Page 9 of Lovesick Titan (Lovesick #2)

“You zipped him away.” Mal’s mind was spinning a mile a minute. “He knows Zeus knows where I live.”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“Where is he?”

“At the precinct. He’ll have a tough time getting back on the streets—”

“His father will get him off.”

“ Mal . Let me worry about that. Are you okay? How did he even get in here?” Danny asked more insistently.

Mal had lost himself in the chaos of it all, but he’d known something was wrong when he got back from the store. Dunkirk must have snuck in when he went out and stayed cleverly hidden. Mal was fine now though. He had to be fine. This was nothing like the other night.

Gripping the hand resting just below the cut on his arm, he relaxed and enjoyed the feeling of Danny’s touch. “It doesn’t matter. I’m okay. Get the kit.”

Maybe it was Mal’s imagination, but it seemed as though Danny flushed with color when their eyes met, gazes lingering just a little too long, as his thumb brushed Danny’s fingers…and then Danny was gone again.

Mal breathed in the smell of garlic in the air and the cooking sweet potatoes not quite done, filling the room with their aroma since Danny had taken them out and turned off the oven.

By the time he shifted and let himself sink back into the sofa, Danny was back.

He got a steak out of the fridge for Mal’s eye, an actual steak, which made Mal chuckle even as he held it up against the quickly forming bruise.

“I can ice my own wounds, you know,” he said.

“I figured. But you’re hurt and exhausted, so don’t strain yourself. This needs stitches,” Danny indicated the cut on his arm. “I can do it, but you’ll want something for the pain.”

“Already do, Sparky.”

Danny nodded and disappeared again, only to blink back into existence with Mal’s bottle of ibuprofen and a glass of water. He was one to talk about straining himself. Mal downed the pills. Slowly, Danny helped him remove his shirt to better get at the wound.

While Mal sat there with a steak at his eye, Danny cleaned the cut, disinfected it, and carefully stitched him up. When he was done, Danny’s gentle touch placed a bandage over the wound and smoothed the edges with his fingers.

“Déjà vu,” Mal said, as he set the steak aside and reached up to grip the wrist of the hand tending to him.

They were inches apart on the sofa, Mal resting back on the cushions while Danny had one leg up to get closer to him.

“Not the kind of déjà vu I want,” Danny whispered, as if afraid to speak too loudly when the rest of the room was quiet.

Danny let Mal hold his hand in place on his arm, while his other hand strayed, drifting down to Mal’s hip and resting at the edge of one of his larger scars.

Mal had many, from years of abuse and a hard way of living.

Normally, when Danny touched one, he pushed on with confidence, but tonight, the raised scar tissue made him snap to his senses like he’d been in a trance.

“Sorry,” he said and pulled both hands away.

But Mal reached for them, hung onto them, and brought Danny’s hands back to his skin. “It’s okay. Broken bottle one night when Dad got drunk. Now I get to add another knife wound to the collection.” Mal smirked as he nodded at his bandaged arm.

Danny smiled with him, but it was a sad, shattered expression. He teased the tips of his fingers over the scar tissue. “Are all these really from…” With a startle, he tried to pull away again as if he’d said something he shouldn’t.

“My father?” Mal said, refusing to let him go. “Not all. Most though. Some are from prison. Some dumb mistakes. Fights like tonight. But most…yeah, they’re his.”

Taking Danny’s hand still resting on his hip, Mal drew it upwards, guiding it across his bare chest until he reached his shoulder and the faint circular scar tissue near his clavicle.

“Freezer burn. From his powers. Because I broke my leg when I was eight and I cried. He wanted to teach me a lesson. Teach me how to keep pain in and never let anyone see it. So he held the tip of a frozen finger there until it burned.”

Danny’s brow furrowed with indignant anger.

Mal trailed the hand lower to a particularly bad scar across his stomach—his worst and the one he remembered the clearest. “First knife wound. Caught me with a boy in my room. Would have killed him if I hadn’t stood in the way.

I took the brunt of it. Let him run off.

Never brought a boy home again, not ‘til Dad was gone. Brought a couple girls home,” he shrugged.

“Girls?” Danny asked with a touch of humored skepticism bleeding through his concern. He splayed his hand flat against Mal’s stomach, warm and intimate in his touch.

“Occasionally. Not as often.”

Danny nodded but his smile quickly faded, his eyes trained on the scar and the affectionate way he traced it with his fingers. “Sometimes…I think my dad hates me because…” he trailed and the motion of his hand slowed. “There’s something I never told you. About the night I killed Thanatos.”

The smile dropped from Mal’s lips as well as he waited for Danny to continue.

“He killed my mom ,” Danny said, bright golden eyes looking up at Mal, sending a chill through him and prickling his arms with goosebumps.

“She was there. In the power station. He took her and put her there to torture me. He…” His voice caught and he shook his head like he didn’t know how to say more.

Mal had known about the death of Danny’s partner, but he hadn’t thought to keep up to date on Detective Danny Grant when his focus had always been on Zeus. His mother…

“That’s when I lost it. That’s why I lost it.

He’d already killed Rick, so many other people, so many people that night, but Mom…

she was chosen because of me. I couldn’t save her.

Dad says he doesn’t blame me, but sometimes I feel like he has to.

Like he hates me. And I know that’s stupid , can’t even remotely compare to you having Icebox as a father—”

“Danny,” Mal cut him off, because he couldn’t take one more minute of Danny being so good to him when all the kid’s grief was Mal’s fault.

“My father didn’t hate me. Didn’t think he did.

That was the worst part. In his mind, he was doing me a favor.

Teaching me lessons .” He took a breath and watched the way Danny’s hand moved with the motion.

“The hardest hits, stitches, broken bones, none of it compared to him still acting like he loved us when it was over. Your father’s not like that.

He doesn’t hate you. He doesn’t blame you, he couldn’t.

And you shouldn’t blame yourself either. You should blame me. ”

The fresh grief that marred Danny’s face was too potent for Mal to look at. He kept his eyes on Danny’s hand resting against his scar.

“I’m sorry she died because I wasn’t there.”

“Mal…”

“And it’s time you learned why,” he pushed on, refusing to be silenced. “I was on my way to meet you. I was coming to help. When Oz Percy knocked on my door.”

R

Mal was already suited up, ready for battle.

Lucy had passed him the message Danny left at Haven, insisting she get to come along, which Mal was having none of and trying to convince her to stay behind.

He would have blown Oz off when he answered the man’s knock, despite him being a former member of the Titans as Hermes, if he hadn’t looked so desperate, with a woman Mal had never met tucked against his side and a little boy clinging to her legs.

“I need your help.”

There wasn’t time. Danny would be facing Thanatos in minutes at the power station. Mal had to be there—but he couldn’t turn Oz away. He couldn’t turn Carla and Michael away after hearing their story.

Why did it have to be tonight ? Why did it have to pour when it rained just like the idiom said?

Mal thought he could do both, that he could get the family to safety and still make it to the station.

He called in Dom to meet them at the shelter.

If Lucy insisted on helping with Thanatos, maybe he could convince her to stay with Oz instead and watch over the family while Mal took Dom to the station.

Divide and conquer; they were good at that.

But when they reached the shelter, Dunkirk was waiting.

Using Oz’s teleportation powers would just mean more running.

Carla couldn’t keep doing that. She was newly pregnant; she couldn’t handle the strain.

They needed to make a stand, but Mal couldn’t risk taking Dunkirk’s life.

It would bring too much heat on the neighborhood, from the cops and the Irish .

“The only thing keeping me from turning you into crumpled snow right now is the extra bodies your father would create avenging you,” Mal said, keeping Oz behind him, who held Carla and Michael close, and letting Lucy spread out to his right as Dom approached from down the street.

“But that only saves you for so long. Back off. And you get to walk away.”

Armed with a simple knife and gun, neither of which he’d drawn, Dunkirk stared Mal down without an ounce of fear toward the powerhouses surrounding him. He knew Mal wouldn’t risk a war with one of the families.

“You might pack a stronger punch than your dead daddy,” Dunkirk spat, “might even think you have more sway, but you’re still the same trash he was. You don’t own these streets, Cho. You don’t own that bitch behind you either. She’s mine.”

Mal’s father had treated his mother the same way. And Lucy’s. That’s why neither of their mothers was alive.

Hands icing into frosted fists, Mal squared off against Dunkirk in front of the shelter doors. “You don’t own anyone. Not her. Not the boy. Not the baby. And certainly not me. Now back off .”

Dunkirk pressed his luck and leaned closer. “Make me.”