Read A Little Too Much for Free Online

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