Hate Me Like You Love Me (Serena and Caleb) novel Chapter 101

Caleb’s POV

The courtroom smells like old wood and recycled air. I straighten my tie for the third time as the bailiff calls my name, and my mother's eyes find mine from the second row before I've taken my first step toward the stand.

She nods once. Barely a movement, more a tremor of the chin, but I read it clearly: I'm right here.

I don't look at Simon as I cross the room. I can feel him at the defense table, persistent and unwanted, but I refuse to give him my attention.

His attorney, a wiry man named Fenton, watches me take the oath with the detached curiosity of someone appraising livestock.

"Mr. Thornton," William's lead attorney Whitfield begins, standing at a measured distance from the witness box, "can you describe your childhood living with your father, Simon Thornton?"

"I can." My voice comes out steadier than I expected, anchored by the hours Serena and I spent practicing until my throat was raw.

"My father was violent. Not occasionally, not when provoked. Regularly and deliberately, the way other fathers kept a schedule for mowing the lawn."

A murmur ripples through the gallery. I keep my eyes on my mother.

"Can you describe specific instances?"

"When I was nine, he threw a glass at my mother because dinner was cold. It shattered against the wall beside her head."

I pause, not for effect but because the image still carries weight. "When I was eleven, he slammed a door on my hand for leaving my shoes in the hallway. I told the school nurse I caught it playing basketball."

"And the scar near your left ear?"

My fingers twitch toward it before I stop myself. "I was twelve. He threw a glass at my head during dinner because I forgot to take out the trash. It shattered against the wall behind me, and one of the shards caught me on the way down. My mother drove me to the emergency room and told them I fell off my bike."

The courtroom is so quiet I can hear the court reporter's fingers pausing on the keys.

Catherine's face has gone still, her eyes bright, holding herself together through sheer will and the refusal to let Simon see her break.

"There were nights I hid in my closet while he raged downstairs," I continue. "I could hear my mother through the floor, trying to make herself small enough that his anger would pass over her."

"Mr. Thornton, you also made financial payments related to your father. Can you tell the court about that?"

"After Simon left, his debts didn't leave with him." I let the words settle. "Collectors showed up. Gambling debts, loans, money owed to people who don't send polite reminders. I was eighteen when the first one cornered me outside my dormitory."

"And what did you do?"

"I paid it. All of it." I hold Whitfield's gaze because looking anywhere else would unravel me.

"For two years, I entered illegal street races to cover debts my father racked up and never settled. Two years of risking my life for a man who never paid for anything in his."

Whitfield nods and steps back. "No further questions, Your Honor."

Fenton rises and approaches with a smile that doesn't reach his eyes.

"Mr. Thornton, you describe a difficult childhood. But isn't it possible you are painting an extreme picture of what was, in reality, a flawed but loving household?"

"No."

"Your father never expressed affection? Never attended a single game?"

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