Page 25 of Lovesick Titan (Lovesick #2)

The flames arced toward Danny, and everything stilled into awful, agonizing slow motion as Mal realized what he was doing.

“Danny!”

As Mal blasted forward with his ice just when the first tongues of flame reached Danny’s face, the overlapping temperatures nullified each other almost instantly. But Mal had crossed powers with Dom before and knew the feedback was dangerous, risking a backlash that would send both of them reeling.

Timing his reaction as perfectly as he could, he released his powers before the eruption could happen, and instead of a shockwave, a slight push from the fizzle of fire and ice was all that reached him, making him stumble as the bright light of their abilities disappeared and left the woods that much darker.

“Hey!” Dom roared, unsure what had happened. She and Mal were still on their feet, but Danny had crumbled to his knees. He’d been hit—point blank, however briefly—before Mal could intervene.

“What the hell were you thinking?!” Mal stormed across the space that separated them.

Danny shifted to face him, shaking, one hand hovering near the side of his cheek that— shit —looked like mincemeat along his jawline where his mask had been burned away. He’d heal, but that had to sting and could have been so much worse if Mal hadn’t stepped in to save him.

Mal hadn’t meant the worst of his threats. He’d just wanted to push Danny, to watch him snap, to see his true face again, he didn’t…he’d never imagined …

Tearing his gaze from Mal to stare at the ground, Danny shook from the pain but was unable to do anything about it. He dropped both hands like an exhale. “I’m done,” he said. “I’m done . Do whatever you want to me.”

“Fine by me,” Dom growled as she stalked forward.

“ Dom .” Mal’s tone allowed no argument, a clear threat. “Get out of here. Now. Wait by the car.”

Dom rose up taller, the spark for a fight between them easily kindled, but she wasn’t angry at Mal. She was angry on his behalf , which only made her more dangerous. Mal didn’t feed into the fight. He shook his head, letting a hint of pleading enter his gaze through the stern warning.

Releasing a howl of frustration, Dom made Danny flinch in expectation of another blast of fire, but he didn’t make any attempt to move from where he knelt.

She stomped off despite her fury, right toward Mal to head to the car.

As she passed by, she didn’t say anything, merely pushed up her mask to frown at Mal and gave him a pointed look.

Fool me once…

Mal knew that, but none of this had turned out the way he planned.

Slowly, all tense nerves and anger but with concern flowing through him that he hadn’t expected, Mal circled closer to Danny.

As Dom headed away, Danny glanced after her, and seeing that he and Mal were alone, he pulled the cowl from his face with a grimace at the skin that tore, burnt to the mask from the blast. It was only the left side that had been hit, beneath his cheekbone, along his jaw, and slightly down his neck, but it wasn’t pretty.

Danny sat back on his heels and looked up at Mal with all the fight drained out of him. “I can’t do this anymore,” he said, tears in his eyes from the pain or maybe from the emotions choking him.

Mal’s hands were still iced over as he approached, and Danny closed his eyes like he was waiting for Mal to…

Never before had Mal loathed having powers like his father more than he did now. The rage he’d expected to find in Danny, counted on finding, surged up in him instead, and for one brief moment he wanted to snatch Danny up by the front of his suit and slam him into the tree behind him .

But Danny’s eyes opened and looked at Mal again, his burnt face blistered and terrible, yellow eyes glimmering, and Mal knew he was never going to see what he’d been waiting for.

“Get up,” he said, fighting to keep his voice steady. “Get up !” he called louder when Danny didn’t move.

The blank expression on Danny’s face was too pitiable, so when he still wouldn’t move, Mal lurched forward to grab Danny’s arm and force him to his feet.

He gripped Danny’s chin with a chilled but no longer icy hand, his thumb careful around the burnt flesh as he turned Danny’s face aside to assess the damage.

“Do you think this is what I want?” he said, before drawing his hand away because he couldn’t stomach Danny cringing at his touch.

Danny blinked as a few fresh tears slid down his cheeks, making him grimace at the salt getting into his burns.

“I don’t know. You think hurting you is what I want.

But I don’t. I don’t want to hurt you, Mal,” he said as heartfelt as he had in the apartment when Mal had been so certain it was nothing but a lie.

“I’m sorry I ever did. Sorry I wanted to then. But I don’t want that anymore.”

Mal turned away because he couldn’t look at Danny like this.

“You can’t forgive me,” Danny followed him, “I get that. So if you need to hit me, fight me, hurt me, then go ahead. I won’t stop you.”

Resentment, old and furious, flared to life in Mal’s gut because no one should ever say that. No one should ever accept someone hurting them because they felt like they deserved it. “You can’t make anything better by letting me hurt you,” he said, clenching his fists tight.

“Then what am I supposed to do?”

“Fight back!” Mal whirled to face him. “You’re supposed to fight back.”

“You mean I’m supposed to be the bad guy,” Danny said, steady and unwavering as he stood before Mal utterly defeated. “I was the bad guy. I was. And I’m sorry .”

Mal couldn’t hear this. He couldn’t hear this…

“I’m not fixing the IA case, Mal. Andre and Lynn want me to, Dad and my sister want me to, everyone wants to help me make it go away.

But I don’t. I won’t .” Sagging from the pain and weariness in his body, he looked so small, so young.

“I’m tired . I was supposed to be getting better, and I made everything worse.

Maybe it would be best…if I wasn’t around anymore. ”

Nausea replaced the anger Mal was grasping onto and drained away into something leaden in the pit of his stomach. Because Danny didn’t mean jail. He wanted Mal to think he did, but he didn’t.

If Mal hadn’t been looking at Danny’s burnt face, he might have thought this was all another ploy.

But this, finally, was the truth. That angry, brutal Danny, that was part of him, but so was this.

So was the broken boy who’d cried in Mal’s apartment so many times, who’d confessed dark and terrible things to him.

Who’d said again and again that he wasn’t worth wanting. Or saving. Or loving.

Mal pulled the shades from his eyes. This wasn’t what he wanted. Now he was as bad as Danny, and he thought he wouldn’t care, but he did. He cared, and he hated that he cared, because it made everything harder, made both of them villains and no one was in the right.

“Don’t say that,” Mal said firmly, stepping into Danny’s space. “You can’t change any of this by letting them haul you off in chains or getting burned alive.”

Danny’s eyes darted to the ground. “I know. But I don’t know what else to do.

I was right about you though, that night I showed you my face.

” Glancing up with a flick of his eyes, the smallest twitch of a sad smile made Mal ache deep in his bones.

“You are a good man. If you weren’t, you wouldn’t have saved me. You’d be icing me now. I deserve it.”

“Danny—”

“You’re a good man, Mal. More so every day.

And I’m a little less. Please don’t let me ruin that for you.

” His voice broke as the tears in his eyes overflowed and he sniffled back a downpour he couldn’t stop.

“I’m like this and…maybe I’ll always be like this now, maybe I’m broken in a way that can’t be fixed, but you’re not. ”

Mal turned away, all the way around to fight the emotions making his face and eyes feel hot.

He couldn’t forgive Danny. But he didn’t want to hurt him, not physically or any other way, not anymore.

He just wanted the night to be over. “When did you turn off your comms?” he asked to avoid the subject that remained like static discharge between them.

“I didn’t. They’ve been on the whole time. ”

Turning back halfway, enough to see Danny in his periphery, Mal said, “Good. Then tell them you’re coming home.

Get out of here. Go back to your friends so they can treat your face.

” He willed his legs to move, trudging through the grass like treading deep water, and headed after Dom to reach the car.

“Mal! I…I can’t let you take the paintings,” Danny said, brokenly, almost embarrassedly, which made Mal laugh without humor.

Turning halfway again, he still couldn’t look at Danny.

“You want to go after Dom’s share, be my guest. Mine will be waiting for you where we had the car.

Not in the mood anymore,” he said because he couldn’t say anything else, couldn’t weather this all in one night, not with Danny standing there like a marred reflection of everything they’d lost.

“Mal…I really am sorry. I’m so sorry.”

Mal pivoted forward, sniffing helplessly as he furiously wiped away a few tears that streaked down his face. He couldn’t look at Danny, he couldn’t , because if he did, he’d want to hold him and tell him everything would be okay. But that wasn’t true.

“Go home, Danny,” he said, before continuing through the trees, “and don’t ever do something like that again.”

R

There was a moment in the woods when Danny almost chased after Mal, but he knew there was nothing more to be said.

He thought he’d feel relief finally telling Mal the whole truth and having him—maybe—start to believe him, but the emptiness only grew, like some beast in the cavern of his chest. He barely even felt the pain of his face anymore.