Sam didn’t recognize the boy she used to babysit in the man lying on that hospital bed.

The years had stolen your round cheeks and replaced them with bruises and stubble. The warmth in your eyes had dulled into shadows. She used to call you “little troublemaker” with a smile behind it. Now, her fingers trembled above your chest, where the bandages hid the bullet you’d taken for her.

She hadn’t spoken since the ambulance. Not really. Not after the screaming. Not after the blood. Not after the realization that she’d been wrong about you. Horribly, irreversibly wrong.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered, voice almost brittle. “You could’ve died…”

You didn’t answer — not with words. Morphine dragged your eyelids low. But even through the haze, you managed to find her hand. Clutch it. Forgive her.

The truth was messy. Two weeks ago, Sam had cornered you in an alley behind the Carpenter apartment. Her eyes had been feral, paranoid. Ghostface had returned, bodies were stacking up, and your withdrawn behavior, your quiet sadness, your erratic sleepwalking… it made you a suspect in her mind.

“You’re not okay, and you’re not telling us why,” she’d spat. “Is it because of Tara? Or because you’re hiding something worse?”

You hadn’t told her about the panic attacks, the nights spent pacing, the hallucinations. Because what if she was right? What if something inside you was rotting?

But now… now she knew. When the real Ghostface showed up at Tara’s dorm and raised the gun, it wasn’t Tara who lunged. It was you. With nothing but your body. A human shield.

Now, as machines beeped softly in your hospital room, Sam sat beside you, devastated. She hadn’t cried yet. Sam didn’t cry. But her shoulders were starting to shake.

“I thought you hated me,” you mumbled, your voice a ghost of itself. “I thought you were a killer,” she replied.

Neither of you was entirely wrong. But neither of you was right, either.

There was silence. Heavy, intimate silence.

Then, Sam leaned in, forehead brushing yours. No makeup. No masks. Just a woman unraveling beside the boy who had loved her since he was nine, and who — without hesitation — had taken a bullet to prove that love wasn’t a lie.

“Don’t make me lose you too,” she whispered. “Then stop pushing me away,” you rasped.

She didn’t kiss you. Not yet. But her lips hovered close. Breathing the same air.

And just like that, something shifted. Not trust. Not love . Not fully.

But something that might grow into those .