Page 90 of Lovesick Titan

“But I am.”

“You’renot. If you keep telling me I’m better than I think I am, then you have to believe the same for you. Ludgate is going to pay, but it’s going to be in the Elemental wing of Olympus City Prison.”

The sparkle in Mal’s eyes grew shadowed as Danny met his stare. He nodded once but pushed past Danny after holding his gaze and headed for the doors.

“Unless it’s life or death.”

Chapter24

The last twenty-four hours had been a whirlwind for Mal, like everything involving Danny Grant. If they weren’t helping each other simply live in the open but still cramped quarters for so many people or working on the plan against Ludgate, someone was always buzzing around making sure everyone rested and ate and took care of themselves—usually the good doctor, until Stella finally stood in front of Lynn and demanded she take her own advice.

When the end of the day drew near, there hadn’t been enough time, there never was. All Mal could think about, pushing aside the numbing fear of facing Ludgate, was Danny and how much he wanted to see the kid without the shadow of impending doom.

He’d avoided Danny the rest of the day, but that wasn’t what he wanted, it was just his way when he didn’t know how to express his feelings. He was such a hypocrite for it too, because he kept telling Danny that he could always talk to him, yet there he was, keeping quiet like a coward. Mal knew what he wanted, but all this—the teams working together—made him all the more terrified of what he might lose.

And that made him hate Hades down to his bones.

Mal felt unraveled, as if having Danny and losing him, then almost having him again only to lose him to Ludgate, and then finally,finallyhaving himagainonly to keep Danny at a distance—it was like a cord pulled taut until it snapped.

There were several rooms that had been temporarily retrofitted as lodgings. Mal stood now before the door to his claimed room, hand on the knob but unable to enter.

“Maybe the problem,” Lucy broke into his reverie, and he flinched as he looked up to see her standing only a few feet from him, “is that’s the wrong room.” She nodded at his door before disappearing through her own.

Mal turned back to stare at it. This was his room, but Lucy didn’t mean he was about to accidently enter someone else’s. He no longer had excuses about testing his new goggles or the Miasma Field or helping get the trap ready for transport. There was no way he’d be able to sleep without Danny.

As Mal turned from his room to walk the hallways, he saw that most of the others were asleep or getting there—he was fairly certain the murmuring he heard from one room was Priestly on the phone checking in with Arty, and Danny’s adopted brother offered Mal a pleasant goodnight as he passed him. The whole affair carried a sense offamilybeneath the abject fear of the boogey man Ludgate had become.

Stepping up to Danny’s door at the end of the hall, Mal knocked twice but didn’t wait for an answer before he entered. “Hey. Thought maybe you wouldn’t want to sleep alone,” he said and closed the door behind him.

Danny’s face lit up when he saw Mal. He was awake. Of course he was. He sat against the wall on top of one of the few actual mattresses they’d acquired, placed on the floor with a mess of sheets and a large down comforter atop it. In his underwear and a T-shirt, he looked far too young and endearing.

“Hey. Yeah. I really don’t,” he said, dropping his legs from being pulled into his chest to spread out on top of the covers.

Mal had traded jeans for sleep pants—not Zeus ones, though he’d been tempted—but otherwise remained in his long-sleeved T-shirt. He’d padded there in socks, a surreal enough experience, and climbed now onto the makeshift bed in what appeared to be a supply closet, looking claustrophobic with all the shelving squished against the walls to give the bed room.

The touch of Danny’s hand was like an electric shock. He let Danny pull him down and sat beside him, leaning against the wall, hip to hip. Their hands stayed coiled, resting between them. It felt like an exhale they hadn’t earned. Oh they’dearnedit, but that deep breath in between wasn’t yet finished, not until they took care of Ludgate.

“Not trying to be distant, Sparky,” Mal said after a few quiet moments, staring at their intertwined fingers. “When you showed up at the last second to save my life, my only thought was holding you and never letting go. But life doesn’t work that way. We haven’t had time to think. Tobreathe.”

“I know. There are too many unknowns out there and it sucks. But that’s why I’m glad you’re here.” Danny rested his head on Mal’s shoulder, and Mal couldn’t resist dropping his head down too, feeling the brush of Danny’s hair against his skin.

“We haven’t answered the hard questions yet. Shan’s talking pardons and your father isn’t glaring as much as I expected, but what comes next? Forthis, I mean.” Mal lifted their connected hands.

“Tomorrow,” Danny said, as though the answer were simple. “And the next day. And the next. Here.” Untangling from Mal, he reached over the side of the bed and returned with a tablet. It lit up at his touch, and he pulled up one of its applications. “This is what Andre made me. It has a normal calendar with birthdays and appointments coming up,” he said, showing Mal each item as he mentioned it, “but the default view only looks at today, because thinking too big, too much at once, that’s when life starts to feel suffocating.”

A lump formed in Mal’s throat as Danny tapped an icon marked ‘Today’s Heroics’ and it pulled up a simple list with the day’s date at the top.

“Just today is easier. Then tomorrow when it gets here. Today, I…ate all my meals and snacks,” Danny said as he tapped a checkbox beside the item and progressed downward. “When asked how I was, I told the truth—sometimes okay, sometimes not. When people wanted to talk to me, I stopped and listened. When I wanted to be angry, I let myself be angry, but then I took a breath to calm down before deciding what to do next. When I felt like it was all too much and I couldn’t…” his voice caught with a touch of distress and dampness, but he paused, took a breath. “I got up...and did laps around the garage,” he chuckled. “Then I ate another snack to regain the calories. All in all, a good day. See?”

Reaching the end of the list, with everything in it checked off or marked with additional notes in the margins like a real journal, he pressed enter at the bottom, and the screen changed. It looked like Tetris for a moment, but Danny didn’t control the pieces that began to build on oneanother to form a tower. When the pieces had all fallen, different colored blocks that fit like a puzzle, a tiny 8-bit Zeus appeared onscreen and jumped up and down at the top, with a pixelated lightning bolt flashing overhead that caused the entire screen to flicker.

Mal laughed, and Danny giggled with him, nuzzling his shoulder.

“Great, right?” Danny said. “If I miss a checkbox, I have to navigate the Tetris pieces like the real game. So even on a bad day, there’s still a way to make up for it, ya know?” Because failure came with its own setbacks, but this had a way to make things better, however small, even after a misstep. “Just means I have to work harder.”

“How did Vaughn come up with this indays?” Mal asked.

“Coz he’s pretty much a genius? Plus I think he’s been working on it for more than a few days, he just had it ready finally. Though I totally went into the code and added the lightning,” he said proudly.

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