Hate Me Like You Love Me (Serena and Caleb) novel Chapter 79

Caleb’s POV

The four of us have sat at this kitchen table hundreds of times. Birthdays, holiday dinners, weeknight homework sessions where Serena would hog the entire left side with her color-coded notecards.

But tonight the oak surface between us feels less like furniture and more like a negotiating table, and the silence pressing against the walls carries the weight of a courtroom. Mia's car pulled out of the driveway twenty minutes ago, leaving us to face this without buffers or witnesses.

William sits at the head. Catherine is to his left, her fingers wrapped around a mug of tea she hasn't touched. Serena is across from her, spine rigid, wearing that careful composure I've learned to read like a second language. I take the chair beside Serena and keep my eyes on William.

He clears his throat—not the absent-minded version, but the deliberate kind, the sound of a man who has rehearsed what comes next and still isn't ready to say it.

"I spent this morning with my attorneys," he begins. His hands are flat on the table, pressed down like he needs the wood to keep him grounded.

"I want to be honest with all of you about where things stand, because we're past the point where protecting anyone from the truth does any good."

"Just tell us," I say.

William meets my eyes without condescension, without patronizing softness.

He looks at me the way you look at someone you're asking to carry part of a load that might crush you both.

"The marriage isn't automatically void," he says. "Under state law, a bigamous marriage is voidable—meaning it can be challenged and potentially annulled—but it isn't invalid on its face. Not until a court says so."

Catherine makes a sound beside him. Small, airless, like the word voidable reached across the table and pressed its thumb against her windpipe.

"What does that mean in practice?" Serena asks, her voice level, clinical almost—the pre-law student stepping in front of the daughter.

"It means we have options." William pulls a folded sheet from his chest’s pocket—notes in his careful architect's hand. "Catherine can file for an expedited divorce from Simon. If he cooperates, the prior marriage dissolves quickly, and ours gets retroactively validated."

"And if he doesn't cooperate?" I ask, though I already know the answer.

"Then we petition the court independently. We argue abandonment, present the separation timeline, and let a judge rule. It's slower. It's public. And it gives Simon standing to contest."

The kitchen feels smaller than it did five minutes ago.

"Some jurisdictions also allow retroactive validation once the impediment is removed," William continues. "But that argument is stronger with cooperation than without."

Silence fills the room. The refrigerator hums. The clock above the stove ticks with the kind of mechanical indifference that makes me want to rip it off the wall.

Then Catherine speaks, and her voice fractures the stillness like a stone through glass.

"This is my fault."

William reaches for her hand. "Catherine—"

"No." She pulls away from him, and the rejection lands visibly across his face. "I need to say this. I need them to hear it."

She looks at me first. Then at Serena. Her eyes are red-rimmed and swollen, the composed woman who orchestrated holiday meals and navigated blended-family dynamics with practiced grace stripped down to someone raw and terrified.

"I should have finalized the divorce," she says. "When Simon disappeared, I told myself the abandonment was enough. That no judge would hold me to a marriage with a man who vanished without a word. And then I met William, and everything moved so fast—the wedding, the house, this family—and I let myself believe the paperwork didn't matter because the life we were building was real."

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