By the time Harper and Brooklyn showed up at Riley's hospital room, I already knew they weren't there to visit.

They were too focused for that.

My sisters were identical in the way twins usually were at first glance. Same dark hair, same sharp eyes, same face that had been looking at mine since the day I was born. But the older we got, the more different they became. Harper carried herself like a soft warning. Gentle voice, dangerous eyes. Brooklyn was the opposite. She walked into a room like she had already decided who needed fighting and who needed feeding, and heaven help the person who tried to argue with her when she had chosen either.

That afternoon, they both looked like they had chosen me.

Harper knocked softly on the open door first, even though she had never once knocked before entering any room I was in. Brooklyn stood just behind her with her arms crossed over her chest, her mouth pressed into a line that told me she had rehearsed what she was going to say and had already decided I wouldn't like it.

Riley was awake, sitting up slightly with the old photograph of us still resting on the little table beside his bed. His parents had stepped out to speak with a nurse, Lydia had taken Milo to the cafeteria because he kept loudly asking if hospital pudding was "for sick people only," and for the first time in hours, the room had been quiet.

Then my sisters arrived.

"Hey," Harper said softly.

I sat up in the chair. "Hi."

Brooklyn looked at me from head to toe and immediately frowned. "You look awful."

Riley's eyebrows lifted.

I sighed. "Good to see you too, Brooklyn."

"I'm serious."

"So am I."

Harper gave Brooklyn a look, then turned back to me with that careful gentleness that meant she was trying not to make me feel cornered. Unfortunately for her, I had known my sisters my entire life, and I could tell when I was being gently cornered.

"Mom and Dad sent us," Harper said.

I stared at her.

Brooklyn nodded once. "To retrieve you."

"Retrieve me?" I repeated.

"Yes."

"I'm not a library book."

"No, because library books actually go home when they're supposed to."

Riley made a quiet sound beside me.

I looked over.

He looked like he was trying very hard not to smile.

Traitor.

Brooklyn noticed too and pointed at him. "See? Even hospital boy agrees with me."

"Brooklyn," Harper warned.

"What? He smiled."

Riley's mouth twitched again. "Hospital boy?"

Brooklyn shrugged. "I don't know you well enough right now to insult you personally."

The words made the room go still for half a breath.

Brooklyn's face changed immediately.

Not much. Just enough for me to see the regret.

Riley didn't seem hurt, though. If anything, he looked amused in a tired sort of way.

"Fair," he said.

Brooklyn exhaled quietly, relieved despite pretending not to be.

Harper stepped closer to my chair and lowered her voice. "Autumn, you need to come home."

I shook my head before she even finished speaking. "No."

"Autumn."

"I said no."

"You haven't showered. You barely slept. You've been living off vending machine crackers and coffee that tastes like burnt sadness."

"That coffee has saved my life."

"That coffee is going to end your life."

"I'm fine."

Both of my sisters looked at me.

Not angry. Not annoyed.

Worse.

Sad.

I hated that.

I hated when people looked at me like I was something fragile, because fragile things broke, and I did not have time to break. Riley was the one in the hospital bed. Riley was the one with bruises on his skin and memories missing from his head. Riley was the one waking up every few hours to a world he didn't understand. I was not the emergency. I was not the one who needed everyone hovering and whispering and deciding what was best.

"I'm fine," I said again, but it sounded weaker the second time.

Brooklyn uncrossed her arms and moved closer. "You're not."

My jaw tightened. "You don't know that."

"You're wearing yesterday's clothes."

"So?"

"You have mascara under one eye and not the other."

"I'm starting a trend."

"Autumn."

I looked away.

Harper crouched in front of me then, placing one hand carefully over mine. Her touch was warm. Familiar. Annoyingly comforting.

"Mom cried when she got home," she said quietly.

My face changed.

Harper's thumb moved over my knuckles. "She's scared for you."

"I can't leave him."

"I know it feels that way."

"No." My voice sharpened before I could stop it. "You don't know how it feels."

The second I said it, guilt burned through me.

Harper didn't flinch.

Brooklyn did.

Riley looked down at his blanket.

I closed my eyes. "I'm sorry."

Harper squeezed my hand. "It's okay."

"It's not."

"You're scared."

I swallowed.

"Yeah," I whispered. "I am."

For a moment, nobody spoke.

The hospital continued around us. Machines beeped. Footsteps passed in the hallway. Somewhere far away, a child laughed, and the sound felt so out of place that it almost hurt.

Riley shifted slightly against his pillows.

"You should go."

I looked at him so fast it made my neck ache.

"What?"

He looked nervous the second my eyes met his, like he regretted speaking but still thought he had to. "You should go home. Rest. Shower. Eat something that isn't crackers."

I stared at him. "You're kicking me out?"

"No. I'm..." He hesitated, glancing toward Harper and Brooklyn as if they might help him. They did not. "I'm agreeing with them."

"Wow."

"I know. Betrayal."

"It really is."

His mouth curved faintly, but his eyes stayed serious. "You said you would come back."

"I will."

"Then go."

My throat tightened.

It wasn't fair, the way those words sounded in his voice. Before the accident, Riley had known exactly how to take care of me. He knew when to push and when to back off. He knew when I was pretending to be fine and when I needed someone to pretend with me for a while. But now he didn't know any of that. He didn't know me. He didn't know my favorite songs or how I took my coffee or why October made me sad and happy at the same time.

And still, somehow, he was trying to take care of me.

That hurt more than it should have.

"I don't want you to wake up alone," I said.

His expression softened. "I won't. My parents are here. Lydia and Milo are here."

"That's not what I mean."

The words slipped out too honestly.

Riley went quiet.

Harper looked down.

Brooklyn's face softened, though she tried very hard to hide it.

Riley looked at me for a long moment. "I know."

My heart stumbled.

He couldn't know. Not really. But the fact that he wanted to made something inside me ache.

"I'll be okay," he said.

I almost laughed because that was such a Riley thing to say. Even without his memories, even lying in a hospital bed with a head injury and a life he couldn't remember, he was trying to make me feel better.

"You don't know that," I whispered.

"No," he said. "But you don't either."

I hated that he was right.

Brooklyn stepped beside me and placed both hands on my shoulders. "Come on, baby sister."

"I'm not a baby."

"You are to me."

"You're only three years older."

"And yet so much wiser."

I gave her a look.

She smiled sadly. "Mom packed you clothes. Dad made soup. Hudson said he'll move your phone charger from the kitchen to your room if you come home, which I guess is his way of expressing love."

A laugh broke out of me before I could stop it.

It was small and tired. But real.

Harper smiled. "There she is."

I looked at Riley again.

He was watching me with that quiet curiosity I was starting to know too well. Maybe he was collecting pieces of me now, the way I had been collecting pieces of him for years. Maybe he was learning that my sisters called me baby even though I hated it, and that my brother loved through stolen chargers and awkward shoulder squeezes, and that I laughed when I was about to cry because sometimes laughter was the only door grief forgot to lock.

"I'll come back," I said.

Riley nodded. "I believe you."

My chest tightened. "You do?"

He looked almost embarrassed. "Yeah."

"Why?"

He glanced at Harper, then Brooklyn, then back at me. "Because you look like leaving is physically painful."

No one said anything.

My eyes burned.

Brooklyn muttered, "Okay, hospital boy. That was unnecessary."

Riley blinked. "Sorry."

"No, it was accurate. That's the problem."

I wiped quickly beneath my eyes before the tears could fall.

Harper stood and gently pulled the blanket from my lap. "Come on."

I rose slowly, my body protesting the moment I stood. My legs felt stiff, my head ached, and now that I was upright, I realized my sisters might have had a point. The room tilted slightly, and Brooklyn immediately grabbed my elbow.

"See?" she said.

"I stood up too fast."

"You exist too fast."

"That doesn't make sense."

"It does to me."

Riley watched the exchange with a faint smile.

I wondered if it felt familiar.

Not the words. Not the moment.

But the shape of it.

Me arguing with my sisters while he watched in amusement. Brooklyn bossing everyone around. Harper soothing the edges. Me pretending I didn't need help while accepting it anyway.

This was part of his life too.

He just didn't know it yet.

I walked to the side of his bed, suddenly unsure what to do with my hands. Before the accident, leaving Riley had never been complicated. I would ruffle his hair to annoy him, or steal his drink, or tell him he was unbearable, and he would tell me to text him when I got home.

Now he looked up at me from a hospital bed with tired eyes and no memories, and I felt like every goodbye had become a cliff.

"I'll be back later," I said.

"Okay."

"Probably after lunch."

"Okay."

"Maybe before if I can escape."

Brooklyn sighed behind me. "You are not escaping."

Riley looked at her. "Should I alert security?"

"Yes," Brooklyn said.

"No," I said at the same time.

Harper laughed softly.

Riley smiled.

For one second, the room felt almost normal.

Then I made the terrible mistake of looking at the photograph on the table beside his bed. The one from the play. Five-year-old Romeo and Juliet, holding hands beneath lights neither of us had understood.

Riley noticed me looking.

"Do you want it?" he asked.

I shook my head quickly. "No. You keep it."

"You sure?"

"Yeah."

His fingers brushed the edge of the photo. "You can tell me more about it when you come back."

My breath caught. "I will."

"Good."

The word followed me all the way to the door.

I turned back once before leaving. Riley was still watching me. And for the briefest second, I saw something in his eyes that almost looked like he didn't want me to go.

It was probably nothing.

A tired boy in a hospital room clinging to the person who had been telling him stories.

That was all.

That had to be all.

But my heart, stupid and soft and impossible to reason with, held onto it anyway.

Harper linked her arm through mine as we stepped into the hallway. Brooklyn took my other side, and together they guided me away from the room like I was something they were afraid might turn around and run back.

Which, to be fair, I was.

We made it to the elevator before I stopped.

"I should tell Willow and Kai I'm leaving."

"Mom already texted Willow," Harper said.

I frowned. "When?"

"While you were emotionally arguing with the patient."

"I was not emotionally arguing."

Brooklyn pressed the elevator button. "You were absolutely emotionally arguing."

"I was saying goodbye."

"You looked like someone was sending you off to war."

The elevator doors opened and I looked back down the hall. Riley's room was too far away to see from there, but I stared anyway.

Harper's arm tightened around mine.

"He'll still be here when you come back," she said softly.

I nodded.

But she didn't understand. Or maybe she did, and I hated that more. Because the thing I feared most was not that Riley wouldn't be there when I returned. It was that I would keep coming back and coming back and coming back, and the boy I was waiting for still wouldn't.

The elevator carried us down in silence.

By the time we reached the parking lot, the morning had turned bright and ordinary, which felt insulting. People were walking to their cars with coffee in their hands. A woman laughed into her phone near the entrance. Someone drove past with music playing too loudly. The world looked exactly the same as it had before Riley forgot me.

I wanted to scream at it.

Instead, I let my sisters put me in the back seat of Brooklyn's car like a tired child.

Harper slid in beside me while Brooklyn got behind the wheel.

For a few minutes, no one spoke. Then Brooklyn looked at me in the rearview mirror. "You're mad at us."

I leaned my head against the window. "No."

"Yes, you are."

"I'm too tired to be mad."

"That's somehow worse."

Harper reached over and took my hand. "We're not trying to take you from him."

I closed my eyes. "I know."

"We're trying to give you back to yourself for a few hours."

That was what broke me.

Not Riley asking who I was. Not the doctors saying his memories might never come back. Not the photograph of us in our costumes.

That simple sentence.

We're trying to give you back to yourself.

A sob slipped out before I could stop it.

Harper wrapped her arms around me instantly, pulling me against her while Brooklyn's hands tightened on the steering wheel. I cried into my sister's shoulder in the back seat of the car, cried until my chest hurt and my breath came in pieces, cried because I had been trying so hard to be useful that I had forgotten grief did not disappear just because someone else needed you.

"I can't lose him," I whispered.

Harper held me tighter.

Brooklyn's voice came softer from the front seat. "You haven't lost him."

I shook my head against Harper's shoulder. "You didn't see his face."

"We did."

"No. You didn't see him when he asked who I was." My voice broke around the memory. "He looked scared of me."

Neither of them answered right away. Because what could they say? There were no words that could make that hurt less.

Finally, Harper pressed her cheek to my hair. "Then we'll help him not be scared."

I cried harder.

Brooklyn pulled out of the hospital parking lot, but she drove slowly, like speed might shatter me. Through the window, the hospital grew smaller behind us, all glass and brick and terrible fluorescent light.

Riley was still inside.

Alive. Awake. Forgetting.

And I was going home.

Not because I wanted to. Not because leaving felt right. But because my sisters loved me enough to drag me away from the edge before I fell over it.

I hated them a little for it.

I loved them more.

When the hospital disappeared from view, I pressed my hand against the window and whispered the promise Riley no longer knew had once belonged to us.

"Text me when you get home."

Then, after a moment, even though he couldn't hear me, even though he wouldn't understand why it mattered, I whispered the answer too.

"Alive."