He sat on her couch—in the middle, of course—and waited for her to sit. So she did . . . in the computer chair. With one eyebrow raised, he silently called her on it, but she simply crossed her legs as calmly as she could, like she was fully dressed in a meeting instead of in her apartment about to have her heart shoveled out, dressed like a loon.

“Reagan . . .” Greg stopped, sighed and ran a hand through his short hair. “Can you come over here, please?”

“You wanted to talk. You can talk from there.” If he wanted a pushover, he picked the wrong woman to start a relationship with.

No, not relationship. That word implied a give-and-take. A mutual sharing. Not a give-and-give-and-get-nothing-back.

He watched her, probably considering his odds, then just ran his hand over his hair once more before sighing and settling back. “My mom didn’t want me.”

She blinked. Didn’t want him . . . to come visit? To join the military?

“Didn’t want me, period. She gave me up. Dumped me, actually. I guess the reason I’m as lucky as I have been is because she gave me up to begin with, instead of trying to raise me with no help, no resources, and no real desire to bother with a kid.” The corner of his lips tilted up, and her breath caught at that hint of vulnerability. “So, thanks, Mom.”

“Greg,” Reagan breathed, but he didn’t hear her.

“Bounced around to a few foster homes. People seem to have stages they prefer when it comes to the temp kids. They like the infants, but when they start crawling, they’re done. Or they like the toddlers, but when they start getting mouthy, they pass them on.” His chest moved in an imitation of a laugh. “You can guess how many families want to deal with surly teenagers, especially the ones who already have a rep for being uncooperative and, well, sort of douchebags.”

Suddenly, her stubbornness to sit alone in the chair seemed so stupid, so petty. But to move now might have broken the moment, and she knew he was finally ready to purge.

“Some were okay, none were great. Some were downright shitty. More than once, I ran away. I would have been better on my own.”

No, never on your own.

“So when people, a few guys around the city, some from school and some not, started paying attention, I fell for it. Hook, line and sinker. I was their lackey. ‘We’re your family, Greg, do it for your family.’” He sighed and closed his eyes. “Such an idiot.”

That unlocked whatever hold she’d had on her own control. She ran the three steps toward the couch, jumping to his side. He let out a big “oof!” as she landed against him, holding tight. Her legs wrapped around his waist, her breasts smashed against his ribs and her nose pressed into his shoulder.

“Hey,” he said in a shaky voice, wrapping an arm around her. “What’s this?”

“I hate this story.” She could barely choke out the words, because she knew she couldn’t cry and make it through the rest of the talk. And they had to talk. Now that the dam had been torn down, the rest had to be purged. But if she cried . . . game over. “And I just . . . I need this.”

He didn’t say anything for a while, just rubbed her back. “I thought you’d hate me because of it.”

“No. I’m still pissed at you. Seriously, numbingly pissed. But I’m not going to hate you. I know who you are now, and whatever was behind you will stay there.”

“Except it won’t. Clearly, someone’s out to get me.”

She pinched his arm, and he yelped.

“Damn, woman, what was that for?”

“Just finish your story. We’ll talk later.”

He settled back against the couch, Reagan still wrapped around him like a barnacle. And she had no intention of leaving him.

*   *   *

HER belief in him filled him with awe. Even knowing what he’d done, seeing it in black-and-white, along with that horrible mug shot, she was willing to sit here like this with him. She didn’t think he was tainting her presence, her life, her career. She was giving him the chance to stay. He’d damn well earn it.

“I was mostly the lookout,” he began again, “a few times I was a distraction or a diversion. But my hands were largely clean of the major lifting when it came to any crime. Petty stuff, more than anything. The kind of stuff a judge would slap you on the wrist for as a kid, maybe do some community service. I got caught a few times, which you saw on the sheet. But other than moving to a new foster home each time, the penalty wasn’t too severe. Never enough to make me quit. Because each time I moved, my crew found me. The foster families were never consistent . . . the crew was. It just reinforced in me I was making the right choice to stick with them. Follow in their footsteps. Screw the man,” he said, feeling an ironic sort of humor in the whole thing.

“Screw the man,” Reagan whispered as she absorbed it all. “So if it was mostly petty kid stuff, what happened?”

He reached up and undid her ponytail—what was left of it—and let the tangled strands float down around her shoulders. Chestnut, mahogany, some streaks of redwood in there . . . she was so damn beautiful it made him have to swallow. As he worked on a few tangles with his fingers, he told her the rest just as he’d told his friends. How he’d been sucked in higher, about getting in a fight, being caught, and a judge finally realizing where he was headed and wanting to give him an out.

“It was my choice to join the Marines,” he said resolutely. “I had the choice, and I took what I thought was the easy way out. Play military hero for a few years and get a clean slate. Not a bad trade.”

“It was right after 9/11,” she argued. “Not exactly a peace-time service record. You’ve deployed. You’ve seen combat time. That’s not a simple choice to make, especially not as a seventeen-year-old.”

“Opposite . . . it’s exactly what a seventeen-year-old would do. At seventeen, you’re invincible. Nothing can touch you. Hell, you think you can respawn.” When she looked up at him, confusion in her beautiful brown eyes, he added, “Video game term for restarting. Basically, once your character dies, you just start all over. There’s no real death.”

“Boys are weird,” she muttered, burying her nose against his shoulder again.

“We are, yeah.” Smoothing his hand over her now-untangled hair, he bent down and took in a deep breath of her calming scent. It filled him, his senses, with a moment of peace in what was now a very tumultuous moment. “I joined a boxing league after basic because clearly fighting was something I did well, and decent exercise. I stood out. I’m not big, but I’m fast.”

“I’ve noticed. You kick everyone’s ass in sprint drills.”

“Long distance, Costa nails my ass every time. Don’t tell him that,” he added automatically, then smiled when she laughed. When she quieted, he sobered. “I did everything in that packet you read. All of it. And then some. I was a horrible kid, and I would have been a pretty shitty adult.”

“You got out. You had the chance to make a change and you did. You haven’t repeated those offenses once, have you?”

“Until I nailed Tressler, I haven’t been in a fight outside the ropes since I joined the Marines. Haven’t taken a dime, haven’t done anything that would leave anyone with doubts about my character. The Corps is my family now. My crew. I’m not shaming it. I’m honoring it.”

She patted his chest, and he realized he was breathing heavily. Her hand rested over his heart, and he fought to slow his breathing again. “Not sure why I keep getting worked up about it.”

“You’re defensive because it’s hard to have something like this flung at you when you’ve spent the last ten years being a model citizen.”

He ruffled her hair a moment, wondering how he’d gotten so lucky. It certainly hadn’t been because of the sum total of his life to date. Karma, as he thought of it, still had some balancing to do before it fell in his favor. He pressed a kiss to her temple. “Does this mean you won’t lock me out again?”