Too Late For His Desperate Proposal

For seventeen years, I loved my best friend, Holden King. I was the quiet girl who always had a bandage for his scraped knees, secretly believing we were meant to be.

But he shattered my world with six words: "She's my sister. That's all." He fell for the cruel and glamorous Fabiola, even taking her to our secret meadow.

Her jealousy was a poison. She faked a pregnancy to trap him, then hired a man to attack me in an alley. The trauma ruptured an aneurysm in my brain, and I went blind.

Through it all, Holden defended her. He refused to believe she was capable of such evil, choosing the monster he'd known for months over the girl he'd known his whole life.

My savior, a kind doctor named Jace, offered me a future, and we planned a fake wedding to give my terrified parents hope.

But as I stood blind at the altar, Holden crashed the ceremony. He fell to his knees, a diamond ring in his hand.

"I love you, Chloe," he cried. "Marry me."

Chapter 1

Chloe Waller POV:

"I love you, Chloe," Holden King whispered, his voice thick with an emotion I' d waited a lifetime to hear. "It' s always been you." He knelt before me, his handsome face etched with desperation, a diamond ring held between his trembling fingers. "Marry me."

I looked down at the man I had loved for seventeen years, the boy who had been my entire world. Then, I looked past him, to the man standing by my side, whose hand was resting gently on my back.

I smiled, a small, sad curve of my lips. "Holden," I said, my voice clear and steady, "I' m already married."

One month ago, my world had been a different color. It had been painted in shades of Holden King.

The university' s annual spring festival was in full swing, the air thick with the scent of popcorn and blooming jacaranda trees. Laughter and music swirled around me, but I only had eyes for one person. Holden. He was standing by the impromptu stage, the setting sun catching the golden highlights in his brown hair, a confident smile playing on his lips as he talked with his business fraternity brothers.

He was charismatic, popular, the sun around which so many people orbited. And I, Chloe Waller, was just a quiet moon, content to circle in his gravitational pull, a secret I had guarded since I was ten years old.

We were inseparable. The Chloe-and-Holden show, our parents called it. He was the adventurous one, I was the cautious one. He was the one who scraped his knees, and I was the one who always had a bandage ready. He saw me as his little sister, a role I played with practiced ease, all the while my heart was screaming a different truth.

"Seriously, King, when are you going to make a move on Fabiola Clarke?" one of his friends, Liam, elbowed him