Page 47 of Lovesick Titan

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 whatIwant. 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’tlookat Danny like this.

“You can’t forgive me,” Danny followed him, “I get that. So if you need to hit me, fight me,hurtme, 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 bylettingme 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’msorry.”

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

“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. Iwon’t.” Sagging from the pain and weariness in his body, he looked so small, so young. “I’mtired. I was supposed to begetting 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, hecouldn’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.

Andre and Lynn had stopped yelling about the time Danny pulled the cowl from his head. They’d heard everything, so they knew he was safe although injured. When he tugged one of his earpieces toward his mouth and said, “I’m coming back now,” Lynn responded softly.

“Okay, Danny.”

She tended to his face with a gentle hand and ointment to soothe the pain as best she could. The rest would have to heal on its own. Danny didn’t want to talk, but while Andre and Lynn respected that, their pitying gazes opened up more of the hole inside of him.

“It’s okay,” he said. “It’ll be better now.”For Mal.That’s what mattered.

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