Hate Me Like You Love Me (Serena and Caleb) novel Chapter 102

Serena’s POV

The truth doesn't set you free — it strips you bare in front of strangers and asks you to stand there anyway.

Different courtroom than Simon's hearing, different judge, different war — but the fluorescent lights hum with the same indifferent frequency, as though justice is just another item on the county's electricity bill.

I press my palms flat against my thighs to keep them from shaking. The prosecutor, Diane Hadley, a woman with silver-streaked hair and a voice that could command a battlefield, gives me the smallest nod.

‘You've rehearsed this. You know what happened. Say it.’

"Ms. Lakin," Diane begins, her tone careful but warm, "can you walk us through the events of October thirty-first? Starting from the moment you arrived at the Sigma Chi house."

"I arrived around ten." My voice is steady, and I cling to that steadiness like a rope over a canyon. "My roommate was supposed to come with me but had a conflict. I went alone."

"And at some point during the evening, you encountered the defendant?"

"I saw someone in a Scream mask." I keep my eyes on Diane, away from the defense table where Lucas sits in a navy suit that probably cost more than my tuition.

"I believed it was Lucas. He took my hand and led me upstairs to a bedroom on the second floor."

"What happened inside that bedroom?"

The room goes quiet. Not the polite quiet of waiting — the held-breath quiet of people bracing for impact.

"He closed the door. Locked it." I hear my own voice as though it belongs to someone else — flat, precise, clinical. "He pushed me against the door and started removing my clothes. At first, I thought it was consensual. I'd agreed to go upstairs."

"At what point did that change?"

"When he pushed me onto the bed and I told him to slow down." My throat tightens, but I keep talking. "He didn't. I said no, clearly, more than once. He pinned my wrists above my head with one hand and used the other to —"

I pause. Not because I've forgotten — I will never forget — but because the memory lives in my body like a bruise that never healed, and pressing on it sends pain through every nerve.

"He held me down by my throat. Not enough to choke me, but enough to make it clear I wasn't leaving that bed unless he decided I could."

"Did you try to resist physically?"

"I pushed against his chest. I kicked. I told him to stop at least three times." The words land in the courtroom like stones into still water. "He didn't stop. He told me no one would believe me."

"And how did the assault end?"

"Caleb Thornton broke through the locked door and pulled Lucas off me." I swallow hard. "If he hadn't been there, I know Lucas wasn't finished."

Diane lets the silence sit for a moment before she says, "Thank you, Ms. Lakin. No further questions."

The defense attorney rises before Diane has fully returned to her seat.

Martin Hale carries himself with the oiled confidence of a man who has spent decades convincing juries that victims are liars.

"Ms. Lakin." He buttons his jacket as he approaches. "You testified that you willingly accompanied my client to a private room and initially believed the encounter was consensual. Correct?"

"Yes."

"Had you been drinking that evening?"

Her voice breaks once, only once, when she describes the Bennett family lawyers threatening her academic career. She recovers in the same breath and keeps going.

Jessica follows. Dark hair pulled back tight, hands gripping the railing. She tells her story about Whitmore University — the party, the bedroom, the same locked door, the same hands. She cries through most of it, but she doesn't stop talking.

Then Danielle Porter — a graduate student from three states away who never met any of us, who has nothing to gain except the right to say what Lucas did to her and have someone finally write it down.

Then Alyssa Keane, barely older than me, who delivers her testimony so quietly the judge asks her twice to speak up.

She does, each time louder, each time steadier, as though being heard is rebuilding something Lucas took from her.

Five women. Five locked doors. Five versions of the same nightmare wearing different dates and different dresses.

The prosecution rests.

I'm sitting in the gallery between Mia and my father when Hale rises one final time. He adjusts his cuffs and addresses the judge with the practiced calm of a man playing his last card.

"Your Honor, the defense calls Caleb Thornton to the stand."

My stomach drops. I look at the defense table, at Lucas, and for the first time all day, he's looking back at me. A ghost of a smile pulls at his mouth.

"Not as a prosecution witness," Hale continues. "As a defense witness. We intend to demonstrate that Mr. Thornton's relationship with the complainant constitutes a material bias that calls into question the credibility of the entire family's testimony."

Caleb is three rows behind me. I don't turn around, but I feel him go rigid, the way air tightens before a storm finds its target.

They're not just attacking me anymore. They're using the person I love to do it.