunched in confusion, his teal eyes bright in the dim light of the hallway. “What are you talking about?”

Danny stared at the door leading into the morgue’s main room, at the other doors leading to rooms they’d repurposed just to play hero.

“Being a cop always puts more of a bullseye on your family—you said that to me when I chose to go to the academy. Not to scare me away, but so I’d understand the burden.

You had no idea what a bullseye was until I became Zeus. ”

“Danny—”

“He turned me into a killer . You can’t tell me you don’t blame me when the only reason Mom died was because Thanatos wanted to get to me.”

“I would never—”

“But you do!” Danny yelled, quickly reining his voice back in at the risk of Andre and Lynn overhearing from down the hall.

“ I do. Everyone does, they just don’t want to say it.

If you didn’t blame me, you wouldn’t cringe every time you look at me.

” His cheeks felt numb to the tears leaking down them.

“And it’s okay, Dad, I get it. I don’t like looking at me either. ”

Scrubbing the wetness from his face, Danny tried to push past his father, but John stood in his path like a monument, as tall as Danny but broader, bigger. Danny almost lightning jumped past him, but before he could, his father’s arm hooked around his neck and pulled him in tight against his chest.

He held him there and squeezed until Danny lost his breath. When John shushed him, like he used to when Danny was a little boy, something triggered in the back of his mind and he sniffled miserably into his father’s shoulder.

“If I cringe,” John said, soft and steady, “it’s because I hate seeing so much pain looking back at me.”

“Dad, I…” Faltering, Danny squeezed his father in return. “I need a break, but I can’t take one, so what’s there to even do about it?”

“There’s the hard way. The long way. One day at a time. I know that’s not the answer you want to hear right now, kiddo, but I promise you that the people who care about you will always be here. I’ll always be here. If you need a break from being Zeus—”

“I can’t.” Danny pulled out of the embrace.

“I can’t let anyone else get hurt when I can do something to prevent it.

Ludgate would have targeted me anyway. He wants the limelight, and that means facing Zeus.

I’ll be okay, Dad. I just need to think like you said—one day at a time.

” It sounded so simple and yet insurmountable all at once.

Unwilling to let Danny pull away just yet, John looked him square in the eyes. “Don’t you dare hate yourself. There is nothing to hate. Don’t blame yourself for something that was out of your control.”

But killing Thanatos hadn’t been out of Danny’s control. Just like lending a hand hadn’t been out of Cho’s control. It was his fault too, at least for Danny’s mother. Danny had to remember that.

“Okay,” he said, even if he didn’t fully believe it.

John pulled him in for one final hug before he let him go.

Andre and Lynn weren’t as difficult to face as Danny had feared when they entered the main room.

His friends hugged him too, both at once like they had weeks ago, and trapped Danny between them.

He wanted to apologize over and over again for how much he must have scared them all, how worried he’d made them, how much he kept pushing them away, but he couldn’t find the words. Sorry wasn’t enough.

So he simply said, “I promise I won’t run anymore.”

The next day, Danny agreed to have lunch with Stella.

He couldn’t tell her, or John, or Andre and Lynn, everything that was going on, so he told his sister half-truths.

How angry he was. How numb sometimes. How responsible he felt for everything that had gone wrong, everyone who had died, and it overwhelmed him most days until the only thing he could do to feel better was lash out.

“You said there was something that was helping,” Stella said. “Is it still helping?”

“Sometimes.” Danny feared she’d find out since Andre knew a little, so he had to tell her at least as much as he’d told him. “There’s this…guy. That I’ve been sleeping with.”

“ Danny .” She flashed him her ‘look at you being naughty’ smile as she reached across the table for his hand.

“It’s not a big deal, he’s just…easy to get lost in? When nothing else makes sense or makes me feel better, he does. Which is probably just endorphins from the sex.”

Giggling, Stella pushed him in the shoulder. “That’s good, Danny, I’m happy for you, but don’t get so addicted to the endorphin rush that you feel worse when you’re away from him. You need to figure out how to keep those good feelings going.”

“What do you mean?” Danny asked, thinking of the pills Lynn had given him, but he hadn’t told Stella about that yet.

“Maybe this mystery man needs to upgrade to mystery boyfriend if he makes you feel so good. There is more to happiness than sex, you know? Or doesn’t he go for that sort of thing?

” There was an edge to her smirk that proved she was prying for details about someone she didn’t know enough to trust with her best friend’s heart.

Little did she know how warranted her concerns were.

Cho, his boyfriend? That would be insane.

“Danny?”

“Yeah, uhh…I don’t think he’d go for that. We’re from different worlds most the time.”

“Yeah? Sometimes those relationships burn the brightest.”

Or burn out the fastest , Danny thought.

“But don’t spend so much time with a guy who’d never want more from you than a good time,” she said with warmth and worry in her eyes. “You deserve someone who wants to sweep you off your feet.”

Danny had always wanted that. He wanted someone to lose their mind over him, to think of nothing but him—all-in, can’t live without it love .

Most people probably found that terrifying, but it was non-negotiable for Danny.

Cho would never understand something like that.

And Danny would never want it with someone like Cho.

How could he?

“What about you?” he changed the subject. “Anyone sweeping you away lately? Or any good stories from work you can share without violating HIPPO?”

“ HIPAA ,” Stella rolled her eyes, “and that joke has never been funny.”

“But it’s the Hippocratic oath! Such a missed opportunity.”

They shared another laugh, and Danny reminded himself that he could do this. He could do this. One day at a time—with or without Cho.

?

“What are you doing?”

Lucy jumped, upsetting the grip she had on her phone, but Mal had already seen the incriminating evidence over her shoulder. Careless that she hadn’t noticed him.

Mal had come upon her outside Mrs. Pak’s corner store, at one of the outdoor tables by the Korean café. It was mid-afternoon, so Lucy only had a half-finished drink, no food, but she’d been engrossed in her phone—which until a moment ago had been displaying Andre Vaughn’s Facebook page.

“Not funny, Mickey.” She whirled in her chair to face him.

“I’d think it’s hysterical,” Mal said, promptly taking a seat at the table beside her, “if there was any sane reason for you to even know who that man is. Why the sudden interest in Vaughn?”

“I was going to ask you the same thing when I searched your browser history last night, until I remembered Zeus works with someone named Andre, and as it turns out, this little cutie is a CSI. So sue me for doing a little detective work.”

“You went through my browser history? ” Mal practically lurched out of his seat. “Where? How?” He had half a mind to confiscate her phone. If Priestly had helped her hack into any of his tech…

“You have all the safeguards in the world, Mickey,” she said, “but as long as something is password protected, you don’t think you need to clear your cache.

I found some references to him on the safe house computer.

Thought maybe he was your mystery man. He isn’t, is he?

Coz he’s kinda cute…” She gazed at her screen longingly.