Chapter 419: Reflections and Guilt

After leaving Summer, I went straight to the beach.

I needed somewhere with nobody around. Somewhere I could cool down without seeing another person, without having to explain why I had suddenly acted like an idiot.

The sand was still warm from the day. I took off my shirt, shoes, and the rest of the clothes I did not need, leaving them in a pile above the wet sand. The breeze coming off the water should have helped, but my body still felt overheated.

It was not only from training.

I had crossed a line with Summer.

The memory made me stop near the water.

I had acted without thinking. One second she had been close, treating the injuries on my neck, and the next I had let the feeling in my body take over and I pushed down Summer on the ground and kissed her and nearly went further.

Marlon would kill me if he found out.

Actually, if he had seen it happen, I probably would not have made it off the Boardwalk in one piece.

But worrying about Marlon was not even the worst part.

Summer trusted me.

She had been trying to help after her father spent an hour beating me into the dirt, and I had responded by making things uncomfortable for her. I did not know what she thought of me now. She might be angry. She might be scared. She might not want to see me again.

I could not blame her.

I looked down at my hands.

They were trembling.

"What the hell is wrong with me?" I muttered.

Something was happening inside my body.

Maybe curing Maribel had triggered it. Maybe stabilizing another person had done something to the Symbiote. Maybe it had been building for a while and I had ignored it because I was too busy fighting, training, dealing with Callighan, and trying to save everyone else.

Whatever it was, it was getting worse.

The heat. The restlessness. The way every small bit of closeness suddenly felt unbearable. It was like my body kept demanding warmth and contact until it became hard to think about anything else.

I walked into the shallows until cold water reached my knees.

The ocean moved around my legs, pulling sand away beneath my feet. I crouched down and splashed water over my face, rubbing both hands across my forehead and cheeks.

It did nothing.

My head was still full of the same thoughts.

I could not ask anyone about this.

There was the white-haired lady from my dreams, if she was even real. Maybe she was part of my subconscious. Maybe she was somebody the Symbiote had remembered. She was the previous host of Dullahan, and she clearly knew more than I did.

She might have answers.

The problem was that she appeared whenever she wanted. I could not just close my eyes and call for her like she was waiting somewhere inside my head.

I looked out toward the dark water.

I was scared that I was losing control of myself.

Not only of my body. Of what I wanted.

The people who could probably help me the easiest were Sydney, Rachel, Cindy, and the others. They were my girlfriends. I could talk to them. I could be close to them without needing to explain every awkward part of it.

But I was not going to run to them just because my body wanted relief.

What kind of man would that make me?

No.

I just needed to get through tonight.

Tomorrow, I would see them. Maybe I could tell them something was wrong without making myself sound like a complete pervert. Maybe one of them would notice something I had missed. At worst, I could put the Anti-Symbiote collar back on for longer.

The collar weakened my body, but it also made everything inside me quieter.

Maybe that was what I needed.

Maybe I had to wear it until whatever this was passed.

I rubbed the water from my face and stared at my reflection breaking apart in the waves.

A worse thought came into my head.

What if Dullahan was behind this?

What if the Symbiote wanted to spread further through other women, like some kind of cold invasion or something? That sounded insane, and I had no proof. It might only be my own mind trying to explain feelings I did not understand.

Still, the thought would not leave me alone.

It would be easier if I could actually talk to Dullahan.

Kunta had told me Symbiotes were not mindless creatures. They were intelligent. Cunning. They could understand people and even hold conversations if they wanted to.

So why had Dullahan never spoken to me?

Maybe it only saw me as a body it needed to survive in.

It had been inside me for seventeen years. Since I was a baby, apparently. It should have known me better than anyone. Yet I had never heard its voice. Never felt it trying to explain itself. Never received any warning before it changed something inside me.

I ran a wet hand through my black hair and let out a tired breath.

Maybe I had watched too many movies.

The idea of becoming friends with my Symbiote sounded nice. If Dullahan and I could talk, maybe it could explain its abilities. Maybe it could warn me before I lost control. Maybe it could help me fight Gaspar when the time came.

But I was hoping for something that had never happened in all these years.

Speaking of Gaspar, I wondered whether he was close with his Symbiote.

He used its powers too naturally. His control looked different from mine. He did not hesitate. He did not look surprised when it reacted. Maybe he had spoken with it. Maybe he had found a way to work together while I was still stumbling around, guessing what Dullahan could do.

If I fought Gaspar one-on-one, I did not know whether I could beat him. Likely not.

Time Freeze was useless against another Symbiote Host. The person might freeze, but the Symbiote inside them did not. I had learned that the hard way. If I stopped time and got close, the Symbiote could still move, still protect its host, still attack me.

I would need another way to deal with him.

The sky had darkened while I stood in the water. A thin strip of orange still showed over the ocean, but the streets behind me had already started losing their color.

Shannon’s birthday was coming up soon.

I needed to get dressed and try to look normal before I showed up at Carmen’s house. I could not walk in there late, exhausted, covered in dirt, and acting strange.

I stepped out of the water, dried myself as best as I could with my shirt, and put my clothes back on. Then I picked up my shoes and headed away from the beach toward the small shop I had been using as a temporary home, where I still had cleaner clothes waiting.

I changed into black pants and a clean white shirt.

The shirt was one of the few pieces of clothing I still had that did not smell like sweat, dust, gunpowder, or old blood. I buttoned it properly, rolled the sleeves up once, and tied my hair back so it would stay out of my face.

After checking myself in the small broken mirror near the back of the shop, I headed out.

I had told Carmen I would come early to help with whatever she needed for Shannon’s birthday, so I could not show up late now.

That was only part of the reason.

The other part was that I did not want to arrive when everybody was already there.

Especially Maribel.

Especially Summer.

My stomach tightened as I thought about them.

Maribel was one thing. What happened with her could not have been avoided. She had been getting worse, and the stabilization had needed to happen before the Symbiote hurt her further. It had been awkward, but at least there had been a reason for it.

Summer was different.

She had not asked for anything from me. She had only come by after training because she felt bad seeing me get thrown around by her father. She had brought water, a towel, and the medical supplies she always carried.

I had made the situation uncomfortable for her.

Fuck.

Would she even believe me if I told her something was wrong with the Symbiote?

"Sorry, Summer. The alien creature inside me suddenly made me horny so why I kissed you out of nowhere and had actually the urge to take you right there."

Yeah. That sounded completely insane.

Even if she believed me, it would not erase what happened. I could not blame everything on Dullahan and act like I had no responsibility. I had been the one there. I had been the one who crossed a boundary.

I did not feel right leaving it like that.

Summer was not some random person I could apologize to once, avoid for a few days, and hope everything became normal on its own. She was Marlon’s daughter. She was part of this place. She had treated my injuries more times than I could count, even when I told her I would recover without help.

I needed to clear things up.

I needed to apologize properly.

I could tell her it had not been what I intended. That I had not wanted to make her feel unsafe or uncomfortable. Whether she accepted it afterward was up to her.

By the time I reached Carmen’s home, the sun had already disappeared behind the buildings. The sky above the Boardwalk had turned deep blue, and battery-powered lamps glowed behind several windows nearby.

I stopped in front of her door and knocked twice.

A birthday party in the middle of a zombie apocalypse probably sounded stupid to some people.

Maybe it was.

Food was limited. Batteries were limited. Any gathering could become dangerous if the wrong people heard about it. There were still Infected out in the city, and Callighan’s shadow had not disappeared just because we took the Golden Nugget.

But I thought birthdays mattered more now than they used to.

People needed something that reminded them they were still alive for reasons other than surviving until the next morning. They needed a table with food on it, people talking too loudly, somebody getting embarrassed when everyone looked at them, and one night where the apocalypse did not get to take everything.

The door opened.

Shannon stood there, and her face lit up the second she saw me.

"Welcome, Ryan!"