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“You gonna share that chair with me?”

“Absolutely.”

He grinned, helping me stand before flopping onto the chair and guiding me down on his lap gently. I twisted so I could cup his cheek. “I want all of it. Don’t sugar coat it.”

“It’s not pretty.”

“I didn’t ask for pretty, just the truth. I want to know everything that made you the man you are today. The good and the bad.”

“It’s mostly bad,” he warned.

“I promise I won’t judge you,” I said, squeezing his hand.

“Okay,” he said, exhaling deeply. “Let’s see. I guess I should start with my old man, who skipped town before I was born, never to be seen or heard from again.”

“Were you and your mom close?” I asked.

“She loved me, but she loved meth more,” he said, without a hint of emotion in his voice.

“I’m sorry,” I said, my eyes already welling up with tears. I’d worked with enough troubled kids to know what kind of burden Jekyll must have carried as a child.

“I was sixteen years old the first time I was locked up.”

“Locked up?”

He nodded. “Spent time in juvie.”

I frowned. “Forwhat?”

“I’d just started my junior year of high school and this senior chick, Janna Forrester, invited me to a pool party at her house. She was hot and her parents were out of town, so of course I said yes. But when I got there, I found out there was no party. Only Janna.”

“She was there alone?”

“Yep.”

“Slutttt,” I teased.

He chuckled. “I won’t go there, but let’s just say she wasn’t shy about her admiration of me.”

“I’ll bet she wasn’t,” I said. “Wereyoushy?”

“I was pissed,” Jekyll said. “It was no secret she had a serious boyfriend, Dalvin Elis. He was captain of the football team and rich as fuck. Besides, I knew what this was really all about.”

“What do you mean?”

“Janna was bored, and I was the bad boy she wanted to use as her new toy. She was sick of dating within her social circle, and I was a novelty. The kid from the wrong side of town with the single mom who didn’t give a shit.”

“So, what did you do?”

“I tried to split, but Dalvin, the asshole boyfriend, showed up just as I was leaving. To make matters worse, Janna came running after me. Topless.”

“Oh, shit.”

“Yep. So, Dalvin sees me and his half-naked girlfriend standing in the foyer and flips out. I could hardly blame the guy after what he’d just walked in on. I tried to explain, but he flew at me before I could get more than two words out, landing a haymaker to my eye that sent me straight to the floor. He began kicking me the moment I hit the ground as Janna screamed for him to stop. While he was kicking, I managed to grab ahold of his left leg and roll my body towards him, sending him tumbling backwards to the floor. I just wanted the guy off me, but as he fell he hit the back of his head on a large marble planter box by the door. Severing his spinal cord and paralyzing him instantly.”

“Oh my god, really?”

He nodded. “It was self-defense, but I was sent to juvie anyway. I was poor and my public defender was shit, so off to the warehouse I went. Ready to be filed away with all the other future full-time criminals.”