Hate Me Like You Love Me (Serena and Caleb) novel Chapter 78

Serena's POV

The sound of two people unraveling a decade of trust is quieter than you'd expect.

I wake to muffled voices bleeding through the wall between my bedroom and the master suite, and for a disoriented moment I think I'm fourteen again, listening to my parents argue about treatment options while pretending I can't hear.

But this isn't that house, and these aren't those voices, and the woman crying behind that door isn't my mother.

Catherine's tone is high and thin, stripped of everything steady. "You have to understand, I thought it was over. I thought walking away was enough."

"Walking away and filing paperwork are not the same thing, Catherine." My father's voice is controlled, but the control sounds like effort. Like holding a cracked glass upright by sheer will.

"You told me your marriage to Simon was dissolved. I asked you directly, and you looked me in the eyes and said it was done."

"It was done in every way that mattered."

"Except legally. Except in the one way that holds up in a courtroom."

I pull my knees to my chest. My fingers find the locket around my neck, the one with my mother's initials etched into silver. E.L. Elizabeth Lakin.

The woman who died believing her best friend would look after her family.

If the marriage isn't even legal, then what was it all for?

The thought hits without warning, and suddenly I'm standing at my mother's graveside in a black dress that didn't fit right, watching my father hold Catherine's hand while the dirt was still fresh.

I'm fourteen, swallowing grief because nobody asked if I was ready for a new family, and now the family they built on top of her memory might not even be real.

My mother was replaced for a marriage that might not exist.

The rage is so immediate that my hands shake when I reach for my phone. I don't think. I just dial.

Mia picks up on the second ring. "It's seven in the morning and I love you, but if this isn't an actual emergency I'm hanging up and pretending I never heard my phone."

"Can you come over?" My voice breaks on the last word, and that's all it takes.

"Give me forty minutes."

She makes it in thirty-five.

I pull her through the entryway and up the stairs before she can ring the bell. Catherine and my father are still behind their closed door, the arguing quieter now, which feels worse.

Loud fights burn out. Quiet ones fester.

Mia sits cross-legged on my bed and takes one long look at my face. She's wearing mismatched socks and a sweatshirt turned inside out, her dark curls still damp from a shower she clearly cut short.

The fact that she showed up half-assembled and fully present makes my throat tight.

"Talk to me." She reaches for my hand. "What happened since last night?"

"Catherine never divorced Simon. The papers were never signed. She married my dad while she was still technically married, which means the whole thing might be invalid."

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