Hate Me Like You Love Me (Serena and Caleb) novel Chapter 73

Freedom is supposed to feel like flying—no one warns you it can feel like falling instead.

The day after the party, the house feels different.

I come downstairs to find Caleb already in the kitchen with Catherine and Dad. No one is hiding, no one is performing for an audience that isn’t there. But no one quite knows how to act either.

The air carries an unfamiliar weight—not tension exactly, but uncertainty. The rules have changed, and none of us have learned the new ones yet.

My father sits at the table with his coffee, eyes fixed on the newspaper he isn’t really reading. The pages haven’t turned in the five minutes I’ve been watching from the doorway.

Catherine stands at the stove, pushing scrambled eggs around a pan with more focus than the task requires.

Caleb notices me first.

“Morning.” He reaches for an empty mug and fills it from the coffee pot, then crosses the kitchen to hand it to me.

Our fingers brush in the exchange—visible, unhidden.

“Thanks.” My voice comes out scratchy from sleep I didn’t really get.

“You look tired.”

“Charming as always.”

“I try.” The corner of his mouth twitches, and for a moment it feels almost normal. Almost like any other morning.

Then I catch my father’s eyes lifting from his newspaper, tracking the interaction with an expression I can’t quite read, and the illusion shatters.

“Eggs?” Catherine’s voice is too bright, too eager. “I’m making eggs. And toast. There’s fruit too, if you’d prefer something lighter. Or I could do pancakes—it’s no trouble, really, I have the mix right here…”

“Eggs are fine, Catherine.” I slide into a chair at the table, wrapping my hands around the warm mug. “Thank you.”

“Of course, sweetheart. Coming right up.”

The endearment lands differently now. Sweetheart. She’s called me that a hundred times before, but this morning it carries weight it didn’t used to—an offering.

A reminder that whatever else has changed, some things remain constant.

I expected relief today. A weight lifted, a burden released. Lucas is exposed, the engagement is over, the truth is out, at least partially. I should feel lighter.

Instead, it’s vertigo.

The ground has shifted beneath my feet, and I don’t know where to stand anymore. I don’t know how to want Caleb without the secrecy.

Our entire relationship was built in shadows—stolen moments in empty hallways, whispered conversations through bathroom doors, the thrill of something forbidden pulsing beneath every touch.

Now that the forbidden is simply… known… I don’t know what we are. What we’re allowed to be. Whether wanting him openly will feel the same as wanting him in secret.

Caleb moves to the counter to refill his coffee, and I watch him without meaning to.

The way he moves through space, confident and careless. The breadth of his shoulders beneath his worn t-shirt. The dark hair still mussed from sleep.

He reaches past me for the sugar, and his hand brushes mine. We both freeze.

The instinct to pull away, to hide, to pretend it was accidental, is so deeply ingrained that we do it anyway. Separating like guilty children caught stealing cookies, even though there’s nothing left to hide.

Even though our parents already know. Even though the secret isn’t a secret anymore.

The realization that hiding has become a reflex makes my chest ache.

“Sorry.” Caleb’s voice is gruff. “I was just…”

“It’s fine.” I push the sugar bowl toward him. “Here.”

“Thanks.”

We don’t look at each other. The moment passes, awkward and unresolved, another reminder that freedom isn’t the same as comfort.

I walk to the kitchen counter and place the ring down—a small, final gesture. The diamond sits there, glittering and meaningless, stripped of whatever power it once held over me.

I don’t look at it again as I step away.

The silence that follows is heavy but not uncomfortable. It’s the silence of an ending, of something being laid to rest.

Catherine’s spatula pauses mid-scrape. My father’s coffee cup hovers halfway to his lips. Even Caleb goes still, watching me with something soft and proud in his blue eyes.

Then my father speaks.

“Caleb.” His voice is gruff, carefully casual, directed across the kitchen without quite meeting Caleb’s gaze. “Pass the salt, please.”

Three words—nothing and everything at the same time.

An acknowledgment, an offering, the smallest possible olive branch extended across a chasm that will take time to bridge.

Caleb doesn’t hesitate. He picks up the salt shaker and crosses to the table, setting it down within my father’s reach.

“Here you go.”

“Thank you.”

Two more words—still nothing, yet everything.

I watch the exchange and feel something loosen in my chest—not hope exactly, but the possibility of hope. The faintest glimmer of something that might, eventually, become acceptance.

We’re not okay yet. We might not be okay for a long time. But for the first time since Catherine opened that bedroom door and found us tangled together, I believe that okay might be possible.

Someday. One salt shaker at a time.