By the time the last of the daylight disappeared behind the storm clouds, the entire Briarwyn house had begun to feel softer around the edges.

The rain still fell steadily against the windows, but it no longer sounded as though the sky were trying to break through the roof. The thunder had moved farther away, rolling low and distant beyond the fog, while the wind had weakened enough that the trees outside no longer bent toward the ground with every gust. Water continued rushing through the gutters and gathering in silver streams along the street, but compared to the violence of the morning, the storm had finally begun to quiet.

Not enough for Willow, apparently.

At nine o'clock, after everyone had finished dinner and rebuilt the blanket fort for what had to be the fourth time, I stood near the entryway with my coat folded over one arm and announced that Hudson and I should probably go home.

Willow looked at me as though I had suggested walking barefoot through the storm while carrying a metal rod. "You are not driving anywhere tonight."

I glanced toward the front window. Rain slid down the glass in thick streams, but I could see the houses across the street again. The fog had lifted slightly, and the trees were moving rather than attempting to uproot themselves.

"It has slowed down." I said.

"It is still raining."

"I noticed."

"It is dark."

"It is nine."

"Exactly."

I stared at her. "We live five minutes away."

"Five minutes is a very long time in dangerous weather."

"It barely qualifies as a drive."

Willow crossed her arms. "You sat in your car for several minutes this morning because you were afraid to cross the driveway."

"I was not afraid. I was evaluating the wind."

"You refused to open the door."

"The rain was coming sideways."

"And now it is dark rain."

I blinked. "Dark rain?"

"Rain that is happening after sunset."

"That is still regular rain."

"It is harder to see."

"I have headlights."

Willow shook her head with the calm certainty of someone who had already made the decision for me and had no intention of pretending otherwise. "You and Hudson are staying here."

From the living room, Milo released a cheer loud enough to wake anyone who might already have been sleeping.

Hudson joined him immediately. "We're having another sleepover!"

"You never stopped having the first one," I reminded him.

"That makes it longer."

"That is usually what happens when something does not end."

Milo appeared in the doorway wearing dinosaur pajamas and one sock. "You can sleep in the fort."

"I would prefer a bed." I said.

"The fort is better."

"The fort collapsed on me twice today."

"That was Hudson's fault."

Hudson looked offended. "The chair moved."

"You kicked it."

"I was stretching."

"You were trying to climb the wall."

"I wanted to see if it could hold me."

"It could not," Lydia said as she walked into the room carrying a stack of folded blankets. "We have evidence."

I turned toward Kai, hoping he might be the reasonable parent.

He was standing beside the kitchen counter, eating half of a caramel apple over a plate to keep the toppings from falling onto the floor. When he noticed me looking, he lifted one shoulder in a helpless shrug.

"I support my wife."

"You abandoned her for ice cream." I reminded him.

"That taught me an important lesson."

Willow looked toward him. "Which lesson?"

"To support my wife."

She nodded. "Good answer."

I sighed and lowered my coat. "Fine."

Milo raised both hands triumphantly. "You're sleeping in the fort!"

"I did not agree to that part."

"You agreed to stay."

"That does not give you control over where I sleep."

"It is my house."

"It is your parents' house."

"I live here."

"So does Riley."

Milo turned toward his brother, who stood near the staircase holding several mugs he had collected from the living room.

"Riley, can Autumn sleep in the fort?"

Riley glanced toward me.

I waited for him to rescue me.

Instead, he smiled. "She seems emotionally attached to it."

I narrowed my eyes. "I am not."

"You spent most of the day inside it."

"I was trapped by the storm."

"You could have sat on the couch."

"The fort was warmer."

"So you admit it is better."

"I admit nothing."

Riley carried the mugs into the kitchen with that quiet smile still lingering at the corner of his mouth.

Traitor.

Once Willow officially declared the evening over, the house became a slow, sleepy kind of chaos. Hudson and Milo were sent upstairs to brush their teeth, though they spent more time arguing over who had used the blue toothpaste than actually brushing.

Lydia gathered the scattered board games and accused Kai of cheating one final time before carrying them back to the closet. Willow packed the remaining muffins into a container for breakfast while Kai checked the locks and looked through the windows at the storm as though he needed to make certain it had not developed a personal grudge against the house.

My clothes had dried hours earlier, but Lydia insisted I keep the cream sweater and gray sweatpants on for the night because putting my leggings back on would be "emotionally depressing." I did not know how clothing could be emotionally depressing, though I had to admit the oversized sweater was significantly more comfortable.

Mom called just before ten. She did not sound remotely surprised when I told her Willow had refused to let us leave.

"I told you she would," Mom said.

"You knew?"

"We spoke earlier."

"You planned this?"

"We agreed that if the weather was still bad, you would stay there."

"You let me spend ten minutes arguing with her."

"You enjoy arguing."

"That is not true."

Mom laughed. "Sleep well, sweetheart."

"Hudson has been there for two nights."

"He seems happy."

"He may never come home."

"We will mourn him."

I could hear Dad in the background asking whether I still remembered my name.

I ended the call.

By the time everyone began disappearing upstairs, the blanket fort had returned to its original quiet state. The snack bowls were gone, the cards had been collected, and the warm string lights had been dimmed until they cast only a faint golden glow through the layered blankets. Pillows and couch cushions still covered the floor inside, arranged into something that looked almost comfortable enough to sleep on if a person ignored the wooden chair legs surrounding them.

Hudson and Milo had begged to stay in the fort too, but Willow refused after remembering how little sleep either boy had gotten the night before. Their protests followed them all the way upstairs, fading only after Kai threatened to separate them into different bedrooms if they did not settle down.

Lydia said good night and disappeared to her room soon afterward. Willow paused beside the fort long enough to place another folded blanket near the entrance and remind me that there were clean towels in the bathroom if I needed them.

"You can take Lydia's room," she offered. "She can sleep in the guest room."

"I can hear you," Lydia called from upstairs.

"You said you didn't mind."

"I said Autumn could sleep in the guest room."

"The sheets aren't changed."

"Then she can sleep with me."

I looked toward the staircase. "I thought you kicked in your sleep."

"I do."

"The fort is fine."

Lydia laughed. "Coward."

Willow smiled down at me. "Are you sure?"

"I'm sure."

Her eyes moved briefly toward Riley, who was kneeling near one side of the fort and attempting to reattach a blanket that had slipped from the back of a chair.

"All right. Do not stay awake too late."

"We won't," I said.

Riley glanced at me.

I looked away before Willow could notice.

She probably noticed anyway. Parents always did.

Eventually, she and Kai went upstairs, leaving the lower floor wrapped in storm-darkened silence.

Riley and I were alone.

Not completely alone, technically. The rest of his family was only one floor above us, and Milo's muffled voice occasionally carried through the ceiling whenever he attempted to whisper something to Hudson. Still, the house felt different once the adults disappeared. The rooms seemed larger, the rain louder, and the little fort brighter against the darkness surrounding it.

Riley ducked beneath the blanket and crawled inside. "You're actually sleeping here?"

I followed him through the opening. "Apparently I am emotionally attached."

"I knew it."

"Do not become pleased with yourself."

"Too late."

He settled against the cushions near the far side, and I sat across from him with my legs folded beneath the oversized sweatpants. The fort smelled faintly like cinnamon from the muffins we had eaten inside it earlier, mixed with clean blankets and the cool dampness that seemed to cling to the whole house after a day of rain.

The battery-powered lights gave everything a soft, dreamlike quality. Shadows moved across Riley's face whenever the blankets shifted in the draft, and the rain against the windows became gentler beneath the layers of fabric surrounding us.

For several minutes, neither of us spoke.

It was not uncomfortable.

Silence had always been one of the easiest things between Riley and me. The old Riley and I could sit together for hours without speaking, each of us doing something completely separate while still feeling as though we were sharing the same moment. He might be writing in one of his journals while I edited photographs. I might be reading while he lay across the end of my bed with music playing quietly from his phone. We never felt pressured to fill every empty space.

The Riley sitting across from me now had learned that too. Or perhaps it had simply remained somewhere inside him.

He pulled one of the pillows closer and leaned against it. "You said we used to build these."

I looked up. "Forts?"

He nodded.

"All the time." I said.

"How old were we?"

"Every age."

"That is not specific."

"We started when we were little, but we never really stopped."

Riley looked around the glowing blanket walls. "Even when we were older?"

"Especially when we were older. We just started pretending they had practical purposes."

"What kind of practical purpose could a blanket fort have?"

"Privacy."

"We both had bedrooms."

"Atmosphere."

"That is not practical."

"It was to us."

He smiled. "What did we do in them?"

"Everything. We watched movies, played cards, told scary stories, ate food we were not supposed to bring into the living room, and argued about how to build them properly."

"Who was better?"

"Me."

"That answer came quickly."

"Because it is true."

"You fell onto a hidden rock two days ago."

"That is completely unrelated to structural engineering."

Riley nodded solemnly. "Of course."

I glanced at the blanket above us and smiled as the memories began returning, one after another, so clear that the fort around us seemed to change.

"The first one we built was terrible," I told him. "We were probably six. Maybe seven. We tried attaching a blanket to the ceiling fan."

Riley stared at me. "Why?"

"We thought it would make the roof higher."

"That sounds dangerous."

"It was."

"What happened?"

"You turned on the fan."

His eyes widened. "Why would I do that?"

"You said the blanket would spin and make the fort magical."

"That does sound like me."

"It wrapped around the fan blades and pulled one of the lamps off the table."

"Did it break?"

"No, but Willow screamed so loudly that we thought someone had died."

Riley laughed. The sound settled warmly inside the little fort.

"You blamed me," I continued.

"Was it your idea?"

"No."

"Then that seems unfair."

"You were the one who turned the fan on."

"That is strong evidence."

"You told your mom I dared you."

"Did you?"

"No. You were a liar."

"So I've heard."

I smiled. "After that, our parents made rules."

"Rules for blanket forts?"

"Several. Nothing attached to moving objects. No candles. No food that could stain the carpet. No jumping off furniture into the fort."

"That last one feels specific."

"It was."

"What happened?"

I tried not to laugh before I even began.

"When we were eight, you decided the couch was a mountain and the fort was a rescue tent at the bottom. You climbed onto the back of the couch wearing your dad's winter goggles and one of Lydia's scarves."

Riley covered his mouth. "I already regret this."

"You shouted that you were caught in an avalanche."

"That is not how avalanches work."

"You knew that after you jumped."

His eyes widened again. "I jumped off the couch?"

"Directly into the fort."

"Did it collapse?"

"Completely. You landed on me, Milo's baby swing somehow tipped sideways, and one of the chairs fell onto Lydia's foot."

"Was Milo in the swing?"

"No. Thankfully."

"So no babies were harmed."

"Only everyone else."

Riley laughed harder.

I had forgotten how much I loved hearing it.

Not merely because the sound reminded me of the boy he had been, though it did. Riley's laugh had always started quietly and then escaped all at once when something truly caught him off guard. It made his eyes narrow and his shoulders shake, and sometimes he would try to speak through it only to make himself laugh harder.

This Riley did the same thing.

The familiarity warmed me.

Then it hurt.

I continued before the ache could settle too deeply.

"One year, we built a fort during a power outage. Your dad found every flashlight in the house, and you put them underneath colored blankets so the entire inside glowed red and blue."

"That sounds better than this one."

"It was beautiful until the batteries started dying."

"What did we do without power?"

"You convinced all the other kids that something lived beneath the floorboards."

Riley's smile vanished. "Why?"

"Because you were awful."

"Did they believe me?"

"Milo wasn't born yet, but Hudson and the girls did. You scratched the floor from outside the fort while I told the story."

"You helped?"

"I was easily influenced."

"You accused me of being dangerous earlier."

"You were."

"What happened?"

"Brooklyn screamed and kicked one of the pillows so hard that she knocked over a flashlight. Then Harper started crying, and you felt guilty, so you crawled back inside and admitted it was us."

"That was responsible."

"Then you told them the creature only attacked liars."

Riley stared at me.

I laughed. "They cried harder."

"I was a terrible child."

"You were creative."

"Everyone keeps saying that when they mean terrible."

"Both can be true."

I told him about the winter we attempted to construct a two-story fort by stacking chairs on top of the dining table until Kai discovered us and nearly had a heart attack.

I told him about the time we dragged every blanket in both houses into the Briarwyn living room, only to realize we had trapped Willow in the kitchen because the fort blocked the doorway.

I told him about a fort we built when we were thirteen, complete with handwritten admission tickets that no one was allowed to enter without presenting.

"What did the tickets cost?" Riley asked.

"Food."

"Reasonable."

"You charged Milo three cookies."

"He would have been tiny."

"He was."

"That feels unethical."

"You said younger children required more supervision and therefore cost more."

"That sounds like an excellent business model."

"You ate all three cookies before he even entered."

"Also reasonable."

"He cried."

"Less reasonable."

I smiled as I remembered Riley crawling out of the fort with crumbs still on his shirt, desperately trying to convince Milo that the tickets were actually refundable. Milo had stopped crying only after Riley gave him the stuffed bear he had been sleeping with since childhood, something he claimed was temporary but never asked for again.

"He still has that bear," I said.

Riley's expression softened. "The brown one on his bed?"

I nodded. "That was yours."

"He never told me."

"He might not remember where he got it. He was really little."

Riley looked toward the fort entrance, beyond which the dark living room stretched toward the staircase. "I gave it to him?"

"You pretended he stole it for years, but yes."

"Why?"

"Because you made him cry."

He considered that. "I seem to have spent a lot of my childhood frightening people and then giving them things."

"That is an accurate summary."

"Did it work?"

"Usually."

Another smile appeared.

The stories continued easily after that.

I told him about the fort we built when we were fifteen because neither of us wanted to attend a neighborhood Christmas party. We hid beneath the blankets for nearly an hour while our parents searched the house, only for Riley's phone to ring loudly because he had forgotten to silence it.

"I blamed you," I said.

"Why?"

"You were calling my phone."

"While sitting beside you?"

"You wanted to see if the vibration would make the floor feel haunted."

Riley closed his eyes. "Of course I did."

I told him about the time he sneaked an entire pie into a fort, and we attempted to eat it with serving spoons because we forgot plates.

I told him about the summer storm when we opened every window and built a fort in the center of my living room so we could pretend we were camping outside without being struck by lightning.

I told him how he always insisted on hanging the lights because he was taller, then complained whenever I told him they were uneven.

"You still do that," he said.

"Do what?"

"Tell me things are uneven after I finish."

"That is because you do them wrong."

"You wiped mud off the wrong side of my forehead yesterday."

"That was you."

"Exactly. You told me it was wrong."

"Because it was."

He smiled.

I was in the middle of telling him about one particular fort we built when we were twelve, the year both our families became obsessed with a mystery show. Riley had made everyone speak in terrible accents and insisted we could not leave the fort until we solved the imaginary crime he created.

"You were the detective," I explained. "You wore your dad's old coat and carried a magnifying glass you stole from Lydia's science kit."

"Did we solve it?"

"There was nothing to solve."

"There had to be."

"You hid a cookie beneath one of the cushions and accused everyone of stealing it."

"Who was guilty?"

"You."

"That is disappointing."

"You spent two hours interviewing us, and the cookie was in your pocket the entire time."

Riley began laughing.

"You forgot you put it there," I continued, smiling as the memory unfolded around me. "When you finally found it, it had completely crumbled, so there were pieces all over the inside of your coat. You tried pretending that was part of the mystery, but everyone knew. Lydia threw a pillow at you, and then—"

The sentence disappeared.

I stopped.

The memory did not.

I could still see him.

Twelve-year-old Riley kneeling beneath a canopy of blankets with cookie crumbs covering the front of an oversized coat. His hair had been longer then, falling into his eyes as he laughed so hard he could barely defend himself from Lydia's pillow. I remembered the way he had looked at me after everyone else crawled out of the fort, grinning as he whispered that he had known where the cookie was the entire time.

He had not.

I remembered shoving him. I remembered him falling sideways into me. I remembered both of us lying beneath the collapsed blankets, laughing until Willow came in and asked what we had destroyed.

The memory was so alive inside me that for one foolish second, I expected the boy across from me to remember it too.

He didn't.

Riley sat quietly against the pillows, waiting for me to finish a story about a childhood he had never experienced anywhere except through my voice.

The smile faded from my face.

For the past several days, I had almost forgotten how much that hurt.

There had been too much happening to leave room for grief. The orchard, the park, the photographs, the fair, the scarecrow competition, the storm, and the kiss on my cheek had filled every empty space. Riley had been laughing again. Teasing me again. Reaching for my hand and learning my expressions and creating memories that belonged to both of us.

I had been having fun.

Real fun.

Not pretending. Not forcing myself to smile for his sake. Somewhere in the middle of all that new happiness, I had stopped thinking every second about the person I had lost.

Now, inside a blanket fort built exactly like the ones from our childhood, the missing returned all at once.

I missed my best friend.

Not this Riley.

Not because the boy sitting across from me was not enough.

That almost made it worse.

I liked this Riley. I liked the way he watched me when he thought I wasn't paying attention. I liked how quickly he had learned to tease me and how he no longer looked frightened by the chaos of our families. I liked the person he was becoming, perhaps more than I was prepared to admit.

But I still missed the one who had known the ending to every story before I told it.

I missed not having to explain.

I missed saying three words and watching recognition appear instantly in his face. I missed the Riley who would have interrupted the story to argue that he had known where the cookie was, even though both of us knew he had not. I missed the person who shared every memory with me instead of borrowing them from my voice.

I missed the way he used to look at me as though I were part of the world he understood.

The silence stretched.

Riley's expression changed. "What happened?"

I looked down at my hands. "Nothing."

"You stopped talking."

"I forgot what came next."

He did not believe me. I could tell by the way he watched my face, the way his eyebrows pulled together slightly as he searched for the truth I was trying to hide.

"You don't forget stories."

"I do sometimes."

"Not these."

My throat tightened.

The rain whispered against the windows beyond the fort.

I picked at a loose thread on the borrowed sweatpants.

"The fort collapsed," I said. "That's what happened next."

"But that isn't why you stopped."

I closed my eyes for a moment.

Riley waited.

He never pushed immediately now. He had learned that much about me. He waited through my silences, leaving enough space for me to decide whether I could fill them.

"I miss you," I whispered.

The words slipped out before I could make them gentler.

Riley became completely still.

I stared at my hands because I could not bear to see what appeared in his face. "That sounds horrible."

"No," he said softly.

"It does."

"It sounds honest."

I swallowed. "I've been having so much fun with you lately that I forgot for a little while."

"Forgot what?"

"How much I miss him."

Riley did not ask who I meant.

He knew.

The old Riley. My Riley.

Romeo.

The boy in every story I had just told.

I finally lifted my eyes.

His expression was quiet. Not angry or hurt exactly, though something shadowed his face.

"I know you're still him," I said quickly. "I know you're not a different person, and I don't want you to think I'm sitting here wishing you were someone else. I like knowing you now. I do. More than I thought I would."

His eyes stayed on mine. "But?"

The single word hurt.

"But sometimes I remember something, and I want to tell you, and then I realize I have to explain the entire beginning before you can understand the end. Sometimes I look at you and expect you to know what I'm thinking, because you always did, and then you don't. Sometimes you do something exactly the way you used to, and it feels like I have you back for one second, but then you look confused when I react."

My voice began to tremble, though I refused to cry.

"I had a best friend who knew almost every version of me. He knew what I was like when I was five and when I was ten and when I was fourteen. He knew every embarrassing thing I had ever done and every terrible phase I went through. I never had to introduce myself to him."

Riley looked down.

"And now you do," he said.

The words were so quiet that I almost did not hear them.

"Yes."

I hated agreeing.

His fingers moved against the edge of the pillow. "I'm sorry."

"No." I leaned forward. "You are not allowed to apologize for this."

"I forgot you."

"You didn't choose to."

"That doesn't make it hurt you less."

"No, but it means it isn't your fault."

Riley nodded slightly, though I could tell he did not entirely accept it.

The fort felt smaller around us now.

More intimate.

The laughter and stories still lingered somewhere beneath the silence, but grief had settled beside them, no longer willing to be ignored.

"I think I forgot too," Riley said after a while.

I frowned. "Forgot what?"

"That you're grieving."

My chest tightened.

He looked at me.

"Everyone keeps talking about what I lost. My memories, my journals, my life. People ask me how I'm feeling and whether something looks familiar. They tell me it must be horrible not to remember all of you."

"It is horrible."

"I know." His voice remained gentle. "But you lost something too. All of you did."

I stared at him.

"Your parents lost the person who remembered being raised by them. My parents lost the son they knew. Lydia and Milo lost their brother in some way, even though I'm still here. And you..."

He paused.

"You lost the only person who knew all those stories with you."

My eyes burned.

I looked down quickly.

"I still have you."

"I know."

"But it isn't the same."

"No."

There was no accusation in his answer. No demand for me to pretend it was enough. He simply allowed the truth to exist.

I wiped beneath one eye before a tear could fall.

"I hate saying that."

"Why?"

"Because it sounds like I don't appreciate you."

Riley studied me. "Do you?"

I looked at him. "Appreciate you?"

"Like knowing me now."

My heart gave a slow, painful beat. "Yes." The answer came without hesitation. "I really do."

Something softened in his face. "Then I think both things can be true."

I blinked.

The words echoed what I had told him on the bridge in the forest.

We can miss him and still want to know you. Both things can be true.

Riley remembered that conversation. Maybe not because it came from his old life, but because it belonged to this one.

"You can miss who I was," he continued, "and still like who I am."

A tear slipped free before I could stop it.

I laughed weakly and wiped it away. "You stole that from me."

"I'm learning from a good teacher."

"You said Willow was your teacher."

"She was busy."

I smiled through the ache.

Riley shifted closer across the cushions, not enough to crowd me, but enough that our knees nearly touched. "You can tell me the stories anyway."

"It isn't the same."

"I know."

"You'll never remember them the way I do."

"Maybe not." His honesty hurt, but it also steadied me. "But I can know them now."

I looked at him.

"And if you tell them enough," he added, "maybe one day I'll interrupt you in the middle and tell you that you're remembering something wrong."

My mouth trembled. "You would do that."

"Apparently I did it all the time."

"You did."

"Then I should practice."

A small laugh escaped me.

Riley smiled. "What happened after the fort collapsed?"

I stared at him.

He was serious.

Not pretending the moment had not happened. Not trying to make me forget that I missed him. He only wanted the rest of the story.

I took a slow breath. "Your mom came into the room and asked what we had destroyed."

"Was anything actually broken?"

"No, but you told her the chair sounded damaged."

"Why?"

"So she would look at it instead of noticing the cookie crumbs all over her carpet."

"Did it work?"

"For about ten seconds."

"And then?"

"She made us clean everything."

"That seems reasonable."

"You kept finding cookie pieces inside the coat for days."

Riley smiled. "Did I admit I forgot where I put it?"

"Never."

"So I maintained dignity."

"You had crumbs in your hair."

"Dignity is internal."

I laughed again. This time, the sadness did not disappear, but it moved enough to make room for something else.

Riley leaned back against the pillows, still watching me.

I continued telling him the story.