Page 14 of Lovesick Titan (Lovesick #2)

Mal had to confront this head on. Insist to Danny that they were going to talk.

That’s all he’d ask for—that they talk .

If the conclusion of their conversation was that Danny didn’t return Mal’s feelings, so be it.

Mal could be the bigger man. He didn’t think he could be ‘friends’ with Danny after what they’d been through.

Couldn’t go back to just screwing. Couldn’t continue as they were, always knowing that Danny didn’t want him as deeply as Mal did.

But he wouldn’t leave Danny high and dry with Ludgate. That bastard deserved what he got.

Getting through the door and past the main array of desks was easy. Mal knew where Danny’s office was, tucked into the corner of the building, down several hallways, near the CSI lab. The station was buzzing, but those hallways were all but deserted as Mal made his way to Danny’s door.

As he neared the office, he could faintly hear Danny and Vaughn’s voices and decided to push onward faster so he wouldn’t get distracted. He’d interrupt whatever they were doing and—

An odd flicker of movement drew Mal’s attention, and he faltered in his steps. Glancing aside, his reflection was dimly displayed in a window along the wall. For a moment, he’d sworn it hadn’t been in step with him.

Mal waved his hand, just to be sure he hadn’t imagined things. His reflection moved with him.

Ludgate had him all kinds of paranoid.

Continuing at a slower pace, he listened to be sure Danny and Vaughn were alone.

For the first time, he wanted to do right by someone.

Sure, some of his motivations were still selfish, because he wanted Danny and everything they’d shared these past few weeks.

But he also wanted it for Danny’s sake, to see the kid smile without darkness hiding in the depths of his eyes.

“Danny, why does being told he loves you make you look like he killed your cat?”

Mal came to a stop just outside the entrance. They were talking about him.

“Because,” Danny said, “I’ve been lying to him from day one. ”

R

Hades had to commend Andre. His little trick was very unfortunate.

He couldn’t get into any of the reflections in Zeus’s office while that projection was on.

But he could still overhear things well enough from the hallway, enough that he had been able to stall Prometheus for just the right amount of time.

He had a clear view of Prometheus’s face as the man’s expression dropped at Zeus’s words. All Hades had to do now was sit back and enjoy the show.

R

“I set him up,” Danny said, causing Mal to train his ear closer.

“When I overheard him and Lucy talking about me in Pronto, about him wanting me, I was so angry . All the feelings that had been rushing through me when I fought Camouflage surged up again, and I just wanted to…hurt someone. I figured, why did it have to be physical? Why not hurt someone like I’d been hurt?

Thanatos used me for entertainment. Cho used me to get what he wanted but wasn’t there when I needed him.

I just wanted someone I could use back.”

Falling against the wall of the hallway, Mal felt the blood drain from his face even as he told himself he wasn’t hearing this.

“Suddenly there was my opportunity. I needed release, something to distract me, to make me feel good, and Cho, well, he is easy on the eyes,” Danny gave a short, cruel laugh.

“Now I knew he was interested. So I approached him, caught his attention, and all the while I had a plan. It was a game. To make him want me. Make him fall for me. Make him love me. So I could throw him away when I was done and make him feel used and betrayed like he’d done to me. ”

The voice of Mal’s father echoed in his head. No one will ever love a waste of space like you.

“I wanted to hurt him. To break him. To teach him a lesson ”—Mal shuddered—“And it was so easy. To act the right way. The way I thought he’d want. To say the right things. To give and take just enough to leave him wanting more. Make him hungry for it. Even beg me for it. ”

“Danny…” Vaughn finally spoke, a disbelieving gasp of Danny’s name that startled Mal back to reality.

He was going to be sick all over the floor. He had to get out of there. He was such a fool, such a god damn fucking idiot.

“I hated him for abandoning me with Thanatos,” Danny said, just to further twist the knife, when Danny had said only last night that he understood, that he forgave him. “For what he was. What he represented. And it justified everything.”

Mal pushed from the wall with such force that he fell forward into the other side and slammed his already wounded and bandaged fist against it before he took off down the hallway.

R

A bang caused Danny to whip his head toward his door.

“Danny, dude, you—”

“Hang on.” Danny walked swiftly to the entrance of his office with a strange buzzing feeling in his gut that something was very, very wrong.

He placed his hand on the doorframe, but when he peered around to look down the hallway, no one was there, just the blur of a uniformed officer hurrying around the corner.

“Danny?” Andre called after him.

He really was losing his mind. As he walked back to Andre, he looked down at his hands and realized how tightly he’d been clenching his fists, having left half-moon indents in his palms almost deep enough to draw blood.

“You did all that just to make Cho suffer?”

“Yes.”

“Shit, man, that’s…”

“Awful? Disgusting?”

“Not like you.”

Danny looked up and Andre’s repulsion might have been coated in pity, but it didn’t make anything better. “But it is like me. I wanted to hurt someone, Andre. Like what Thanatos did to me. I wanted to be the one in control, the one pulling someone else’s strings. God …I’m just like him.”

“You’re not—”

“But I am .” Danny clenched his fists again, uncaring to how much it hurt. “And Thanatos knew it. He knew he’d break me. And he did. He got exactly what he wanted when I killed him. He knew I’d end up bitter and angry and even worse than he was.”

“Danny, Thanatos was crazy—”

“And it’s somehow better that I’m not?” Danny snapped.

But Andre didn’t flinch or back down at yet again being cut off.

“No, Danny. It’s awful, what you were going to do.

It’s really awful. But you know that. And you stopped yourself before going through with it.

It doesn’t make things better, it doesn’t make it okay, but it’s a start.

You know you’ve been the bad guy and you hate yourself for it.

You’ve been hating yourself this whole time.

You ever stop to think that maybe the reason you’ve been so wrecked lately is because you’re acting out of character? ”

Danny opened his mouth to speak but no words formed. He’d been feeling fractured and torn apart for months, and all he’d done since then was pull at his seams that much harder.

“Do you love Cho? Or do you just feel guilty for using him?”

Gentle hands touched Danny’s closed fists and he blinked at how close Andre was, his grey eyes looking up at Danny in concern.

Slowly, Danny let his fists loosen. “Everything’s different now.

I wasn’t supposed to fall in love with him back .

But I…did. I do . I love him. What am I supposed to do now, Andre? I have to tell him the truth.”

Andre’s face scrunched in sympathy. “Okay. But if you love him, then you need to tell him that too. It’s not gonna be easy for him to hear this.

You gotta put it the right way. But I think once you come clean, you’ll finally start feeling like yourself again.

And then, I promise, things will get easier.

You’ll see.” He smiled encouragingly. “Now come on, screw Ludgate for the rest of the morning. Let’s practice what you’re gonna say to Cho. Then you can go talk to him.”

Danny laughed in relief at how understanding his friend was being. “Thank you. You’re right. I don’t want to lose him. I love him.”

He loved Cho— Mal —and he was going to tell him. He was going to make this right.

R

Mal felt like he was slowly suffocating until he exited the precinct and breathed the outside air.

He covered the few blocks to the alley where he’d parked his bike so quickly, he barely noticed his surroundings.

Shaking and too hot and fighting for breath, he reared back and kicked his bike over with a crash.

He’d been conned. Duped. Taken for a fool. And he’d practically handed himself over on a platter, he’d been so easy to manipulate. All this time Mal had been so certain that Danny was some untouchable good in the world. But he was just like everybody else.

No one used Malcolm Cho. No one did this to him. No one made him feel like…

With a final sharp intake of breath, Mal cracked his neck to the side and let his fists relax. He picked up his bike, replaced the police hat for his helmet, and drove out of the alley, leaving everything about the past few weeks behind him.

He was going to be ready the next time Zeus came to see him, and he was going to make him pay.