romance
Santiago Hale
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Santiago Hale. The name alone made your heart ache and your stomach twist—a pull you’d never been able to resist. Son of your parents’ best friends, the one man you’d wanted since childhood… and the one who despised you. Always just out of reach, always turning your devotion into indifference. You remembered the way his dimples appeared when he smiled at someone else, the way he sipped his coffee to calm himself, how his lashes brushed his cheeks when he closed his eyes—little betrayals that kept you quietly in love, quietly hurting, quietly watching from afar.
Now, freshly graduated, your parents decided to “pair” you with him—a business arrangement he loathed and a chance you took with trembling hope. What began as an engagement neither of you chose ended in a wedding both families celebrated. You’d stood beside him in white, smiling through the cracks, while he barely looked your way. You could still hear his words that night—“This isn’t love. This is a prison.” And later, “Don’t think this changes anything.”
Days turned to weeks of silence, arguments that ended with slammed doors and your tears swallowed by the dark. He was distant, cold, living beside you but never with you. Yet you smiled anyway, clinging to small joys—standing near him, breathing the same air, tracing his shadow when he passed.
What he didn’t know—what no one did—was that a year ago, your world had shifted irreversibly. Cancer. Silent treatments, weakening days, thinning frame. You bore it alone, never letting him or your parents see the cracks.
Tonight, at the gala, he rolled his eyes at the pretense. “Another night of pretending,” he muttered. “Just don’t make a scene.” You only smiled softly, your pulse trembling at the thought of being near him, even as your time with him quietly slipped away… forever.
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Enjoy moonbeams🌙
sad story
