Page 4 of Lovesick Titan (Lovesick #2)

There were several CSI who worked with Andre as part of the Crime Scene Unit.

The Deputy Inspector who ran the team tended to use a lighter touch, which was how Andre got away with spending so many hours in the morgue instead of in the CSU lab.

He got his work done, which was all anyone cared about.

He was also everyone’s favorite CSI, among his coworkers and the other officers and detectives, because of his jovial personality.

“Hey, Ryan, go long!” Andre’s voice filtered out of the lab the moment Danny opened the door to enter. He caught his friend making a football throwing motion with a plastic bag containing a larger piece of glass from the museum heist.

The other CSI didn’t even look up from his microscope. “If you cut yourself, Vaughn,” he deadpanned, “I’m saving all the decontamination work for when you get back from the ER.”

Andre chuckled. “Hey, Danny,” he said as he set the bag of evidence aside. “Got the results on that fiber for you.”

It was nearly the end of the day and they weren’t short on cases in Olympus City, but Andre was one of the best at what he did and the heat was on now that Ludgate had upped his game to murder.

Outsiders might have thought it was cold that Andre could joke with evidence from a case like that, but Danny understood.

They dealt with the worst of the worst every day.

If they didn’t make light sometimes, they’d go crazy.

Danny had been going crazy. Andre was better at compartmentalizing, just like Lynn .

The lab was quiet aside from Andre and Ryan, which made it easier to have this discussion upstairs for once instead of down in the morgue. Besides, half of Danny’s work was still done as a normal detective.

The room was large enough for four main desks and a few additional lab stations. Danny had always thought the desks looked more like art tables since they sat up so high. “So,” he said, leaning against Andre’s desk when he reached him, “what do we know?”

“Milliskin matte fabric,” Andre held up the bag with the fiber inside, “in a shade of silver no Olympus City suppliers carry. Which means Ludgate either ordered the fabric online or he got it from somewhere outside the city.”

“That’s it?” It didn’t point fingers at Cho, but it didn’t point any at Ludgate either. “We don’t have anything else?”

“Can’t even say for sure if it was Ludgate, other than…assumption,” Andre said with a glance at Ryan, who didn’t seem to be paying them much attention. “No fingerprints on any of the glass, but if there was…” he let his words trail.

They would have been from Cho, since he was the only one who hadn’t been wearing gloves.

“Thanks, Andre. Can’t do more than our jobs, right?”

“Sorry, Danny. You uhh…doing anything else tonight?” He bobbed his eyebrows.

Danny had no intention of patrolling. “Just going home. It’s been a long day.”

“Yeah, man, you should take it easy. All this stellar evidence will still be here in the morning.”

Evidence . Right. Danny considered telling Andre about Cho’s comms, but he couldn’t risk it with Ryan in earshot.

He decided that the best way to get the comms out of the precinct would be to wait, lightning jump back in during the night as Zeus, faster than anyone could track or trace, then deliver them to Cho when he was ready to see him again.

Trying to smuggle them out as Danny Grant would likely blow up in his face.

“I’ll see you tomorrow, Andre.”

“And Danny? About that other thing we were talking about before?” Andre smiled crookedly, which somehow said it perfectly that he meant Cho. “If you want my advice… ”

Danny wasn’t sure he did.

“…don’t make any rash decisions, okay? Give yourself some time to breathe, then figure out what you really want.”

The various text messages from Cho were still sitting on Danny’s phone, waiting for a real answer. For now, maybe he needed to listen to Andre’s counsel. He didn’t have to make any decisions tonight. “Yeah. You’re probably right.”

R

Taking the extra pill in the afternoon had helped, but the lightness in Danny’s chest couldn’t last. He didn’t remember until he got home that they were having family dinner early this week as part of moving Joey into his new bedroom.

“Hey,” he said, carrying a box as he was about to head upstairs. He’d originally taken Stella’s old room on the main floor, but now he’d be getting the attic all to himself.

“Hey, Joey. Tonight’s the night, huh? I’ll help out in a sec.”

“Great. Yeah. That would be great .” Joey almost tripped up the first step as he shuffled backwards, a blinding wide smile on full display.

For the man Joey thought of as his hero.

Even though Danny had practically screamed at him and hadn’t been able to save either of their mothers from Thanatos.

Instead, Danny had failed and become the same type of cold murderer as his villain, taking out his vengeance until Thanatos was nothing but a smoldering husk.

The second Joey dashed upstairs, the smile Danny had mustered dropped. Someone else was dead now because of him—the guard from the museum. A dangerous Elemental was on the loose too, because of him . He shouldn’t be anyone’s role model right now.

Part of Danny wished he could escape. Usually, he’d escape to Cho or with another pill, but he had to learn to face these moments without running.

John and Stella didn’t know the full extent of what had happened at the museum, only that Ludgate had been behind the heist. Danny needed to tell them the truth, but he couldn’t tell them everything without coming clean about Cho, and he wasn’t ready to do that yet.

After he ended things, it would be easier to explain.

“Hey, Danny,” Stella said as she came downstairs to grab one of the other boxes already piled up by the landing.

“Anything in particular you want on your pizza? I was just about to order. And hey, for once you don’t have to eat an extra one by yourself in the kitchen to get your daily Zeus calories. ”

The pain of faking a smile at his sister like he’d faked one for Joey was more than Danny could handle today. She’d told him he didn’t have to do that. That he never had to do that. So he kept his face neutral and simply looked at her.

“Danny?” Leaving the box behind, she rushed over immediately and hugged him. “Are you okay?”

He took two deep breaths before answering, “ No .”

“Can I do anything?”

“No,” he snuffled against her shoulder, pulling back with a smile he actually meant, if only because his sister and best friend was always there for him. “This,” he gestured at the boxes, “and pizza will be good. Really. I’m not okay, but I think I can be. So maybe…hamburger, green pepper, olives?”

Stella made an exaggerated disgusted face. “I don’t know if I’m willing to go that far for you.”

Danny laughed.

“There he is.” John came down the stairs next with Joey right behind him. “Ready to get to work?”

“Wait a sec, John. We could get to pizza faster if we had a little,” Joey looked to Danny hopefully, “ extra help?”

Releasing another chuckle, Danny set his messenger bag on the floor. “I don’t know, Joey. Dad, don’t you have some speech prepared about how manual labor builds character?”

“I do,” John jumped in with a nod and wag of his finger. “I do have a speech about that. What kind of father would I be if I let you use Zeus to get off the hook for moving your own belongings?”

“Um, a really cool one?” Joey grinned, then looked at Danny with a bashful shrug. “Assuming you’re okay with that?”

There was so much left unsaid between them, but Joey was giving Danny an olive branch anyway.

Maybe it was because Danny was Zeus, someone Joey admired, but the young man also knew there was more to Danny than all the good Zeus had done, more than all the bad Danny had done, more than any single part of him.

“Do I get to choose first pizza?” Danny asked.

“Urg,” Stella groaned, “I wouldn’t agree to that one, Joey.”

But Joey rubbed his hands together like the only thing he’d ever ask for was to see Zeus in action. “Deal.”

Motioning with his arms like parting the Red Sea, Danny said, “Ready?” and when Joey nodded, he lightning jumped the remaining boxes up to the new bedroom as fast as he could, one after the other, then returned for John, Stella, and Joey in turn and deposited each of them on Joey’s bed, which at the moment was nothing but a mattress.

They were all laughing when Danny finally collapsed amongst them, and Joey nudged his arm in gratitude.

“ That was awesome.”

“Now about that hamburger, green pepper, and olive pizza…” Danny pulled out his phone.

There were a couple more pieces of furniture left to bring up, some maneuvering that required finesse beyond teleporting, and of course Joey would have to do all of his smaller unpacking himself, but it was nice to have family night without feeling like there was some large part of Danny he couldn’t share—some part of him he couldn’t be .

His phone vibrated several times while they waited for the pizza to arrive, and he tried to ignore it, tried to focus on being with his family and letting the rest of the world fall away. It was Joey who finally said something.

“It’s okay,” he said the next time Danny’s pants pocket buzzed. “Could be important, right?”

Danny saw the sympathy in Joey’s eyes, the apology for things Danny would never begrudge the young man, not after how he’d reacted in turn. Nodding, he snuck a peek at his phone.

Mal . A few earlier ones were from Andre, but the newest was from Cho.

“Thanks, Joey. I’ll just be a sec.”