His face scrunches a little. “Alessandro Moretti . . . from the group home?”

The next thing I know I’m on my ass in a puddle, my legs having turned to Jell-O, and Alessandro has my arm. It’s like the last eight years vanish. We’re in the rec room and an invisible fist is crushing my heart.

We’re leaving.

It takes me a second to find my breath and I look up at his pinched face. “What are you doing here?”

He helps me off the sidewalk but stops short of brushing off my ass. “I . . .” He shakes his head. “I just found your address. I only meant to see how you were.”

My stomach plummets to my toes and I think for a second that I should have stayed down. Does he know? How could he have found out?

I lean back against the wall for support. “Where’s Lorenzo?” All of a sudden I’m desperate to know if he’s coming for me too.

His lips press into a hard line and his charcoal eyes darken. He closes them and hauls a deep breath before opening them again. “Lorenzo has been dead for two years.”

LORENZO IS DEAD. I’m not sure how I feel about that.

I’ve spent so long trying to forget the Moretti brothers ever existed. I never thought I’d see them again. But Alessandro is here. He steadies me with a hand on my arm and I’m not sure if I want him to be a figment of my imagination or not.

I was only fourteen the last time I saw Alessandro and his older brother. It was only three months that we were together at the group home, but those three months have haunted me ever since. There are things I don’t remember . . . things I’ve blocked out. But there are other things that are etched in my memory as if it were stone. Things that, no matter how hard I try, I’ll never forget.

Lorenzo was my first, and I’m pretty sure I was Alessandro’s. Now, looking back, I see it for what it was. Lorenzo was bored and I was something to do. But at the time, my life was an emotional void. Everyone who was supposed to love me had abandoned me. I’d stuffed the pain down where I couldn’t feel it, but without that pain, there was nothing. I was totally numb. I was so desperate to feel something . . . anything . . . that, without even realizing I was doing it, I offered myself up to him on a silver platter.

Lorenzo seemed so alive to me—so far from the numbness I felt. Watching him was like watching a comet streaking across the black emptiness of the night sky: so big and bright, but belonging to an entirely different universe. He was always in trouble with our counselor, but he wouldn’t back down. She’d yell and he’d get right in her face. Then one day he hit her. I saw it. I watched his fist swing out and connect with her jaw. I saw the blood and spit splatter from her mouth in an arc that left a stain on the carpet. I saw the look on her face . . . in her eyes. All of a sudden, she was totally alive.

I wanted to be alive too.

I would say things to piss him off, at first so he’d notice I existed, but then later to see if I could get a rise out of him. I think I wanted him to hit me too.

Instead, he did something else to me.

With Lorenzo, it wasn’t sweet or tender. There was no small talk. No foreplay. And when it was over, he was done with me.

I was alone again, so I went to Alessandro.

He was so different from his brother. He wanted to talk—about my parents and his family . . . the world and our place in it. But that’s not what I needed from him. I didn’t give a shit about the meaning of life; I just needed to feel alive. So I told him about Lorenzo—what we’d done—then I unzipped his jeans. He told me no at first, but I was persistent.

When he finally gave in, it wasn’t what I expected.

All I knew was Lorenzo. He was so sure of himself, taking what he needed and not really giving a shit about me or anyone else. He wasn’t gentle and it hurt, but physical pain was something I could grasp on to.

Alessandro, on the other hand, was scared and soft and fumbling. He was painfully gentle, and when it was over, he held me and asked if I was okay.

I didn’t understand the question.

It wasn’t until later, when he made me feel things I’d never felt before, that I realized sex to Alessandro was more than just physical. He opened me up and saw my black, broken soul, and it didn’t scare him away. He made me believe everything was going to be okay. He helped me understand love.

Then a month later, he left. Just like everyone else.

But now, here he is.

“It’s really late,” I say, trying to sort out what to do. There are things I need to know, but . . . I need to figure some things out first. I’m not ready to do this now. “Are you in the city for a while? Can we maybe meet tomorrow?”

He nods. “I’m sorry, Hilary. I don’t mean to make you uncomfortable.”

Well, you do. “Argo Tea at Columbus Circle? Eleven? They’ve got coffee too, in case . . .”

“Argo Tea,” he says with a nod, saving me from myself.

I back a few steps toward my door. “Okay . . . so . . . I guess I’ll see you tomorrow.”

He levels me in his dark gaze and backs off a step. Something in those probing eyes sends a shiver through me and I look away, afraid he’ll see too much. I twist my key and slip through the door without looking back, then pummel the elevator call button with the side of my fist, willing it to get here before my legs give out again. When it finally shows up, I step in and punch four, then lean against the wall in the back corner and slide down it to the floor. I hug my knees to my chest and rest my aching forehead on them. When the doors clank open on my floor, I don’t move. They glide shut again after a minute and I still don’t move.

Lorenzo is dead and Alessandro is here. So much has happened to me since those three months we were together at the group home. Once they were gone, all I had left was pain and anger. I survived by learning to be strong. I stuffed the pain down where no one could see it and pretended like nothing mattered. But seeing Alessandro again brings it all to surface again. It stirs the dark places in my mind where I’ve hidden it away. I’m not going to hurt like that ever again. The pain made me weak.

But my anger fuels me.

So I do it again. As the elevator starts to move, I pull myself off the floor, stuffing my pain away into those dark crevices of my mind. The door opens on one and a couple that I’ve seen around but don’t know gets on arm in arm, giggling over some inside joke. They eye me suspiciously and stop laughing.

When the elevator stops on four, I step out without looking at them and move across the hall to our door. The apartment is dark, but it’s only eleven, so I know Brett’s not in bed. I flip on the light and move to the kitchen, where I grab a mostly empty two-liter of Diet Coke out of the door of the fridge and chug the rest.

On the way to the bedroom, I stop in the bathroom to pee and brush my teeth. When I look in the mirror over the sink, peering back at me is that scared little girl from so long ago. I crank the hot water and splash my face, breathing in the steam and forcing the fear away, and when I look up again, that girl is gone. It’s just me. Hard, tough, indestructible me. I let the Moretti boys close enough to hurt me all those years ago and I learned my lesson. No one’s ever getting through my armor again.

The bed is empty, so Brett must be out. I strip and slide in under the sheets. All I want to do is curl up in a ball and go to sleep.

But I can’t sleep. My mind won’t turn off, wondering what Alessandro has to say. An hour later, when Brett comes home, drunk, I’m still wide awake. I sit up in bed when he staggers into the bedroom. He flips on the light and peels off his jacket. He’s soaked through from the rain, the shoulders and back of his T-shirt wet and clinging.