“It was an ugly, ugly life. Second Chances saved me when I was too stupid to save myself. I was in and out of jail several times before I landed on their doorstep as a final chance to straighten up. I owe them so much. It’s why it’s so important for me to work there.” He swallowed hard enough he nearly choked. “I want to give back to the program that saved me, and I want to give other kids the same opportunity.”
“Why did they let you go?”
“Deuce?”
She nodded furiously.
“I fought my way out. Literally. Think cage fighting but with weapons. It was ugly.”
“It nearly killed him,” Darcy said from the doorway. “But he made it.” She moved in and laid a hand on Justin’s shoulder. “Don’t hold the past against him.”
“I can’t change who I was, Grace. Therapy taught me that much. The most I can do is try my damnedest to be a better person. I had to forgive myself for being responsible for a lot of ugliness. You have every right to know who I once was, but I want you to see me for who I am now.”
And that was the crux of the entire evolutionary cycle he’d been caught up in. It came down to now, to this very moment, when he was either rejected or absolved.
Grace turned huge green eyes to him and stared, seeming to gaze straight through him to his most intimate parts.
He let her look, silently pleading with her to glimpse the man he wanted to be for her.
17
GRACE COULD ONLY stare at Justin with a combination of horror and admiration. Horror that he’d been such a violent young man; admiration that he’d clawed his way out of the lifestyle and turned himself around. It all made sense now. “That’s why you let me take the lead with Gavin. You knew it would be more effective.”
Justin reached for her hand, stopping when she involuntarily flinched. “I understood how to handle him because it was how I was handled. The rest? You did it on your own—the comic-book connection, the firm but compassionate female authority figure, the camaraderie. But I also realized I was also too close to be entirely objective. I’ve got to get over that if I’m going to make this work at the program.”
“You’ll deal with a lot of kids involved in various gangs.” The thought made her want to vomit. How could she be involved with a man who would put himself in constant danger daily just by showing up to work? Who would willingly dive into the kind of malignant environment she was so desperately trying to leave behind? She wasn’t sure it was something she could live with.
“I will, yes. But hopefully I’ll be a positive influence on them and help them realize they’ve got options.” He closed the distance between their hands and laced their fingers together. “Please, Grace. Trust who you know I am now, not who I used to be.”
“You killed people.”
“I did. I’ll never be proud of it, but it was a ‘me or them’ situation each time.”
“How many times?” When he hesitated, her fingers spasmed in his grasp. “How many times, Justin?”
“Less than ten.”
She shuddered. Any one of those instances could have gone a different direction. “You should have turned yourself into the police.”