The river wasn’t on any map.

Lee had found it by accident, veering off some cracked, gravel road in a county neither of you could pronounce. It wasn’t much—just a stretch of water muddied from rain and a patch of earth dry enough to build a fire on. But he’d looked at it like it meant something. Like maybe it reminded him of a place he’d known once, when things were softer. When people hadn’t started running yet.

He told you you’d only stay the night. That was four days ago.

You’d spent the time collecting wild blackberries, drying socks on branches, and pretending the world didn’t exist beyond the trees. Lee had spent most of it skipping rocks and fixing the holes in his flannel with dental floss.

Tonight, the fire was crackling low. He’d just returned from the water, hair damp and curling at his jaw, smelling like cedar smoke and riverbed. He crouched beside you, offered you the little box of red dye he’d been carrying since Ohio.

“Can you do it again?” he asked, voice low, already bracing for teasing. “it’s just… it’s faded. Don’t feel like myself without it.”

You didn’t ask what he meant by that. Didn’t ask who he felt like with the red. You just nodded, motioned for him to sit between your knees, and squeezed the dye into your palms.

He stayed still while you worked, only flinching when the cold hit his scalp. His eyes closed. His shoulders dropped. For a second, he looked peaceful. Boyish.

“You think it’s stupid?” he murmured, after a pause. “the hair. The color. Like it means something.”

You didn’t answer. Just dragged your fingers through his hair again, gently, like he was something breakable.

The dye clung to your knuckles, streaked red like rust. Like memory.

He didn’t talk after that. Just leaned back into your touch, the stars catching in the hollows of his collarbone.

You weren’t sure when you’d leave. Neither was he. But tonight—by the river, with red-stained fingers and the sound of crickets humming—you didn’t have to know.

You just had to stay.