The Stranger Who Knew How I Take My Coffee

By Giuseppe Arlotta

Alice Bennett is an archivist who trusts facts, records, and the quiet order of the library. Then she meets Julian Mercer, a clock restorer who knows things about her that no stranger should know.He knows how she takes her coffee. He knows the poetry she keeps hidden. He knows the touch of her hand as if he has held it before.Alice suspects obsession until a silver pocket watch triggers impossible memories: a garden, a nineteenth-century house, a life she cannot remember, and Julian standing beside her as the man she once loved. The more she learns, the more frightening the truth becomes. Julian has been waiting for her for a century.In another life, Alice was dying. She made Julian promise to let her go, to stop searching for her, and to allow her next life to remain free from the grief of their love. He kept that promise.Now she is alive again, but the past is returning through clocks, dreams, touch, and fragments of memory. Julian wants to protect her from a love that once ended in loss, while Alice struggles to understand whether her feelings belong to the woman she was or the woman she has become.Then Alice realizes the promise was made by someone she used to be. It does not own her now.She can remember Julian without surrendering her freedom. She can honor the past without living inside it.And when she reaches for his hand, she makes a choice the woman from the past never could.This time, she is not returning to an old love.She is choosing a new one.The clocks mark a future Alice can choose. The past explains their bond, but it will not command her.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: B0HMCH2F4K
• ISBN13: 9798182869669
• Release Date: October 2026
• Publisher: Giuseppe Arlotta
• Length: 120 Pages
• Weight: 0.34 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.3" x 6.0" x 9.0"