Page 11 of Lovesick Titan (Lovesick #2)

Mal felt so exposed, like a raw nerve. He’d never told anyone he’d been with that he loved them, was never with anyone long enough to love them.

But Danny was everything Mal wasn’t; he’d need to hear it.

He deserved to hear it. The words had spilled from Mal’s lips so easily after Danny counted off his supposed virtues, both metaphorical and physical.

“I love you, Danny.”

He didn’t expect to hear the same words back, so he didn’t wait for Danny to say anything. He leaned up to capture a kiss.

Danny pulled out of reach. He’d drained of all color, eyes wide and shimmering as he shook his head. “I…I can’t.”

“What?” Mal reached for his face.

“I can’t .” Pulling back completely, Danny scrambled off the bed like he couldn’t get away fast enough. “I have to go.”

“Go?” The dull edge of rejection felt as if Dunkirk’s knife had lodged itself in Mal’s chest. He pushed up onto his arms, twisting his mouth into a strained smirk. “Suddenly in such a hurry, Sparky?”

Danny dressed in what seemed like seconds, unable to look Mal in the eyes. He backed up toward the stairs and only for a brief moment before he disappeared did his eyes meet Mal’s. “I’m sorry,” he said, and then he was gone.

He left. Mal said ‘I love you’. And Danny left .

Still stained with his own release on his stomach, naked on his bed, if ever Mal had felt used and thrown away, this moment trumped the rest. He’d known what a risk he was taking, but he’d thought…he’d just thought …

He stumbled out of bed and raced for the bathroom, gripping the cool porcelain of the sink when he reached it.

He felt dizzy, nauseous. He needed to get clean.

Needed to get out of the house. Needed to…

something . He couldn’t just stand there.

He’d risked everything offering himself to Danny. And lost.

Mal’s fingers remained knuckle-white on the sides of the sink.

When he’d finally calmed enough to look up, he saw in the mirror how quickly the bruise around his eye was forming.

Saw the bandage over his arm that Danny had so carefully applied.

What had he been thinking, imagining that longing and kindness meant Danny could love him?

After rinsing off in the shower in a numb daze, Mal dressed in fresh clothes. Every creak and shift of his apartment when he headed down the stairs made him equally anticipate another attack and hope that Danny had returned, but neither of those things happened.

He contemplated putting the unfinished components of dinner in the fridge but eventually just threw it in the trash. Retrieving his trench coat from the closet, he left his apartment.

He didn’t want to walk. He didn’t want to see anyone.

But he couldn’t stay in his home. He needed neutral ground, somewhere he could go to think without distraction—a safe house.

Picking the nearest one, the closest one he could walk to, he barreled down the sidewalk, causing the few pedestrians he passed to make way or cross to the other side of the street.

Mal reached the safe house with a flurry of the door opening and snapping shut.

He hadn’t realized how heavily he was breathing, how fast he must have been walking, until he stopped.

With the door closed behind him blocking out all sound from outside, the only noise was him gasping for air—which sounded too much like crying.

He slammed his fist into the wall. Malcolm Cho did not cry. He never cried. Not over somebody else. He’d hardened his heart a long time ago. He was strong. Unmoving. Cold . Nothing could touch him anymore. Nothing could touch him .

Until a boy with soulful eyes and a sweet, teasing smile crossed his path.

Next to where he’d punched the wall was a mirror set at just the right height for Mal to look himself in the eyes. Lucy had wanted one by all the doors, not merely so she could give herself a final once over before leaving any safe houses, but so they could see if anyone was behind them.

Now the mirror mocked Mal. Because of Ludgate. Because of his battered reflection. Because what he saw there was something Danny had looked at and decided so fiercely he didn’t want that he’d ran.

The howl that tore from Mal startled him as he reared back with his fist and punched the glass. Only as the pieces cracked and shattered did he notice the reflection of someone standing behind him.

“What the hell are you doin’?!”

Mal whipped around, bloody hand shooting out in front of him, coated in ice in seconds…only to go limp as he saw that it was Dom.

She wore jeans and a heather grey Henley, clean, which meant she hadn’t been tinkering with her bike today, probably just crashing on the couch to watch the game, have a few beers, and enjoy a quiet night in.

She needed that once in a while—the stillness and the solitude.

Too many nights like that though, and she’d need to go out and burn something.

“Someone we gotta take out?” She crossed her arms tightly as she drew closer and saw the state of Mal’s face. “Or there some other reason yer bustin’ up my safe house?”

Mal didn’t realize how exhausted he was until he let his tension go. “Dom…sorry. Didn’t know you were here.” She tended to squat wherever it suited her, though she had a few favored safe houses. Even if there wasn’t any place that was solely hers, wherever she was, was hers in her mind.

“Not much of an answer, Frosty. Don’t remember that shiner from Ludgate neither.

Tell me who I need to torch. Been itchin’ to set somethin’ on fire anyway.

Some one’s just as good if they’re causin’ you this kinda grief.

You only destroy shit when yer beyond pissed.

Never handle it like a normal person and pick a bar fight, nah, you gotta take it out on somethin’ that doesn’t hit back.

” She shook her head like she’d never understood that about Mal.

But she did understand; she understood Mal better than anyone. It just wasn’t something they said .

Mal never hurt people when he got angry. Oh he hurt people plenty, out of necessity or for certain benefits, but never out of anger. Too big a risk that one day he’d do it to the wrong someone, and he never wanted to risk being like that. Like his father.

So he hurt things instead of people when the anger and grief got so bad that he needed a way to let it out with his fists. Took a crowbar to his own motorcycle once. But those situations were few and far between. Usually, there wasn’t much to make him mad enough to lose his cool.

“Get in here,” Dom commanded when Mal continued to stand there staring like an idiot. She snatched him by the arm and dragged him behind her the rest of the way into the safe house. “Yer enough of a mess as it is without punchin’ glass.”

It wasn’t the first time Dom had manhandled Mal to take care of him when he was half in his own world. Few people could toss Mal around like that and make him feel safer for it rather than wary.

Dom brought him into the main room, where the hockey game was on and an empty bottle of beer sat next to a newly opened one on the coffee table, and pushed him down onto the sofa. Disappearing for a moment, she soon came back with a first aid kit.

Déjà vu— again .

Mal swallowed the bile in his throat.

“Now what the hell happened?” Dom asked as she took out a pair of tweezers, disinfectant, and gauze.

Mal still had his trench coat on. He didn’t know what to say. It was too fresh. And this was Dom . They didn’t have heart to hearts.

“Gimme your god damn hand, dumbass,” she gruffed out, before roughly grabbing Mal’s wrist. For all her irritation and seeming brutishness, her hands were gentle as she pulled the glass from Mal’s knuckles with the tweezers.

The practiced motion reminded Mal too keenly of weeks ago when he’d done the same for Danny after breaking the wine glass.

Damn it.

“Mal…” Dom grumbled, full of impatience but also softer, weary—worried.

“Had a house call from Dunkirk,” Mal said and proceeded to tell Dom all about it. He’d seen Dom briefly during the week after the heist, so he’d already explained about Ludgate. Dunkirk was a whole other issue, but Dom understood .

“So Zeus came over in the nick of time and saved yer ass. What’s the big deal? You do somethin’ stupid after?”

Mal felt his face contort as he warred with himself to look angry rather than stricken.

Dom huffed. “You went and fell in love with the kid, didn’t ya?”

The pain of her picking glass out of his hand wasn’t enough of a distraction. Mal closed his eyes and gritted his teeth. “Don’t say it.” He couldn’t handle an ‘I told you so’ right now.

“I won’t,” she said. Then, after a pause, “But I did .”

Choking on a laugh, Mal was far too close to sobbing.

People always thought Dom was just dumb muscle.

They had no idea. She sat back and paid attention while everyone around her was busy underestimating her intellect.

She noticed things other people didn’t. Picked up on the nuances of enemies and strangers.

So when it was someone she knew, few as those numbers were, she was almost never wrong.

“What happened?” she asked again.

Mal opened his eyes. His hand was clean now as Dom swiped disinfectant over the cuts and started to bind his hand in gauze. He didn’t have the luxury of fast healing like Danny. “I told him.”

“Yeah? And what he say?”

“He left.”

Mal could feel Dom’s frown even without looking at her. “I’m guessin’ you don’t wanna hit the streets and cause a little mayhem to spite him, huh?”

Exhaling, Mal choked on another short, shaky laugh. “No, Dom.”

She grunted acknowledgment, then nodded at the screen still playing the game on mute. “Wanna stay in and get drunk?”