Hate Me Like You Love Me (Serena and Caleb) novel Chapter 64

The moments that destroy us rarely announce themselves—they simply arrive, quiet and devastating, while we’re still pretending everything is fine.

Catherine stands frozen in the doorway, her face drained of color, eyes fixed on the scene before her. I bolt upright, yanking the blanket over my chest, heart hammering so violently I can barely breathe.

Beside me, Caleb finally wakes up, slowly realising the scale of the disaster. He sits up, his mouth opens to speak, but nothing comes out.

There are no words for this.

Catherine doesn’t scream, doesn’t cry, doesn’t demand an explanation or hurl accusations across the room. She simply turns, one hand gripping the doorframe like it’s the only thing keeping her upright, and walks away.

Her footsteps fade down the hallway. A door closes somewhere in the distance.

The silence she leaves behind is worse than any accusation could have been.

“Oh God.” I scramble out of bed in a frenzy, grabbing my clothes from the floor, pulling them on with trembling hands. “Oh God, oh God, oh God.”

“Serena.”

“What do we do?”

My voice pitches toward hysteria as I yank my shirt over my head.

“Caleb, what are we supposed to do now? This is a disaster. This is the end of everything! They’re never going to forgive us, they’re going to—”

“Hey.” He’s on his feet now, catching my wrists, forcing me to stop the frantic movement. “Breathe.”

“How can you be so calm?”

I stare at him like he’s lost his mind.

“Your mother just walked in on us half-naked in your bed. My father is downstairs right now, probably hearing exactly what she saw, and you want me to breathe?”

“I want you to think.” His voice is steady in a way mine will never be. “Panicking won’t change what happened. It’s already done. There’s no turning back, no undoing what she saw.”

“We could lie.” The words tumble out desperate, grasping. “We could tell them we were drunk, that it was a mistake, that it didn’t mean anything.”

“That ship has sailed.” Caleb shakes his head. “She knows what she saw, Serena. We were wrapped around each other in our underwear. Any lie we tell now will only make things worse.”

“Then what?”

“We go downstairs.” He releases my wrists and reaches for his own clothes. “We face them. We tell the truth—all of it. About us, about Lucas, about everything we’ve been hiding.”

“They’ll hate us.”

“Maybe.” He pulls his shirt over his head, and when he looks at me again, there’s something resolute in his expression. “But at least they’ll know who we really are.”

We dress in silence and head downstairs together.

The kitchen feels different in the morning light—smaller somehow, the walls pressing in from every direction.

Catherine stands at the counter, her hands busy with dishes that don’t need washing. She won’t look at us. Won’t acknowledge our presence at all.

My father leans against the kitchen island, palms braced on the surface, head bowed like a man carrying an unbearable weight. When he hears our footsteps and looks up, his expression makes my chest cave in.

Not angry, not yet. Just devastated.

“Sit down.” His voice is quiet, controlled. “Both of you.”

We sit at the table like defendants awaiting sentencing. The silence stretches, suffocating, until my father finally asks the question hanging over all of us.

“How long has this been going on?”

Caleb and I exchange a glance. Then we start talking.

We fill in the pieces together—when it started, how it evolved, why we kept it hidden. The words feel inadequate against the magnitude of what we’re confessing.

I watch Catherine’s jaw tighten as we speak, her eyes fixed on the table, her hands gripping the edge of the counter so hard her knuckles turn white.

“So this has been happening for months.” My father’s voice stays measured, but each word lands like a stone. “Under our roof. While we thought you were building a sibling relationship.”

The gesture surprises me so much that I freeze for a moment before collapsing into the embrace.

She holds me tight, her hand stroking my hair, and I realize she’s crying too—both of us shaking against each other while my father and Caleb sit in stunned silence.

“We should have seen it.” Catherine’s voice is thick with tears. “We should have noticed something was wrong.”

“There’s too much happening right now.” My father stands, his expression caught between fury and determination. “Too many fires burning at once. We need to deal with Lucas before we can address anything else.”

“What does that mean for us?” Caleb speaks for the first time since we sat down. “For me and Serena?”

The question hangs in the air. My father and Catherine exchange a long look—the kind of silent communication that comes from years of marriage, of learning to read each other without words.

“For now, you keep this secret.”

My father’s voice carries the weight of a man making impossible decisions.

“Whatever exists between you stays hidden until we figure out how to handle Lucas, the engagement, and everything else threatening to collapse around us.”

“And after?” I ask, my voice barely above a whisper.

“After, we’ll have a conversation about what comes next.”

His eyes meet mine, and I see pain there—but also something that might be understanding.

“But that conversation waits until our family isn’t under attack.”

I nod, relief and dread tangled together in my chest. The secret stays buried—for now.

But the ground beneath it has already started to shift.