Page 16 of Lovesick Titan (Lovesick #2)

Slowly, even though he was mostly okay now save his reddened, aching skin, Danny rose to his feet. “I’m not going to do anything. You left before I finished explaining. You don’t know the whole truth.”

“So tell me,” Mal said, softer, but colder somehow, numb and challenging at the same time. “What would I have heard if I stayed?”

“That I didn’t mean it. ”

Scoffing, Mal laughed as he tilted his head. “That’s it? That’s the best lie you got? After the lengths you went to? Wow, kid. You gotta work on your fallback plans.”

“I’m serious .” The barest motion from him made Mal flinch and start to raise his hand, so Danny stayed where he was. “I did mean it in the beginning, I admit that. I was planning to hurt you, to do all those terrible things you heard me say, but I changed my mind.”

Mal shook his head and backed up another step.

“I wasn’t going to go through with it!”

“Shut up.”

“Mal—”

“I don’t want to hear any more of your lies, Danny!”

“It wasn’t a lie! It wasn’t…all a lie.” Danny felt so weighted down, as if his sins hung heavy from his jacket like the dampness left behind from the cold field.

He’d never seen Mal this standoffish, even when they were enemies.

Ready for a fight, yes, but not as if he feared Danny.

“Everything you learned about me, all those things I confided in you, that was true.”

“And everything else was bullshit,” Mal snarled, all trace of forced humor lost in his sneer and the tightness of his jaw.

“No.” Danny didn’t try to hide the desperation and grief in his expression. “Not everything. Not every time. When we were together—”

“Which ones were real, Danny?” Mal demanded. “Huh? Which ones were fake?”

“Last night—”

“Just then? Only then? And that’s supposed to mean something to me?”

“No!” Danny moved forward and Mal blasted him without hesitation, but because the cold field was down, Danny was able to dodge, causing the ice to coat the wall beside the door instead.

He held up his hands, pleading with Mal to not attack again.

“No, I promise, it was more than that, I just didn’t realize—”

“Then which ones, Danny?” Mal re-centered his outstretched palm. “Which times? Which words were true? Which times did you mean it when you fucked me?” His voice cracked, and he sneered at himself for letting that weakness slip .

Danny really had broken him, opened him up and made him vulnerable in a way that the thief didn’t know how to face without taking back control with a blast of his powers.

“You don’t even know, do you?” Mal said when Danny didn’t respond, letting his hand drop maybe because he looked so weary—of Danny, of all of it. “At least Ludgate was real. I don’t think even you’d take a beating like that just to further your con. But what do I know, maybe you would.”

“It wasn’t like that,” Danny said, thinking of his own twisted reflection that kept telling him the awful truth—that Danny was the darkness he’d been running from—and he couldn’t escape it without help.

He needed Mal to listen, to understand, to forgive him, or how could he forgive himself?

But the loathing in Mal’s voice wounded Danny deeper than he could say.

It was everything he’d been feeling toward himself for so long.

He’d thought that finally, in Mal, he’d found someone who could see his darkness and still want him, still believe in him, the way Danny had learned to believe in Mal, but he’d ruined it, just like he ruined everything.

“I swear, Mal, I swear , it wasn’t like that. I’m so sorry. I’m sorry .”

“ Are you, Danny?” Mal said, that numb icy presence firmly in place again as he glared across the space between them. “Sorry you got caught? Or sorry you don’t get to control me anymore?”

Danny’s fists started to clench so tight, they hurt like they had that morning from the blunt pressure of his nails and the remaining sting of ice. “Mal, please…just listen …”

“You know, it’s funny, Danny. You. Playing it up like you’re scared to turn into Thanatos, when you’re gunning to be the next best thing. Maybe that was the point. Maybe this whole time you’ve wanted to reshape yourself in his image. Maybe you were grateful when he killed your mother.”

Stomach bottoming out, all the protest died on Danny’s tongue. He started to shake. “Don’t say that.”

“Why not? Isn’t it true? Coz congratulations, Danny. You’re well on your way to being just like him.”

“Stop.”

“You’re living up to his legacy like a real champ. ”

“ Stop it …”

“I bet he’d be proud of the monster he turned you into.”

“Shut up!” Danny screamed—and saw nothing but darkness .

In the blink of an eye he had his hands on Mal, clutching his sweater as he jumped them across the room and slammed Mal into the wall beside the desk. It all happened too fast for Mal to react, too fast for Danny to realize what he was doing until it was over.

When Danny recognized what had happened and tried to scramble back, Mal laughed in his face. He didn’t try to fight, he just laughed .

R

Mal was right. All Danny had needed was the right push to reveal his true colors.

And it was funny, wasn’t it? That Mal had believed he’d found something good, that he’d believed he could have someone good , who wouldn’t do what everyone else always had—use and abuse him and throw him away.

Danny was just another copy of the same story wearing a different face.

Mal wouldn’t be fooled again. Not again. So as he leaned against the wall Danny had slammed him into, he was sore and beaten but not broken. He refused to be broken.

“There you are, Danny. There’s the real you. You wanna hurt me? Go ahead. Hurt me!” he yelled as Danny stumbled away, still trying to keep up the lie.

“No… I…I don’t…I don’t want to hurt you.”

Mal laughed—and laughed again. He couldn’t believe he’d ever looked at this kid with reverence.

He wanted to ice him again, but no. Danny deserved worse.

“You don’t want to hurt me. You just wanted to ruin me.

That takes a special kind of evil. But you felt justified, didn’t you?

Because I’m a bad man, who’s done bad things, so that makes it okay.

Coz if you’re the victim first, it’s okay to make a victim out of somebody else.

Why, you can even justify murder with that logic. ”

He pushed away from the wall and stalked slowly forward, making Danny back up with every step .

“The hero can do something as heartless as the villain, but as long as he pretends to feel bad about it later, he’s not the bad guy. If you’re good, and you climb your way out of the darkness, everyone cheers for you, but if you start out as trash, well…you’re just trash forever.”

“Mal, I never said—”

“You didn’t have to.” Mal surged forward, feeling his fury building, and he let it build, if only to see Danny back off, finally letting him reclaim the power Danny had only pretended to give him.

“I kept thinking, nah, the kid’s just hurting and in a dark place, whenever I saw that sinister part of you creep in.

But I get it now. That’s the real you. The rest is just a convenient mask for those of us too stupid to tell the difference. ”

Danny shook his head, halfway across the floor now, almost back to where he’d been beside the couch, and Mal stuck with him all the way. “I-I don’t…want to be like this.”

Mal was so sick of Danny trying to deny the truth. He had him now, and he wouldn’t give up his power ever again. “Well done, Zeus. You conned a conman. You became everything you claim to hate. You won .”

“No…this isn’t what I wanted.” Danny backed into the door. The patch of ice Mal had shot at the wall was still misting.

“Isn’t it?” Mal said, as cold and unfeeling as Danny had been to him. “Isn’t this exactly what you planned? I said ‘I love you’ and you left me there.”

“I know…I’m sorry …”

Fuck , those eyes and the way they pleaded, but Mal knew it was just another lie. Danny needed to pay. He was going to pay .

Mal would have slammed his hand into the door beside Danny’s head, but he didn’t want to get that close—not yet. He held back and stood before Danny, calm and in control. “Do you remember what I said about my father? About the worst part of his abuse?”

The moment when Danny realized what Mal meant was plain on his face.

“I said that the worst part was how even at his nastiest he’d still pretend like he loved us. That’s how I learned love is a lie. And you, Danny, reminded me of that. So thank you for the lesson . Guess I needed to learn it after all. ”

“Mal…I don’t want this. I didn’t want this. I wanted to fix it. I came here to fix it!”

Bitterness churned in Mal’s stomach because even now Danny thought he could con him.

“You think I’d ever let you touch me again?

That I’d listen to a word you say? You are something else.

But why not, Danny?” The last thing Mal wanted was to be as close to Danny as he moved now, crowding in on his space against the door, moving into his body that only just last night had moved inside of him like there was something beautiful in the way they connected—but this was the moment that mattered.

This was how he ruined Danny in return.

“Here’s one for the road,” Mal said as he finally pressed his hand to the wall, no longer iced over, and gripped Danny’s waist roughly with the other. “So you know what you’re missing.”

He kissed him. And it was cold and it was angry, nothing sweet or caring about it.

The press of his lips and the bite of his teeth as he forced his tongue inside and waited for Danny to respond as he knew he would.

And oh how Danny did, how he opened up and kissed back like he was desperate to claim some leverage, to convince Mal in the swirl of their tongues that there was something there to salvage.

But Mal wasn’t anyone’s bitch , and he wasn’t going to bend to Danny Grant.

It didn’t matter that for a moment, he did give in and kiss harder and deeper because he wanted to remember this feeling, because he wanted to savor Danny’s body and mouth and skin for just a little longer before he had to let it go.

He hated how weak he felt as he lost himself in the ruse because Danny had been right about one thing that first night they shared: no one would ever compare to him—to the version Mal once believed he had.

And for that he hated Danny even as part of him loved the broken hero enough to make that sting.

Danny sobbed out of the kiss when Mal pulled back and tried to follow him, tried to reconnect their lips, to tangle his hands in Mal’s sweater and hang on tight. But Mal pushed him off, ripped Danny’s hands away, and wiped his mouth like the kiss hadn’t been a painful goodbye.

“Mal, please…” Danny’s eyes looked golden as they glistened.

No . Never again.

Mal shoved Danny to the side of the door so he could wrench it open. “We’re done. Now get the fuck out of my house. ”

While Danny was still finding his feet, Mal thrust him out into the hallway, kicked his shoes out after him, and slammed the door in his face.

If he really believed the worst of the kid, he’d half expect him to lightning jump right back inside, but Danny wasn’t going to pummel him to make his point.

Oh, he had it in him, but that wasn’t part of the game.

It would spoil the lies he told himself about being a hero.

It should have felt good to be rid of him. Mal almost expected a knock, a cry, another plea for him to let Danny in. But nothing came. Just the faint shuffle of feet walking away from the door.

When Mal reached up to wipe his face—not because there were tears there, damn it , he wouldn’t allow tears—he cursed himself for how much his hands shook.

Danny was going to pay. And it was going to be more than worth it to watch him fall. No one tried to bring Malcolm Cho down without bringing themselves down too.

R

The show at Prometheus’s apartment made Hades shiver in anticipation.

He’d been waiting for this, for the right moment to play his hand.

Tearing Zeus from Prometheus was one thing, but now he had to break the wayward hero down further.

Pull him from his family. His friends. His livelihood. Give him no sanctuary or place to run.

Then when he made the switch , no one would be the wiser.

Watching Prometheus a little longer, he was surprised to see what the man got up to after Zeus left. Hades didn’t need to play his hand after all. Prometheus had his own game he was playing, and it would be an even sweeter way to bring Zeus low.

Hades threw his head back and laughed as Prometheus worked at his computer. They made it so easy . He barely had to do a thing, and Zeus and Prometheus continued to ruin themselves all on their own.