Hate Me Like You Love Me (Serena and Caleb) novel Chapter 117

117 /120

Caleb’s POV

The clearing barely resembles the winter version Serena and I have been haunting for years. Spring has done its work with a heavy hand — the oak is thick with green leaves that filter the dying sunlight into scattered gold, and the swing hangs from new ropes I replaced last week because the old ones were fraying beyond trust.

A quiet act of maintenance that felt less like a repair and more like tending to a living thing. Fireflies drift through the warm evening air, lazy and unhurried, as if the whole world has finally decided to slow down.

I lead Serena by the hand through the tall grass, her fingers loose and trusting in mine, and guide her onto the swing. She settles into the seat, tilting her head at me with curiosity bright in her green eyes.

"You're being very mysterious," she says, the corner of her mouth pulling into a half-smile. "Should I be worried?"

"Probably." I let go of her hand and step back so I'm standing in front of her, close enough to touch but far enough to see all of her. "I need to say some things. And I need you to let me get through them before you respond."

Her smile fades into attentiveness. She wraps her fingers around the ropes and nods. "Okay."

I drag a breath so deep it hurts.

"I fell in love with you when I was twelve years old." The words come out steadier than I expected, as though they've been rehearsed so many times inside my skull that they've worn smooth.

"You were sitting on a dock trying to skip stones and failing miserably, and you laughed at yourself like failure was the funniest thing in the world. I put a rock in your hand and showed you how to throw it, and you smiled at me, and that was it. I was done."

Serena's lips part, but she catches herself. She promised to let me finish.

"I didn't know what it was then. I just knew I wanted you to look at me like that forever." My voice drops, scraping against the honesty I've spent years burying. "Then I went home, and my father taught me what I was actually worth. And the next time I saw you — happy, whole, untouched by any of the ugliness I carried — I couldn't stand it. Not because of you. Because of me. Because wanting you felt like reaching for a life I didn't deserve."

A firefly drifts between us, pulsing gold.

"So I made you hate me." I swallow hard. "Every cruel word, every fight I picked, every time I tore you down in front of people — those were walls, Serena. I built them because I was terrified of what would happen if you saw the truth. If you saw that the boy who tormented you was the same boy who couldn't fall asleep at night without thinking about your laugh on that dock."

Her eyes are glistening now, catching the last of the light, and her knuckles whiten around the ropes.

"I've told you I love you before," I say. "In the middle of a crisis, in the aftermath of a disaster, in the desperate moments when the world was falling apart and it felt like the only honest thing left to say. But I've never told you like this. Not standing still. Not with nothing burning down around us."

I step closer. Close enough to see the pulse jumping in her throat.

"I don't want to fight anymore." My voice cracks on the word, and I let it. "Not against you. Not against us. I just want to be yours. Completely, publicly, permanently yours."

The silence that follows is the loudest thing I've ever heard.

Then Serena rises from the swing. She closes the space between us in one step, lifts her hands, and cups my face with a tenderness that nearly buckles my knees.