Mal’s eyes felt strangely hot as he slid his hands to Danny’s face. “Those are a lotta words you’re putting in people’s mouths, Sparky. Don’t they deserve to think for themselves? You’re so sure you’re the bad guy in this story, but if you weren’t paying attention,” he grinned, “that role is already taken.”
Danny broke into a short, bitter laugh.
“Besides, your friends keep trying to help. People don’t go out of their way to help someone who doesn’t deserve it. Well, maybe you do. But normal people? We’re selfish. If all your friends see you as more than you see yourself, then maybe they’re not the blind ones.”
For a moment, Danny seemed to look right through Mal. “What if someday I snap and do something I’ll regret?”
Mal smirked to lighten the mood. “You saying I should be careful if we cross paths in the near future?”
“You mean for your heist?” Danny called him on his bullshit, not that Mal was about to admit anything. “As long as you don’t hurt anyone, you’re safe.”
“A deal’s a deal.”
“Until it stops suiting you, right, Cho?”
“For now, I have no intention of hurting anyone. And it’s Mal.”
Danny chuckled, and whatever tension remained eased into something else. He squeezed Mal’s sweatpants-covered ass, which was far too much of a tease on a Tuesday morning quickly nearing 8AM.
“Mal…” he purred.
“Time for work, Sparky.”
ß
Work, damn it. Danny had almost forgotten. A morning romp would have done wonders to rid him of the lingering ache in his chest. But even without one, the twist in his stomach, the ease with which his tears had formed, seemed distant now, like all he’d needed was to let some of the pain out, and for once it hadn’t immediately nudged its way back in.
Logically, Danny knew that talking things out would help, but he hadn’t wanted that with anyone else. With Cho, it didn’t matter how the man looked at him afterwards. Cho was bad to begin with. Why would he care if Danny was headed down a dark path? If he’d killed someone? He probably welcomed it and hoped for a team up having Danny carry out his thefts.
Only Cho would never want that. Having Danny’s powers in his pocket would spoil the challenge. At least Danny hadn’t confessed the entire story. Cho still didn’t know that Danny’s mother had been the intended target that night, that she’d died with all the others. Danny had to be careful or he’d give away every secret he had without putting up a single fight.
While Danny was up in his head, Cho climbed off of him. If he hadn’t been distracted, he would have clung to the other man a little longer.
“Danny…” Cho chided.
The long game, Danny thought as he accepted the hand Cho held out to help him from the sofa. Cho couldn’t have any fun with a blubbering mess, so of course he’d want to cheer Danny up. It didn’t mean anything. It just felt nice that Cho didn’t pry the way the others did. He’d never look down on Danny. He was a liar, a criminal, a scoundrel—he was the reason Danny had been forced into that position with Thanatos to begin with—but while the rest of his life felt like an open wound, somehow Cho was a balm.
Danny made a show of changing out of Cho’s clothes and into his Zeus costume right there in the living room. Leaving the sleep pants and T-shirt folded on the sofa, he started to put on his boots at the door.
“Interesting choice of work clothes.” Cho crossed his arms with an amused eyebrow raise.
“I’ll change when I get there. And next time I’ll call. Or text. Promise. Thanks for breakfast.” Danny made to walk toward Cho off the rug, then gave an abortive gesture like oops, stuck now with my boots on.
Cho rolled his eyes, but he still moved closer to accept the kiss Danny pulled him into. And let linger. And linger... Maybe a little longer than necessary.
“Have a nice day at work, dear,” Cho said, sickly sweet in his familiar drawl.
Danny found himself smiling—and meaning it.
Cho was a bad man. He was. He…he was. But he made things lighter. And easier. And even though Danny knew that soon he’d have to end this or risk getting in too deep, for now he could enjoy the lie for just a little longer.
ß
He deserves this, Zeus had said. Interesting.
Prometheus should have been there the night Zeus murdered Thanatos. But he wasn’t. Zeus resented him for it, that was clear, yet they’d still ended up in bed together. This affair had more layers than Hades realized. Zeus was planning something of his own.
For now, Hades filed the information away for later. The city’s hero and his nemesis were making this far too easy.
Chapter 18
When Danny knew Lynn and Andre would be elsewhere, he jumped into the morgue and grabbed his phone from where he’d left it with his clothes last night. He also found the pill bottle from Lynn and downed one without a moment’s hesitation.
Everyone had tried to reach him at some point—Andre, Stella, his father wondering why he’d never come home. He spent his lunch break answering texts while avoiding actually seeing anyone. He was fine. He was sorry. Yes, he’d talk, he just needed to get through the day, hopefully without incident or anyone showing up to blindside him. And he almost made it.
Until John came in as Danny was about to leave his office for the day and said he’d walk down with him to the morgue.
They were silent for the first few minutes, even after they reached the basement floor and no one was around to overhear them. John’s silent treatment was almost worse than his lectures.
Closing his eyes, Danny leaned against the wall once they slipped through the locked door into the old morgue’s hallways. “Andre and Lynn know. Stella knows a little.”
“Care to share with me finally?” his father asked.
I’m broken, Danny thought, but he’d just scare John if he said that. “I’m sad and angry all the time and nothing”—almost nothing—“seems to make it go away. It’s making me careless, dangerous when I’m out there as Zeus. But if I try to talk it out, I’m going to end up screaming.”
“Like you have with your friends?”
Danny opened his eyes with a sigh, but he couldn’t look at his father. “What am I supposed to say, Dad? Mom and Rick are gone because of me. I hate myself and sometimes I don’t even know why I…”
“Why you what?”
Why I keep going.
“Danny, listen to me,” John said when Danny didn’t speak. “Rick and your mother are not dead because of you. None of what happened was your fault. You did everything—”
“Can you stop lying to me, Dad?” Danny finally turned to him.
“Lying?” John’s brow scrunched in confusion, his teal eyes bright in the dim light of the hallway. “What are you talking about?”
Danny stared at the door leading into the morgue’s main room, at the other doors leading to rooms they’d repurposed just to play hero. “Being a cop always puts more of a bullseye on your family—you said that to me when I chose to go to the academy. Not to scare me away, but so I’d understand the burden. You had no idea what a bullseye was until I became Zeus.”
“Danny—”
“He turned me into a killer. You can’t tell me you don’t blame me when the only reason Mom died was because Thanatos wanted to get to me.”
“I would never—”
“But you do!” Danny yelled, quickly reining his voice back in at the risk of Andre and Lynn overhearing from down the hall. “I do. Everyone does, they just don’t want to say it. If you didn’t blame me, you wouldn’t cringe every time you look at me.” His cheeks felt numb to the tears leaking down them. “And it’s okay, Dad, I get it. I don’t like looking at me either.”
Scrubbing the wetness from his face, Danny tried to push past his father, but John stood in his path like a monument
, as tall as Danny but broader, bigger. Danny almost lightning jumped past him, but before he could, his father’s arm hooked around his neck and pulled him in tight against his chest.
He held him there and squeezed until Danny lost his breath. When John shushed him, like he used to when Danny was a little boy, something triggered in the back of his mind and he sniffled miserably into his father’s shoulder.
“If I cringe,” John said, soft and steady, “it’s because I hate seeing so much pain looking back at me.”
“Dad, I…” Faltering, Danny squeezed his father in return. “I need a break, but I can’t take one, so what’s there to even do about it?”
“There’s the hard way. The long way. One day at a time. I know that’s not the answer you want to hear right now, kiddo, but I promise you that the people who care about you will always be here. I’ll always be here. If you need a break from being Zeus—”
“I can’t.” Danny pulled out of the embrace. “I can’t let anyone else get hurt when I can do something to prevent it. Ludgate would have targeted me anyway. He wants the limelight, and that means facing Zeus. I’ll be okay, Dad. I just need to think like you said—one day at a time.” It sounded so simple and yet insurmountable all at once.
Unwilling to let Danny pull away just yet, John looked him square in the eyes. “Don’t you dare hate yourself. There is nothing to hate. Don’t blame yourself for something that was out of your control.”
But killing Thanatos hadn’t been out of Danny’s control. Just like lending a hand hadn’t been out of Cho’s control. It was his fault too, at least for Danny’s mother. Danny had to remember that.
“Okay,” he said, even if he didn’t fully believe it.
John pulled him in for one final hug before he let him go.
Andre and Lynn weren’t as difficult to face as Danny had feared when they entered the main room. His friends hugged him too, both at once like they had weeks ago, and trapped Danny between them. He wanted to apologize over and over again for how much he must have scared them all, how worried he’d made them, how much he kept pushing them away, but he couldn’t find the words. Sorry wasn’t enough.
So he simply said, “I promise I won’t run anymore.”
The next day, Danny agreed to have lunch with Stella. He couldn’t tell her, or John, or Andre and Lynn, everything that was going on, so he told his sister half-truths. How angry he was. How numb sometimes. How responsible he felt for everything that had gone wrong, everyone who had died, and it overwhelmed him most days until the only thing he could do to feel better was lash out.
“You said there was something that was helping,” Stella said. “Is it still helping?”
“Sometimes.” Danny feared she’d find out since Andre knew a little, so he had to tell her at least as much as he’d told him. “There’s this…guy. That I’ve been sleeping with.”
“Danny.” She flashed him her ‘look at you being naughty’ smile as she reached across the table for his hand.
“It’s not a big deal, he’s just…easy to get lost in? When nothing else makes sense or makes me feel better, he does. Which is probably just endorphins from the sex.”
Giggling, Stella pushed him in the shoulder. “That’s good, Danny, I’m happy for you, but don’t get so addicted to the endorphin rush that you feel worse when you’re away from him. You need to figure out how to keep those good feelings going.”
“What do you mean?” Danny asked, thinking of the pills Lynn had given him, but he hadn’t told Stella about that yet.
“Maybe this mystery man needs to upgrade to mystery boyfriend if he makes you feel so good. There is more to happiness than sex, you know? Or doesn’t he go for that sort of thing?” There was an edge to her smirk that proved she was prying for details about someone she didn’t know enough to trust with her best friend’s heart. Little did she know how warranted her concerns were.
Cho, his boyfriend? That would be insane.
“Danny?”
“Yeah, uhh…I don’t think he’d go for that. We’re from different worlds most the time.”
“Yeah? Sometimes those relationships burn the brightest.”
Or burn out the fastest, Danny thought.
“But don’t spend so much time with a guy who’d never want more from you than a good time,” she said with warmth and worry in her eyes. “You deserve someone who wants to sweep you off your feet.”
Danny had always wanted that. He wanted someone to lose their mind over him, to think of nothing but him—all-in, can’t live without it love. Most people probably found that terrifying, but it was non-negotiable for Danny. Cho would never understand something like that. And Danny would never want it with someone like Cho.
How could he?
“What about you?” he changed the subject. “Anyone sweeping you away lately? Or any good stories from work you can share without violating HIPPO?”
“HIPAA,” Stella rolled her eyes, “and that joke has never been funny.”
“But it’s the Hippocratic oath! Such a missed opportunity.”
They shared another laugh, and Danny reminded himself that he could do this. He could do this. One day at a time—with or without Cho.
ß
“What are you doing?”
Lucy jumped, upsetting the grip she had on her phone, but Mal had already seen the incriminating evidence over her shoulder. Careless that she hadn’t noticed him.
Mal had come upon her outside Mrs. Pak’s corner store, at one of the outdoor tables by the Korean café. It was mid-afternoon, so Lucy only had a half-finished drink, no food, but she’d been engrossed in her phone—which until a moment ago had been displaying Andre Vaughn’s Facebook page.
“Not funny, Mickey.” She whirled in her chair to face him.
“I’d think it’s hysterical,” Mal said, promptly taking a seat at the table beside her, “if there was any sane reason for you to even know who that man is. Why the sudden interest in Vaughn?”
“I was going to ask you the same thing when I searched your browser history last night, until I remembered Zeus works with someone named Andre, and as it turns out, this little cutie is a CSI. So sue me for doing a little detective work.”
“You went through my browser history?” Mal practically lurched out of his seat. “Where? How?” He had half a mind to confiscate her phone. If Priestly had helped her hack into any of his tech…
“You have all the safeguards in the world, Mickey,” she said, “but as long as something is password protected, you don’t think you need to clear your cache. I found some references to him on the safe house computer. Thought maybe he was your mystery man. He isn’t, is he? Coz he’s kinda cute…” She gazed at her screen longingly.
Mal should have known better than to underestimate his sister. She also obviously had a thing for adorable nerds, because while Vaughn was a handsome enough young man, his profile picture sported a giant smile and a T-shirt of the classic E.T. movie poster, only a silhouette of Godzilla had been added and was in the process of eating Elliott.
To get her eyes back on him, Mal snapped his fingers in front of her face. “You are not allowed to use that knockout lipstick seducing a CSI.”
“Wouldn’t dream of it,” she grinned.
“Lucy…”
“I was just checking his relationship status.” Almost thirty years old, yet her pout made her look like she was five again, being denied a treat at the grocery store. “He happens to be single, and well…your recent success, even if you won’t share with me who the guy is, has me curious.”
“About clandestine affairs?”
“About finding someone who could make me smile like that.”
Mal hadn’t realized he’d been smiling more lately. First his mind and the words leaving his mouth were mutinying against him, now his expressions? He screwed his face up into a fro
wn.
“Mrs. Pak described him for me,” Lucy said, shifting back to teasing now that she had an opening. “Tall. Too skinny. Redhead. Didn’t mention his leaning. Fire maybe? Well-dressed but a bit on the dorky side.”
“Mrs. Pak did not say ‘dorky’.”
“Close enough.” She shrugged and leaned forward on the table. “What she did say definitely translated to dorky. So this guy sounds entirely your type, is what I’m saying, but what matters is she said he showed up and you were flustered. He surprised you, huh? You’re keeping him to yourself. Won’t talk about him. Won’t tell me who he is. Which means you like him. And if he’s dressed nicely with a flare of nerdy too, that tells me a few other things. He’s not part of our world, is he?”
Mal sighed, his hands twitching on the tabletop. “More so than you might think.”
He’d taught his sister too well; she knew how to read people, how to fit together the pieces of a puzzle and act accordingly, turning any situation to her advantage. They weren’t supposed to use their skills against each other, but that rule often went out the window when one of them thought it was in the other’s best interest.
But as Mal prepared to counter her prodding, to either shift attention elsewhere or maybe, maybe come clean and admit he was sleeping with Zeus, he saw Lucy’s attention diverted behind him, and her smile fell into a hard glower.
Turning to look over his shoulder, Mal soon glowered as well.
Dunkirk. On his turf. Again.
He stood with a scrape of metal on concrete. “This ends today.”
“Mickey…”
“Back me up or back off.”
With a huff, she hurried to catch up with his swift strides across the street to where Dunkirk had just entered the bakery.
Mal folded his hands in front of him and brushed a thumb along the switch on his amplifier. He’d worn the cuff on a whim today. Thanks to Priestly, he could do plenty to send a strong message without even having to blast Dunkirk. “I have some lovely new enhancements to try out, sis. Stay close.”
Lovesick Gods Page 24