He smiles and his smoky eyes turn a shade darker. “It is to us. That’s all that matters.”

We find seats and I jump a little when we swing away from the station a few minutes later. I stand and turn for the window as our big red box rises out over the city. Second Avenue falls away below us as we lift into the sky, and behind us, Manhattan is laid out on display.

“Wow. This is so—”

“—cool,” Alessandro says with an amused smile, standing and turning toward the window.

“Stop it,” I pout.

“Never let me curb your enthusiasm,” he says, softer.

When I glance at him, he’s not looking out the window. He’s looking at me. I wipe my jacket sleeve under my nose, sure there must be something dangling there. Finally, his eyes shift toward the view out the window behind us, scanning the New York landscape and locking on the top of the Empire State Building, just visible over the other buildings in midtown. “You do know, at some point we really are going to have to visit the Empire State Building.”

I shrug. “I guess. When we run out of everything else.” A little shudder ripples my skin into goose bumps. How long will that take? How many more Thursdays do I have with Alessandro before the city dries up and leaves me with no excuse to see him again?

He nods slowly as his gaze shifts to me. “That could take years.”

Years. The combination of his words, the intensity of his gaze, and the fact that he just answered my unasked question, gives me more goose bumps. Is he staying for years? Or will he go back to Corsica and leave me here again?

I shake the despair that settles in my bones with the thought away. It doesn’t matter if he stays or goes. He doesn’t matter to me.

But it’s hard to convince myself of that as I stand here, locked in his gaze.

“Roosevelt Island was occupied by the British throughout the Revolutionary War, until 1782. American prisoners of war were quartered there until peace negotiations were under way,” he says, releasing me from his gaze and turning toward the island we’re approaching.

I start breathing again. “You’re into art and history? What kind of a geek are you?”

His gaze flashes to me and there’s an amused spark in his eyes. “A geek of epic proportions.”

We glide alongside the Queensboro Bridge, out over the East River, and our tramcar starts descending as we approach Roosevelt Island. The whole thing only lasts about four minutes, but it’s four seriously incredible minutes.

“There is a bus,” Alessandro says as we unload from the tram, “but I’d prefer to explore on foot, if you’re up for a little more walking.”

I shrug to hide my shudder, wondering if he’ll put his arm around me again. “Sure.”

He ushers me out of the station and across the street toward the Manhattan side of the island, where we walk along the road near the river, past what Alessandro says is the only subway stop on the island, until we come to a brick path on the left. We head down the path toward the water to a large observation platform that looks back over East River toward the city.

I lean my elbows on the rail and watch a tugboat chug up the river. “It’s nice here. Quiet.”

“It is. There’s only one bridge onto the island from the Queens side, so traffic is limited.”

I turn and look at the road behind us, between the apartment buildings and the water. There are a few parked cars, but no traffic jam. No taxi drivers honking their horns. “They should do that for all of Manhattan,” I say, turning back to the city. “You know . . . like when people make you take your shoes off at their front door,” I say, thinking of Mallory. “Welcome to Manhattan. Leave your car at the door.”

I glance at Alessandro and his eyes scan the city. “That’s an intriguing thought.” After a minute, he looks at me and waves an arm to the right. “There’s an old asylum and a lighthouse to the north, if you’re interested.”

I crack a smile. “An asylum, huh? Is that why you brought me here? To be with all the other crazy people?”

He smiles back. “It closed decades ago. Only a small part of it is left. They’ve built an apartment building around it. I’m actually more interested in the lighthouse at the northern tip of the island. It was built from stone quarried off the island. And at the southern tip are the ruins of an old smallpox hospital that I’d like to see.”

“How do you know all this?”

He smiles and tips his head at me. “The internet is an amazing thing.”

He grasps my elbow gently and guides me off the to the right, and I think again of the night he found me. The internet really is an amazing thing.

We follow the walking path along the water, taking in the peaceful quiet and the view of the city. Even the cold November air feels crisper here. Apartment buildings and condos are spread behind us, but there’s an expanse of grassy space all around them. Space. It’s like city living in the country.

We don’t talk, but it’s comfortable silence, and I feel myself unwinding a little as we walk. After about fifteen minutes, Alessandro breaks the silence. “This way,” he says, directing me off the path and back across the road. We loop around the front of a gray cement apartment building with lots of windows until we come to the front entrance. It’s octagonal, built from stacked blocks of rough gray granite, and topped with a blue roof.

“The Octagon,” Alessandro says. “This was the entrance to the asylum. The rest of it was demolished decades ago.”

“So,” I say, looking over the building, “there was an asylum and a smallpox hospital. Was this like Quarantine Island or something?”

“Not exactly,” he answers, still examining the building. “There were, and still are, hospitals on the island. It’s one of the few places in Manhattan where there was still open land to build them.”

He takes my elbow again and we start back toward the path along the river. In another ten minutes we’re at the obvious tip of the island, and perched there is a tall, gray gothic-looking lighthouse, built out of the same rough granite blocks as the Octagon. There are two other people milling around it, snapping shots—the only two people we’ve seen on the path. So maybe this place really is undiscovered.

Alessandro’s hand slips into mine and he holds it as we take a circle around the lighthouse. “The lighthouse was active from 1872 through the mid 1900s, when most commerce was still seafaring,” he tells me, and for some reason I find it interesting. But not as interesting as his face as he examines it from all sides. From his strong cheekbones to the dimple on his chin, those lines beg for me to trace them with my finger.

His eyes gravitate to mine, and the air is suddenly charged. His grip on my hand becomes tighter, and I don’t even realize I’ve leaned into him until he clears his throat and steps back, letting go of my hand. He rubs the back of his neck. “We should loop down the Queens side of the island.”

I nod and he lays a hand on my back, ushering me that direction. Where I was cold before, now I’m beyond hot, and his hand on my back is the source of the burn that works slowly through me. Whatever’s hanging in the air between us is palpable, like a gravitational pull that won’t be denied. We walk without talking, but there’s so much I want to say—things I feel the desperate need to tell him.

But I can’t.

He veers off the path once to walk me past a white clapboard house. “This is one of the oldest surviving buildings in Manhattan, the Blackwell House,” he says. “The Blackwells owned the entire island until 1828, when they sold it to New York.”

Finally, he drapes his arm over my shoulder as we walk back to the path, and something deep inside me aches at the feel of him there. There’s some part of me that still remembers how safe I felt with Alessandro way back when—and how scared I was after.

Please, don’t leave me.