CHAPTER 10

"You… you were shot?"

Miguel's heart sank like a stone, and the small oval-shaped scar on his abdomen pricked in pain. There was no hiding it now. She had seen it. The girl had gone completely silent, which was very much unlike her. She was completely in shock, her face pale as a ghost, her body completely motionless. All Miguel could do was gulp in fear and watch anxiously for Sam's reaction.

"Sam…" Miguel's quiet voice ventured cautiously into the tense air. "I can explain…"

However, once again he was interrupted, but it wasn't by more words from Sam. No, instead she reached back and slapped him across the face with every fiber of strength she had. All of the training from a year in Miyagi-Do, and all of the anger that was exploding inside her combined into one shockingly powerful blow. Miguel felt like his cheek had been rocked with an earthquake that had rattled through his entire head, feeling it move from the sheer force of the slap. His cheek immediately began to pulsate in pain and for a moment, he felt dizzy. However, the lightheaded feeling was less about the hit itself, than the shame of the lie that was crashing through him. The guilt was an even more staggering blow than the slap, and it clamped down right on his heart, squeezing it so hard that it physically hurt him to stand up straight.

"Ow… Sam." Miguel muttered, clutching his face and feeling a welt already begin to form.

He forced himself to meet Sam's eyes, and the sight before him was a genuinely alarming one. Sam had gone from shock to anger in a matter of seconds, but now she had already transitioned to a third emotion: devastation. Her entire body was wracked with sobs as tears streamed down her face. In the year and a half Miguel had known Sam, he had seen her express a variety of emotions: happiness, surprise, joy, thoughtfulness, frustration, anger. However, he had never seen her quite like this. Guttural cries escaped her mouth, and even wiping her eyes didn't do anything to stem the steady flow of tears that were making their way down her face.

It shattered Miguel's heart to see Sam like this, and it physically killed him that he was the cause of it.

"Sam, look…"

Sam slowly shook her head at him, non-verbally screaming at him to shut up now. She grabbed him by the shoulders and shook him in anger.

"You swore to me, Miguel. You swore to me that you didn't get hurt! That you were okay!" Sam cried.

"I am okay!" Miguel replied. "They got the bullet out, gave me a bunch of painkillers and sent me on my way. It's all good."

Sam couldn't help but allow a small, mirthless laugh to escape her lips.

"It's all good?" She repeated his words. "IT'S ALL GOOD?! YOU THINK THAT GETTING SHOT IS ALL GOOD?!"

Miguel sighed.

"Come on, Sam. You know that's not what I mean." He murmured. Sam took a few steadying breaths to try and calm herself, but it was no use. There was no calming herself down right now. She had never felt fury quite like this her entire life.

"Do you have any idea how much I worried about you in Mexico?" Sam began, her voice scarily quiet, but every word dripping with pain and hurt. "Do you have any idea how many nights I lay in bed, scared to sleep because I knew I'd be transported to a nightmare where you get hurt out there? Or that I'd fall asleep and then be awoken by the phone ringing and I'd find out that your dad had killed her? That I'd have permanently lost the person I care about most in this entire world without even getting a chance to say goodbye?"

It was Miguel's turn to have the tears begin to trickle down his cheeks. She had a point. All this time, he had been so concerned with his own feelings about everything that he hadn't really stopped to think about how his trip affected the people he cared about.

"Sam, I'm so sorry." Miguel whispered, more tears welling up in his eyes. He tried to take a step towards her to comfort her, but Sam immediately recoiled and took two steps back. "I just…"

"Don't!" Sam snapped, the venom very much back in her tone. "Do NOT try and tell me that you didn't mean to lie to me! That you didn't mean to withhold the truth! You and I both know you're not that stupid! You knew EXACTLY what you were doing. You knew exactly what you were doing when you didn't confide in me this past year, didn't confide in anyone, and instead bottled up your feelings until you couldn't take it any longer and had to run to Mexico, into the arms of some criminal thug father! HOW COULD YOU DO THIS TO ME?!"

Miguel forced himself to take a few deep breaths to calm himself, as the anger began to rise inside him.

"First of all… my father is NOT a criminal! He is a better person than you or I ever will be!" Miguel shouted, his voice beginning to rise. "And second… do this to you? You had NOTHING to do with any of this! My not knowing who I am as a person had nothing to do with you! My every time I even so much as mentioned my father's name, my mother screaming at me for hours had nothing to do with you! Not everything about me relates to you! I can actually make decisions for myself that have nothing to do with you!"

"I'm well aware of that, Miguel! And you're right! That decision to abandon everyone and walk out in the middle of the tournament… I wasn't a part of that, was I?" Sam snapped back, walking ever closer to him in a very much confrontational way. "That decision to get drunk and hit me in the canyon… that sure as hell wasn't me! And that decision to date a psychopath who in less than a few months afterwards, tried to kill me… that was ALL you! But I didn't say anything… because your decision had nothing to do with me! "

"Exactly, Sam… my dating Tory had nothing to do with you because we were already broken up, so why are you bringing it up?!"

"Because it still fucking hurt me, Miguel! News flash… even if nobody else is involved in your decisions but you, they still affect other people. You need to consider other people's feelings! Don't you think it hurt to watch you with her?! Don't you think it hurt that night at the part, to see you and her acting so lovey right in front of me!"

"Quite frankly, Sam… I don't care!" He shot back. "You can't just treat me so possessively, like I'm some damn toy for you to play with when you feel like it, but then lock away so nobody else can play with it afterwards! And besides, YOU dumped ME! You then were refusing to take my calls to even give me a chance to apologize for what happened!"

"You wouldn't have needed to apologize for anything if you had just trusted me in the first place when I told you that Robby and I were just friends!"

"Sam, I apologized to you so many damn times for that! I was drunk… I never meant to hit you." Miguel told her. Sam shook her head furiously.

"Don't you get it?! It wasn't about you hitting me! It was about you having the same mistrust in me back then that you did right now when you refused to tell me about what happened to you in Mexico! You didn't trust me back then, and you still don't trust me now!"

"Sam, WAKE UP! Look at our relationship!" Miguel shouted. "Every single part of our relationship was built on mistrust and basically every other bad feeling under the sun! Let's start at the beginning, shall we? THE ONLY reason you found out I even existed was because I committed assault! The reason we broke up was because I saw you with another guy, a guy who within two months, you were already dating! Then we kissed that night at the party, and it started some warped kind of reconciliation between us… and how? Only because of the lack of honesty, trust and respect we had for Tory and Robby when we cheated on them! We cheated on them, Sam! They were loyal, we weren't, and for some reason, neither one of us as so much as even mentioned that since we got back together. No… we just brushed it under the rug like everything else. You joining Eagle-Fang was all because of a lack of trust in your dad! Getting pissed at each other at the prom… mistrust! Again! So don't paint me like the bad guy in all of this for keeping a secret that was, in fact, none of your concern, when our relationship has been built on secrets and lies!"

"No! We didn't trust each other the FIRST time around! But unlike you, I've actually grown up since then! This time around, I haven't lied to you. I haven't been so much of a COWARD that I've had to keep secrets and withhold the truth! But YOU did! YOU lied! YOU didn't trust me!"

Miguel slowly nodded, clenching his jaw. Both of them were letting it all out now, with absolutely no holds barred. They had so many past unresolved issues with each other that they had swept under the rug and refused to talk about when they got back together, and it was costing them now. All of the monsters had come out from underground and were rearing their ugly faces.

"Yeah. You're right. I did lie." Miguel nodded. "I didn't want you to know I'd been shot. I didn't wat you to know about all of the shit I went through. And you know what? I don't regret it one bit!"

An eerie silence rang through the room as Sam wiped the tears and smudged makeup from her face, the expression on it still furious as ever.

"Why though?! Do you seriously think so little of me that you think I'd just bail? Or are you like the others, thinking I'm just some soft, privileged princess who can't stand a little bit of blood?!"

Miguel shook his head and looked down, avoiding her gaze.

"Come on, Sam! You know that's not it." Miguel murmured. Sam nodded.

"Then why, Miguel?! Why?! Tell me! What would've been so bad about telling me what happened?!"

"Because no offense but you SUCK at dealing with shit when life gets tough! So what do you do? You just bail. And better yet, you find ways to blame others for it!"

"That is NOT true!" Sam shouted.

"Isn't it?" Miguel chuckled. "Your dad didn't approve of me and you were scared of what he'd do if he found out you were dating a Cobra Kai? So what did you do? You ran RIGHT to Robby, and then pretended to be completely innocent in it all when I confronted you! And don't give me that 'we were just friends' crap! I saw you and him having dinner together with your family. You were flirting with him, I saw it with my own eyes! And yes, I did lose my shit and I fucked up by hitting you, but you CANNOT tell me you were totally innocent in everything and I was the clear-cut bad guy either! You used my mistake as a get-out-of-jail-free card in a relationship you had no intention of continuing anyways, given what your dad thought of Cobra Kai! Then later, we cheated on people… and you use what happened afterwards as an excuse to help yourself sleep at night and not hold us accountable for what happened. Have you even apologized to Robby yet for cheating? And don't lie… Tory told me the answer to that already!"

"When did you speak to-"

"In Mexico! My dad called me out on how shitty what we did truly was, and so I spent the better part of an afternoon on the phone with her, apologizing. Even back at the Valley when I was still in the wheelchair. She told me that you hadn't done the same yet for Robby. That you used him going away to juvie as an excuse to turn your back on him and turn your attention back to me! That you didn't visit him once in juvie, let alone officially break up with him. At least when I was in the Valley, I told Tory how things really were between us after the school fight!"

"Well congratulations then! You're a big, big man Miguel! Is that what you want to hear?!" Sam screamed at him, the river of tears increasing and causing Miguel to force himself to calm down and check his tone a little.

"Look, Sam, trust me, I am not trying to attack you, okay? You wanted an honest answer about why I didn't tell you what happened to me… well I'm being honest now and look what's going on! If you couldn't even handle me being honest about all of this, how do you think you're going to react if I told you what really happened to me in Mexico? Will you actually stand here and take it, or will you bail again just like you did every other time we've been through shit?!"

"Try me, Miguel!" Sam exclaimed, spreading her arms wide. "I'm a big girl! Tell me what happened to you, and see if I bail!

Miguel took a deep breath, and for a moment he sounded like he was about to speak up about everything, but he then shook his head and began to turn around again.

"Of course! Be a coward and walk away again!"

"Sam, stop…" Miguel murmured. He knew exactly what she was doing. She was trying to push his buttons, trying to rile him up and explode and end up telling her. It was working too, as Sam wasn't done yet, even as Miguel was trying to walk away from her and into his bedroom.

"But if you're going to do that, don't you DARE tell me that it's MY fault for being too soft, or I'm going to bail, or any of that bullshit!" She continued. That's when Miguel finally well and truly lost it. He spun on his heel and stormed back over to her, yelling right in her face…

"I KILLED SOMEONE!"