Page 40 of Lovesick Titan

While Lynn looked at him with downturned eyebrows, Andre set the tablet aside and stepped up next to her. “But what if he didn’t?”

“Andre—”

“Danny,what if he didn’t?Because he doesn’t. You know he doesn’t. He’s just mad, right? And doesn’t think he can trust you. But he doesn’t hate you. He wants to hate you, but he doesn’treally, and none of this means you should hate yourself. Look…” Andre shifted his eyes to Lynn and her curious expression made it clear that what he was about to say hadn’t been shared with her yet. “Lucy called me yesterday.” He waited for a judgmental frown, but Lynn just rolled her eyes as if she should have seen this coming.

It might have been funny if Danny didn’t know where Andre was going with this. “You didn’t.”

“I uhh…may have told her everything. Not that you’re Zeus!” Andre added hurriedly. “But everything I know about you and Cho.”

“Great,” Danny said, succumbing further to that horrible numb feeling that was seeping into his bones, “now she hates me too.”

“But she doesn’t!” Andre surged forward, only to pull back and tuck another braid behind his ear. “Okay maybe she does a little. But only because she was pissed at first and said she needed to think about how to respond. But she also said there was something she needed to tell me. Said her brother was out of his mind since the whole blowup with you two, not thinking clearly, and probably going to do something stupid.

“He’sPrometheus. He doesn’t do anything small. But he just needs time. He wouldn’t be this upset if he didn’t care about you, Danny. You can’t hang up the cowl and let yourself take the fall for everything that happened just because you had a bad breakup.”

Danny shook his head. He’d heard every argument about why he should fight this, but he was too undeserving, too fractured and weary. “None of that matters. I’m not going to get a few weeks to let Mal cool down and decide if he wants to stop hating me. At most I have a week before IA closes the investigation. If I don’t give Mal up, they’re going to press charges. I can’t outrun this. All I can do is face it.”

“What about Ludgate?” Lynn asked neutrally, her expression tight but difficult to read.

“I’ll do everything I can to help the team catch him,” Danny said. “Joey helped me come up with some ideas. If I have to lightning jump out of prison to bring Ludgate in, so be it, but only if I’m needed. I’m done saving myself.”

The phrase seemed to resonate around them with a chilling clang and lingering echo. Neither Andre nor Lynn said anything for a few moments while Danny stared at his hands.

“Okay, Danny,” Lynn finally said, “but in case you change your mind before it’s too late, we’re still ready to get you out of this.”

Danny shook his head again, but before he could protest, Andre picked up where she’d left off.

“You can’t stop us from wanting to help you. You don’t want to accept that help, fine, but even if you really believe you don’t deserve to be saved, we’re still going to be here.” He flashed a heartfelt, earnest smile. “Always.”

Lynn smiled at Danny just as supportively. And damn, did it sting. It stung how much they continued to believe in him when he knew he wasn’t worth it.

“Guys…”

“Now, back to Ludgate,” Andre said before Danny could protest the wall of protection they’d surrounded him with. “You tell us what you and Joey came up with—and sweet, is he like the unofficial team mascot now, because we could seriously use some additional minds on this,anda cheerleader—and we’ll tell you what we found out about that fiber.”

“Fiber?” Danny perked up. “The fiber from the museum? You got a hit?”

“We think so,” Lynn said. “We don’t know yet if it will give us any leads to help find Ludgate, but it’s definitely interesting.”

Ignoring the elephant in the room revolving around Danny’s impending doom for now, Andre and Lynn led him over to one of the monitors. Andre sat at the desk and began pulling up newspaper articles from around the time Thanatos was defeated.

“Ludgate was known as more of a homebody before the power station incident,” Lynn explained. “He rarely left Olympus City, only to neighboring towns, which is where we’re guessing he was during his time away. So going off of the assumption that he wouldn’t have gone far to get what he needed for his suit and assuming he’d avoid online transactions since he’s smart enough to not want to leave a paper trail, we figured we’d see if there was anything in Olympus at the time of the explosion that could explain an outside source for the fiber.”

“Like what? A traveling fabric salesman?” Danny couldn’t help snorting.

“More like travelingcircus,” Andre said as he brought up a particular article and several ads for the circus that had been in town during the dates around the power station explosion. “And guess what type of fabric they used for some of their performers?”

“Milliskin matte in silver?” Danny couldn’t help but return Andre’s triumphant smile.

“Bingo.” He made another keystroke and an ad for the circus’ acrobatic group popped up—all in silver suits similar to Ludgate’s.

“So he has something to do with the circus?” Danny asked.

“We checked,” Lynn shook her head. “No connections we could find.”

“But we’re guessing he was there,” Andre said.

“What happened to the circus? Did it get destroyed during the blast?”

---