The next day, I didn't go to the hospital.

I woke up with the intention of going. That was the strange part. For a few quiet minutes after opening my eyes, I lay in bed staring at the pale morning light on my ceiling and mentally arranged the day around Riley the way I had been doing since the accident.

I would shower. I would get dressed. I would force down something small because everyone had apparently formed a secret committee dedicated to monitoring whether I ate. I would stop for coffee, maybe bring Willow one too, and then I would walk through the hospital doors and sit in the chair beside Riley's bed like I belonged there.

Then I turned my head and saw the shoebox still pushed halfway beneath my bed, and the night before came back to me all at once.

The crying. The memories. The way grief had dragged me down to the floor and opened every door inside my head.

I remembered the seven-year-old version of us hiding beneath the kitchen table. I remembered Riley standing in the rain at fourteen. I remembered his hands around mine in the empty hallway when I was sixteen and couldn't breathe. I remembered so much of him that, for one terrifying second, I felt like if I went back to the hospital and saw him looking at me with those curious, unfamiliar eyes, I might fall apart right in front of him.

So I didn't go.

I didn't tell anyone at first.

I showered. I got dressed. I brushed my hair. I went downstairs and let Dad put toast in front of me. I took two bites because his eyes kept flicking toward my plate with quiet hope, and I couldn't bear to disappoint him. Mom asked what time I was heading to the hospital, and I stared at the orange juice in my glass like the answer might be floating somewhere inside it.

"I'm not going today," I said.

The kitchen went still.

Not dramatically. Not loudly. Just enough that I felt it.

Dad stopped reaching for his mug. Mom's face softened. Harper looked up from where she sat at the table scrolling through her phone. Brooklyn, who had been leaning against the counter with a piece of toast in one hand, raised her eyebrows like she had not expected to hear that sentence from me in this lifetime.

Mom was the first to speak. "Are you sure?"

No. "Yeah."

"You don't have to stay away if you want to go."

"I know."

"And you don't have to go if you need a day."

"I know."

Dad sat across from me slowly. "Do Riley's parents know?"

I shook my head. "Not yet. I'll text Willow."

Brooklyn studied my face. "Are you sick?"

"No."

"Are you lying?"

"Probably."

"At least you're honest."

Harper reached across the table and touched my wrist. "What do you need today?"

I looked down at her hand, then toward the window over the sink. The sky outside was pale and cloudy, the kind of gray that made the whole world look quieter than usual. I could feel my family watching me, waiting for me to ask for comfort, food, company, anything they could give me.

But what I needed wasn't in the house.

"I think I need to drive."

Mom's brows pulled together. "Drive where?"

I shrugged. "Just somewhere."

That wasn't true. I knew exactly where I was going, but saying it out loud made it feel too close to Riley, and I needed one thing, just one thing, to belong only to me for a little while.

Mom looked like she wanted to argue, or at least ask more questions, but Dad reached across the table and gently covered her hand with his. "Take your phone," he said.

"I will."

"And text us when you get there."

The words hit me in the chest.

Text us when you get there.

For a second, all I could hear was Riley.

Alive?

I swallowed.

"I will," I whispered.

After breakfast, I texted Willow before I could lose my nerve. I told her I was sorry, that I needed to take a day but I would come back tomorrow, and that she could tell Riley I wasn't upset with him.

I stared at that last part for a long time before sending it because it felt ridiculous and necessary all at once. Riley didn't know me well enough to know my absence wasn't anger, but somehow, I needed him to be told anyway.

Willow responded less than a minute later.

Take care of yourself today, sweetheart. He'll understand.

I stared at the message and wondered if that was true.

Then I grabbed my keys and left before anyone could convince me to stay.

I drove with no music on.

That was how I knew I wasn't okay.

Usually, silence in a car made me restless. Usually, I needed music to fill the spaces between my thoughts, to give my mind something to hold onto besides itself. But that morning, I couldn't bear the idea of a song. Every lyric seemed dangerous. Every melody felt like it might know too much. So I drove with only the sound of the tires against the road and the soft rush of air through the vents.

The farther I got from town, the quieter everything became.

Houses thinned into trees. Sidewalks disappeared. The road curved through patches of woods that had turned gold and rust with autumn, leaves clinging to branches like small flames refusing to go out.

I drove past the little bakery Riley used to say smelled like heaven and financial irresponsibility.

I drove past the elementary school parking lot where I had told him I loved him. I forced myself not to look too long.

Eventually, I turned down a narrow road most people missed unless they already knew it was there. The pavement grew rougher, cracked in places where tree roots had pushed beneath it, and the branches overhead leaned together until the road looked like it was slipping into a tunnel made of leaves.

At the end of the road was my thinking spot.

I had found it when I was fifteen.

Back then, I had been learning that growing up did not always feel like becoming bigger. Sometimes it felt like the world was getting too loud and my body was getting too small to hold all of it. I started driving before I had a license, only short distances and never with permission, and one afternoon after a terrible day at school, I had taken a wrong turn and ended up there.

It wasn't anything special to anyone else.

Just a small overlook near the edge of the woods, where the ground rose high enough to see the town below through the trees. There was an old wooden bench near the edge, weathered gray from years of rain, and beyond it a narrow dirt path that led toward a creek hidden deeper in the trees. In the fall, leaves covered the ground so completely that walking there felt like stepping through a storybook someone had forgotten to finish.

To me, it had become sacred.

It was where I went when I didn't know what to do with myself. It was where I went when my anxiety was too big for my bedroom, when my thoughts were too tangled for anyone else to understand, when I needed to be somewhere the world could not immediately find me. I had never told anyone about it.

Not my parents. Not my sisters. Not even Riley.

Especially not Riley.

And yet, one day, he found me there anyway.

I parked in the small gravel space beside the trees and turned off the car. For a while, I didn't move. My hands stayed wrapped around the steering wheel, and I stared through the windshield at the bench waiting beneath the cloudy sky.

I could still see him there.

Seventeen-year-old Riley, standing beside that bench with his hands shoved into the pockets of his hoodie and that worried little crease between his brows.

I had been furious when he found me.

Not because I didn't want to see him.

Because I did.

That was the problem.

I always wanted Riley, even when I was trying to escape the entire world.

I got out of the car and walked toward the bench, the leaves crunching beneath my shoes. The air smelled like damp earth and woodsmoke from somewhere far away. I pulled my sweater tighter around myself and sat down slowly, letting the silence settle around me.

Then the memory came.

I had been seventeen, and it had been one of those days where nothing truly terrible had happened, which somehow made the sadness worse. If something terrible had happened, at least I could have explained it. But it had only been a thousand small things. A bad grade. A comment from a girl in class. My hands shaking during lunch. A headache. The feeling that everyone else knew how to exist easily and I had missed the lesson.

I had left school without telling anyone.

That was unlike me. Riley was the impulsive one. I was the one who overthought every possible outcome until doing anything felt impossible. But that day, I had walked out, gotten into my car, and driven here. I sat on the bench with my knees pulled to my chest and cried until I ran out of tears.

Then I heard leaves crunching behind me.

I turned so quickly I almost fell off the bench.

Riley stood a few feet away.

"What are you doing here?" I asked, my voice sharp from crying.

He stopped walking, hands raised slightly like I was a wild animal he didn't want to startle. "Finding you, apparently."

"How did you know I was here?"

"I didn't."

"That makes no sense."

"I know."

"Riley."

He sighed and glanced back toward the road. "You weren't at school. You weren't answering your phone. You weren't home. Your mom thought you were with me, which was a problem because you were not with me, and then I started driving around because apparently my hobbies include panic and trespassing."

I stared at him. "This place is twenty minutes from school."

"I know."

"You just randomly drove here?"

He shrugged. "I took a wrong turn."

"That's not possible."

"It very much happened."

"No, I mean..." I looked at the empty overlook, the trees, the bench, the quiet little corner of the world I had been so sure belonged only to me. "I've never told you about this place."

Riley's expression softened. "I know."

"Then how did you find me?"

He looked at me for a long time. "I don't know, Autumn."

I remembered hating that answer because some part of me had wanted him to say something impossible. I wanted him to say he could feel where I was, that some invisible string between us had pulled him through the roads until he found me. I wanted him to say the universe had made a mistake by letting me feel alone and sent him after me to correct it.

Instead, he walked over and sat beside me.

Not too close.

Just close enough.

We stared at the town below, both of us quiet for a while. I had expected him to ask why I left school. I had expected him to scold me or tell me everyone was worried. But Riley only leaned forward with his elbows on his knees and picked a leaf from the ground.

"You scared me," he said eventually.

I looked down. "Sorry."

"Don't apologize yet. I'm still mad."

I almost smiled. "You're mad?"

"Yes."

"You don't look mad."

"I'm doing it internally."

"That sounds unhealthy."

"So was disappearing."

I didn't answer.

He turned the leaf between his fingers. "Do you come here a lot?"

I hesitated, then nodded.

"Why didn't you tell me?"

"Because it's mine."

Riley looked at me then, and I remembered bracing myself for hurt to cross his face. It didn't. He only nodded, like he understood that some places were private not because you loved people less, but because you needed somewhere to exist without being witnessed.

"Okay," he said.

I blinked. "Okay?"

"Yeah."

"You're not mad?"

"I'm mad that you scared me. I'm not mad that you have a place."

That was Riley. He could be annoying, dramatic, impossible, and too smug for his own good, but then he would say something like that, something gentle and careful, and I would remember why loving him had never felt like a choice.

We sat there for a long time. Eventually, my breathing slowed. The tightness in my chest loosened. Riley didn't ask me to explain the sadness, which was good because I didn't know how. He simply stayed beside me, picking leaves apart and tossing the stems at my shoes until I finally threatened to push him off the overlook.

Before we left, he stood and brushed dirt from his jeans. "I won't tell anyone about this place."

I looked up at him. "Promise?"

"Promise."

"And you won't come here unless I invite you?"

He put one hand over his heart. "I solemnly swear."

I narrowed my eyes. "Riley."

He softened. "I won't."

He kept that promise.

Mostly.

He never came here without me again, not unless I asked. But after that day, sometimes when I got quiet, he would tilt his head and say, Thinking spot? And if I nodded, he would drive me here without another question. Sometimes he stayed. Sometimes he waited in the car. Sometimes he brought fries. Once, he brought a blanket because it was cold and told me that emotional breakdowns did not excuse poor circulation.

I sat on the bench now and wiped at my face, even though I hadn't realized I was crying again.

The worst part was that I had wanted him here.

I had chosen not to go to the hospital because seeing Riley hurt too much today, but sitting in the place where old Riley had once found me made me miss him so badly I could barely breathe.

I wanted him to appear at the edge of the trees with his hands in his hoodie pockets and that worried crease between his brows. I wanted him to sit beside me and say nothing until the world felt survivable again. I wanted him to toss leaf stems at my shoes and tell me he was mad at me internally.

But if Riley came here now, he wouldn't know why this place mattered.

He wouldn't know he had found me here once.

He wouldn't know he had promised not to tell.

He wouldn't know that this bench had become ours only because he respected that it had been mine first.

I leaned forward and rested my elbows on my knees, staring down at the town through the trees. Somewhere down there was the hospital. Somewhere inside it, Riley was probably waking up from another nap or answering another question or listening to someone tell him another story about who he used to be.

Maybe Willow had told him I wasn't coming today.

Maybe he had asked why.

Maybe he hadn't.

The thought hurt more than I wanted it to.

I pulled out my phone and stared at the screen. There were messages from Harper and my mom, both asking if I had made it to wherever I was going. I texted them both that I was safe, then opened my conversation with Willow.

Her last message was still there.

Take care of yourself today, sweetheart. He'll understand.

I stared at the words.

Then I typed.

How is he?

I deleted it.

I typed again.

Did he ask about me?

I deleted that too because it sounded pathetic, and because the answer mattered too much.

Finally, I locked my phone and set it on the bench beside me.

The wind moved through the trees, scattering leaves across the ground. One landed near my shoe, bright orange and curled at the edges. I picked it up and turned it between my fingers, the way Riley had done that day.

I wondered how many places could hold one person.

How many corners of the world could be ruined by missing someone?

The parking lot behind the elementary school belonged to him now. The hospital belonged to him. My bedroom floor belonged to him. This bench belonged to him. So did the roads we had driven, the kitchen tables we had sat beneath, the sidewalks we had run down, the card games we had played, and every stupid text thread I was too scared to open.

Riley was everywhere.

Except beside me.

I closed my eyes and let the ache sit with me instead of fighting it. Maybe that was why I had come here. Not to escape him, because I was beginning to understand that there was no escaping someone who had been woven into your life for fourteen years. Maybe I had come here because this was the one place where I had once learned Riley could find me even when I didn't want to be found.

And maybe, if I sat here long enough, some part of him would find me again.

Not the Riley in the hospital.

Not the boy with bruises and missing memories and curious eyes.

The old Riley.

My Riley.

My Romeo.

I stayed there until the afternoon began to fade, until the clouds grew darker and the air turned cold enough to make my fingers ache. When I finally stood, my legs felt stiff and my chest felt hollow, but I could breathe a little better than I had that morning.

Before I walked back to my car, I looked at the bench one last time.

"I'm sorry I didn't come today," I whispered, though Riley wasn't there to hear me.

Then, after a moment, I whispered the truth too.

"I just needed to miss you somewhere you used to know how to find me."