“I’m going to catch the one,” I say, waving an arm up the concourse toward my train. “You should head back.”

His eyes scan me again, lingering over my legs. He bites the corner of his lower lip and looks up at my face. “I’d like to see you again sometime when we can talk.”

“You always wanted to talk,” I grumble opening my bag and rooting through it for a piece of gum. When I find one and look up at him, his expression is tight. Guarded.

He reaches up to scratch the back of his head . . . again. One of his childhood tells. So they’re not all gone. “There are a lot of things that need to be said.”

“When?”

His eyes flick over me again. “Let me buy you lunch. What’s your favorite restaurant?”

He wants to take me out? No one’s taken me out for a really long time. “Luigi’s.”

He nods. “I’ll meet you there at one.”

He keeps stride with me as we walk to my platform and my anger starts to ebb a little. When we get there, I look at him. “Thanks.”

His eyes widen a little, surprised, I guess, after my snippiness. “For what?”

I gesture vaguely at the platform. “This.”

His face darkens as his lips press into a line. “Don’t thank me, Hilary.”

The train comes and I climb on. The doors close and I watch Alessandro disappear as the train whisks me away. I settle into a seat near the door and lean my head back into the wall panel, closing my eyes.

I remember how everything changed for me with Alessandro. He was the first person in years who seemed to really care about me. He never hurt me. He kissed me on the mouth and he touched me so gently. He was sweet and tender . . . and I started to trust him. Then I started to need him.

And then he left.

I feel the sucking wound in my chest open up again as if it was just yesterday. As if I haven’t spent the last eight years forcing myself to forget it and move on.

But I have moved on. And I can never go back.

Chapter Six

LUIGI’S IS ALWAYS packed and there’s only, like, eight tables, but we luck into a party that had two of them stuck together just leaving, so we and the couple waiting ahead of us score seats near the window.

“So what are we talking about today?” I ask once we’re settled and the waiter has taken our drink order.

“You.”

I huff out a laugh. “Then it’s going to be a short conversation.”

He rubs his forehead, then leans on his elbows and looks at me with weary eyes. “I have been haunted for eight years, Hilary. There’s not a day that’s passed that I haven’t wondered about you.”

I feel my armor going back up and the claws coming out as I glare across the table at him. He has no idea what it means to be haunted. “I told you. I’m fine.”

“I have to know . . .” The skin around his eyes tightens but he doesn’t break my gaze. “Did Lorenzo rape you?”

I actually laugh out loud. “That’s what this is about? You think you owe me something to make up for your brother?”

He just looks at me, because I didn’t answer the question.

“No, Alessandro. He didn’t rape me.”

Over Alessandro’s shoulder, I see the woman sitting behind him turn and look at me.

“I know I can’t fix it if he did, but there are resources—”

“He didn’t rape me,” I say again, lower but more slowly so he’ll hear it. Lorenzo was never the problem. I didn’t care about him enough for him to have the power to really hurt me. I pick up the menu and flip it open, refusing to look the person who did in the eye. “Are we getting pizza or what?”

Alessandro blows out a sigh and the storm on his face subsides slowly. “What do you like?” he asks, and it feels ten degrees cooler when his laser-beam gaze lowers from me to his menu.

“Veggies, mostly. And pepperoni.”

The waiter comes back with our iced teas and sets them in front of us, and my eyes are drawn to Alessandro’s arms as he reaches across and takes my menu. As I follow the veins in his forearm, coursing over long, lean muscles to the rolled-up sleeve of his button-down, I catch myself envisioning that perfection all the way up, covered in a thin sheen of sweat as he punched the bag at the gym.

“Are you ready to order?” the waiter asks, snapping me from my fantasy.

Alessandro hands him our menus. “We’ll have a large veggie combo with pepperoni.”

The waiter scribbles on his pad, then takes the menus. “Salads?”

“Antipasto for two, I think,” he says with a questioning glance at me.

“Fine,” I say, squeezing lemon into my tea.

As I watch the waiter take our order to the computer and key it in, I feel Alessandro’s eyes on me again, but I’m not ready to look at him yet.

“I need to know what happened to you after we left,” he says, suddenly intense.

No you don’t. I narrow my eyes at him. “Why?”

There’s a long minute where he doesn’t answer.

“Listen, Alessandro, I know you have this whole major guilt thing happening,” I say, waving a hand in a circle at him, “but that’s not really my problem, you know? I’m seriously okay. Everybody has shit they need to deal with. I’ve dealt with mine. My life is really good. As a matter of fact, it’s great. So at this point, the only thing you could do to make my life better would be to score me a part on Broadway.”

His eyebrows go up. “Broadway . . . ?”

I twirl my straw in my tea. “I’m hoping to score a part in a musical. I have an amazing voice.”

A smile twitches his lips and a little of the tension that’s always there runs out of his shoulders. “I remember.”

I just stare at him as it all comes flooding back.

It was only a week after Lorenzo and Alessandro had shown up at the group home. We were all in the basement “rec room” where there was a radio and a TV with a broken Xbox. I was curled up on a sticky overstuffed chair and Lorenzo and Eric were sprawled on the sagging couch getting stoned. Two girls, Hannah and Trish, who were like sixteen I think, had smeared on heavy makeup with tons of eye shadow and liner and were doing a fashion show. They’d cranked the radio and were shimmying around to Beyonce’s “Naughty Girl,” stripping off clothes they’d bought at the Salvation Army store until they were all the way down to tiny bikinis. Lorenzo and Eric were watching and catcalling. I remember Alessandro sitting on the floor in the corner. He was doodling something on a pad of paper, but he was also watching.

The black one . . . Trish, I think . . . or maybe it was Hannah, told me to go put on my bikini, but I didn’t have one so I just shook my head.

“Dumb bitch,” she said, turning to the boys and grinding her hips in a circle.

“No guts no glory,” the other one said as she slid onto Eric’s lap.

I had guts, I just didn’t have a bikini, so I stood up and started belting out “Naughty Girl” with Beyonce like my life depended on it.

Looking back, it was pretty bad, but later that day, when were eating dinner, Alessandro slipped into the seat next to me, which he’d never done before. “You have a good voice,” he’d murmured, without looking at me.

They were the first words he ever said to me.

I look down at the table, pulling a napkin from the dispenser for something to do, pissed that he can make me feel this stupid with just two words. “Yeah, well . . . I’m better now.”

“You were exceptional then, so I can only imagine.”

I don’t know if he’s messing with me or not, but all of a sudden, I wish I hadn’t come here. I’ve spent the last week and a half pretending like his showing up out of nowhere didn’t shake me to my core—like it didn’t mater. I wish I could just forget that he ever came back. But I can’t.

Our waiter is back with the antipasto and two plates, which he puts at the edge of our table. “Your pie will be up in a few.” He tips his head at my glass. “More tea?”

“Yeah, sure,” I tell him, then watch as he goes to the counter for a pitcher. He’s back a moment later with a smile, filling my glass.

“I’m glad you know what you want and that you’re chasing your dream,” Alessandro says as the waiter retreats again, pulling my attention back to him.

I run a finger down a rivulet of sweat on my glass. “Problem is, it’s running way the hell faster than I am at the moment.”

The waiter scoots up to our table a few minutes later with a wire rack and a pizza tin, which he sets in the middle of the table. “Anything else I can get you?”

Alessandro lifts a questioning brow at me.

“No, thanks,” I answer, and the waiter shuffles off to clear the next table.

“But you’re getting auditions,” Alessandro says, spinning the tin so the spatula handle is facing me. “With all the aspiring actresses in the city, I’d think that wouldn’t be an easy feat.”

I shrug. “Only because of American Idol. I made it to Hollywood Week.”

He lifts an eyebrow at me. “I know.”

I squint at him. “You didn’t . . . ?”

He shrugs. “I didn’t see it real time, but I told you, I Googled you. The first search results for you are YouTube clips from American Idol.”

Why does it embarrass me that he’s seen that? I scoop a slice of pizza onto my plate. “So . . . how long are you staying in New York?” I ask, to steer the conversation away from me.

He helps himself to a slice. “I don’t intend to stay long.”

I take a bite of pizza and try to ignore the cold rush through my gut. I don’t want him to stay. When he leaves New York again, it will be a good thing. “So you just spend all your time stalking me?”