Chapter 1364: Story 1364: Every Caress Hurt

We shouldn’t have touched each other.

Not when the fever was climbing.

Not when my skin was blistered and his arms were shaking from blood loss.

Not when the wind outside carried screams on it like drifting leaves.

But we needed something… anything… to feel human again.

And that meant touch.

Even if every caress hurt.

He found me after I was grazed by a biter. Not bitten, not infected—just sliced across the ribs when I fell running from a swarm. The wound bled, but didn’t pulse black. Not yet.

He pulled me into the church ruins, laid me down on shattered pews, and whispered, “You’ll be okay.”

He lied. But gently.

His hands were like fire—rough from weeks of scavenging, shaking from dehydration. Still, he touched me like I was made of silk. Like I wasn’t torn and trembling. His fingertips ran over my bandages, slow and reverent.

Every inch of me ached.

But I needed him closer.

The moment our foreheads touched, I forgot about the end of the world. His breath came hard and hot against my cheek, smelling of canned peaches and gunpowder. I smiled through the pain. So did he.

We kissed. Desperate. Broken. Alive.

And when he held me—tight, protective—I realized something terrifying:

I was falling in love. In a world built to bury love.

“Does it hurt?” he asked, fingers brushing my stitched wound.

“Yes,” I said.

“Want me to stop?”

“No.”

Because even pain was better than numbness. Even the sting of a cracked rib or the throb of stitched flesh was better than nothing. Better than cold nights and colder mornings without a heartbeat beside you.

Later, when the fever returned to him, I cared for him the same way. Wet cloth on his brow. Soft kisses on his temple. Murmured lullabies while zombies scratched against the stained-glass windows of our hideout.

He coughed blood that night. He shook so hard I thought he’d split in two.

But he kept reaching for me.

We didn’t speak of tomorrow. There might not be one.

We didn’t talk about the rot blooming across his shoulder. Or the bite mark he hid for two days before showing me. Or the fact that I hadn’t stopped bleeding since the fall.

We held each other.

We whispered old songs.

We cried without shame.

And every caress…

burned like a goodbye.

When morning came, we were still alive. Barely.

He smiled with cracked lips and said, “We hurt together. That means we’re still here.”

I nodded.

And I kissed him again.

One last time.

Even if it scorched every part of me that could still feel.