It only lasts a few minutes. I don’t come, but I don’t need to. That’s not what this was about. I just needed to know I’m here, in this place. Right now. I needed to feel it.

Brett rolls off me and I ooze back up onto the bed, finally feeling sleepy. And when I close my eyes, there’s nothing. Just the way I want it.


WHEN I WAKE up in the morning, I realize Brett never made it into the bed. He’s sprawled in the dirty clothes on the floor, just where I left him, sound asleep and fully dressed, with his limp dick hanging out of his open fly. I pick my phone up off the nightstand and check the time.

Ten.

I step over Brett and hurry to the shower, racing through my routine, the whole time wondering if I’m actually going to go through with this. I still don’t know what I’m supposed to say to Alessandro. Why is he even here after all this time?

I don’t have time to de-frizz my hair, so it’s more afro-ish than normal when I race up to the Argo Tea at eleven fifteen. I’m not sure if I want him to be there or not.

But he is.

He’s sitting alone at a table in the back corner, a coffee cup cradled in both hands. I watch as he brings it to his mouth and sips. He’s changed, but not so much that I can’t see the sixteen-year-old boy I knew. He still has the same silky, black hair, the waves combed off his forehead now, instead of shaggy in his face. He has the same smoky charcoal eyes, dark with black rings around the irises. But, where his features were more delicate then, they’ve turned stronger and more masculine. His sleek jawline is shaded with dark stubble and there’s a shallow dimple at the tip of his chin. He’s tall, probably six-three, but he was lanky before. He’s filled out. He’s in a sapphire-blue button-down with the tails loose over black jeans, and there’s no question there’s a pretty serious body under the thin cotton.

He’s still beautiful. That’s the only word that does him justice. But there’s an edge to him now that reminds me of Lorenzo.

Even though Lorenzo’s face was more boyish in some ways—rounder with a little baby fat in his cheeks—he was tougher and more rugged-looking than Alessandro. His hair was sort of mud brown, and his eyes were totally black and totally unreadable. His skin wasn’t as dark as Alessandro’s either. He was seventeen and half and didn’t shave very often, so he had blondish scruff on his chin and upper lip that scratched my face when he was on top of me. He was shorter than Alessandro, even though he was a year and a half older, and, at the time, he was broader than Alessandro, though it’s clear Alessandro caught up in that department at some point. But he forever had that look in his eye that let you know he could snap at any second. Alessandro’s got that look now.

I stand in the door, staring at him for another minute, deciding once and for all if I’m really going through with this. I hate that I’m this scared. I don’t do scared anymore. Pissed? Yes. A little nervous? Sometimes. But never scared. But I have to do this. I have to know why he’s here—what he knows. I take a deep breath and square my shoulders, then stride over to where he sits.

He stiffens for just a second when he sees me, but he stands when I reach his table. “I wasn’t sure you’d actually come.”

“Yeah . . . whatever,” I say, dropping my eyes from his intense gaze.

“I would have ordered for you, but I didn’t know what you liked.” He pulls out the chair opposite his. “I’ll get something for you.”

I’m just staring at him. I can’t get over the change.

“I can get it.” I spin and hurry toward the counter, where, thankfully, there’s a line. I don’t look back as I wait. Instead, I work to pull my thoughts together. I don’t know if it’s closure I need or what, but there are things I need to know—questions I need answers to.

Now I just need to clear my head enough to remember what the hell they are.

Alessandro stands again as I walk back to the table several minutes later. He holds the back of my chair as I lower myself into it, then helps me slide it in. He sits again and looks at me for a long, awkward minute, swirling his coffee. “I’m sorry I was so awkward last night. You took me by surprise. I wasn’t planning to ring the buzzer, but I’d just found your address and I . . .” His eyes pinch a little and I realize it’s because I caught him there. He’s embarrassed.

“You were stalking me?”

His whole face pinches now. “I never meant to . . . I wasn’t going to contact you.”

“How did you find me?”

He presses back into his seat and hesitates before answering. “It took some ingenuity . . . and Google.”

I slam my teacup down on the table. “My address is not on Google!”

“It’s actually pretty shocking, the amount of personal information that can be found online.”

“So you were stalking me.”

“In a manner of speaking, I suppose I was, if there’s a non-creepy connotation to that term.”

“How is this non-creepy?” I say, waving a hand at him. “You show up in New York eight years after vanishing off the face of the planet, and I find you poking around my apartment building in the middle of the night, then you admit to cyberstalking me. Nope . . .” I say, folding my arms across my chest and scowling at him. “Nothing creepy there.”

He breathes deeply. “As I said, I didn’t plan on—”

“How long have you been back in New York, anyway?” I ask, cutting him off. I don’t want to hear any more of his lame explanations. I just want to know what the hell he’s doing here—why he found me. If he knows.

“About a month,” he answers, and my gaze is drawn back to his eyes.

“You’ve been here a month,” I say, trying to absorb that. “Doing what? Do you have a job?”

“Not at the moment. For now, I’m volunteering at the West Side YMCA.”

“Where were you? Before?”

He takes a long sip of his coffee, and below the rolled-up cuff of his sleeve, I watch muscles of his forearm ripple as he sets his cup down and swirls it. “A few places, but mostly Corsica and Rome.”

“Rome.” He was in Rome while my life fell apart. “So . . . why did you come back?”

“To put some old ghosts to rest.” As he says this, his gaze darkens . . . becomes more intense, seeming to bore through me.

But I won’t back down. I hold his gaze. “Am I a ghost?”

“You are.”

“And you’re going to put me to rest,” I say, unable to curb the cynical edge to my voice.

“I needed to find you,” he says, finally lowering his gaze. “The way things were left . . . I’ve never felt right about it.”

“The way things were left . . .” I repeat. The way things were left sucked. He has no idea how much.

He splays his long, slender hands on the table on either side of his cup as if to steady them and presses into the back of his seat. “I don’t even have words, Hilary. I don’t have words to adequately apologize for what Lorenzo and I did to you. You were so young . . .” He trails off with a shake of his head. “Too young,” he finally says, lower.

“So what is it you think you can do about it now?” I’m more bitter than I realized, and it bleeds through loud and clear into my words.

“Nothing,” he says, lowering his gaze and watching his fingertip trace the rim of his coffee cup. “There’s nothing I can say or do to make this right. All I can do is apologize. All I can do is tell you that I’ve prayed for you every day. I’ve—”

I bolt out of my chair, my palms slamming on the tabletop and splashing my tea. “You prayed for me? What the hell is that going to help? How the hell is praying for me going to make one fucking bit of difference?”

I’m only vaguely aware that the whole shop just went silent.

His face crumples as if I’d reached out and slapped him. Good. He deserves to hurt. “This was a mistake,” he finally says, standing. “It was wrong of me to open old wounds for the sake of easing my conscience. I’ll go.”

He turns and walks out of the shop, leaving me staring after him. Which makes me want to rip his head off. If anyone gets to walk out, it’s me. I storm after him and when I slam through the door onto the crowded sidewalk, he’s waiting at the crosswalk.

“There’s no fucking way you get to walk out on me!” I shout, charging after him. He turns and starts moving back toward me. “Do you hear me, Alessandro? You don’t get to walk away again!”

I stop in front of him. For several beats of my racing heart, we just stand here staring at each other. Then I reach up, not sure what I mean to do.

What I do is slap him. Hard. And it feels really good.

So I do it again.

He just stands there, taking it. He doesn’t flinch, or reach up to rub his face. He doesn’t step back, or grimace, or raise his hand to defend himself, or hit me back. He doesn’t tell me to stop.

So I slap him again.

His jaw tightens and he closes his eyes for just a second, like he’s relieved. But then I’m pinned in that charcoal gaze again. “Do whatever you need to do, Hilary.”

It’s like he’s asking for more . . . like he thinks he deserves it. But he doesn’t get to call the shots. This is my show, and I’m done.

I spin and stride to the Argo Tea without looking back. Our cups are still on the table, and when I drop into my seat and pick mine up, I realize my nerves are rock solid. No shake. Other than a faint sting in my palm, I’m fine. I’m suddenly proud of myself. If you don’t show weakness, then you’re not weak. First rule of survival.

That makes me the strongest sister around.


I LEFT ALESSANDRO standing on the sidewalk outside Argo Tea five days ago, but I can’t stop looking over my shoulder everywhere I go, thinking I see him lurking around corners or in doorways. I’ve never been this paranoid in my life.