Hate Me Like You Love Me (Serena and Caleb) novel Chapter 81

Caleb’s POV

Some men leave wreckage and never look back. My father left wreckage, disappeared for three years, and came back to charge admission.

I track Simon to the Pineview Lodge on Route 9, past the town line where the streetlights stop trying. The kind of place that rents by the week and doesn't ask questions—peeling siding, a parking lot more pothole than pavement, a vacancy sign missing half its letters. Room 14. Ground floor.

It takes me four full breaths before I knock. Not because I'm scared of him. Because I'm scared of what I'll do when I see his face.

He opens on the second knock. Same sharp jaw, same dark eyes that mirror mine in ways I've always hated, but faded. Thinner.

His hair is longer, threaded with grey at the temples, and there's a yellowish tinge beneath his stubble that speaks of cheap liquor and cheaper sleep.

He doesn't look surprised to see me. He looks entertained.

"Caleb." He leans against the doorframe and crosses his arms, a slow smile spreading across his face. "Took you longer than I thought. Come in, or are we doing this where the neighbors can watch?"

I step inside. The room smells like stale cigarettes and industrial cleaner—a sagging bed, a television bolted to the dresser, a small table near the window cluttered with takeout containers and papers.

A depressing, fitting place for a man with nothing.

"What's your play?" I don't sit. I stand with my back to the closed door, hands in my jacket pockets where my fists can clench without him seeing.

"You show up after three years, blow up Mom's marriage, and hire lawyers you can't afford. Tell me what you actually want."

Simon settles into the only chair in the room and gestures at the bed like he's offering me a seat at a dinner table. When I don't move, he shrugs.

"Suit yourself." He tips back, hands folded across his stomach. "I don't have a play, son. I have a right. Your mother married another man while she was still married to me. That's not opinion—it's a fact."

"You disappeared. Left her with no money, no signed papers, no forwarding address. You don't get to rewrite that as abandonment she caused."

"I left because I was in pain." He says it so smoothly that I almost admire the craftsmanship. "I made mistakes. But three years gave me perspective, and what I see is a family that moved on without giving me the chance to make things right."

The rage sits low and heavy in my gut. Don't take the bait. Don't give him what he wants.

"Make things right." I repeat the words flat and measured. "Is that what you call hiring lawyers and threatening Mom's marriage? That looks like extortion with a sympathy card taped to it."

"You've grown up. Sharper. More controlled." He tilts his head, studying me. "That's good. Control is important."

"Don't do that." My voice comes out harder than I intend. "Don't talk like you're proud of who I became. You had nothing to do with it."

"Didn't I?" He leans forward, elbows on his knees, and the amusement drains into the quiet, calculating focus I recognize from childhood.

"I know about the racing, Caleb. The debts, the collectors, the cars that could have killed you. I know you paid every cent yourself, night after night." He pauses. "I know all of it."

"I'm not thirteen anymore." I hold his gaze until the menace fades back beneath the performance. "You don't get to threaten me from a chair in a room that costs less per night than what I used to pay your collectors per week."

"We're done here." I turn for the door.

"Say hello to your mother for me." His voice follows, unhurried, the tone of a man who believes he's already won. "And William. Tell him I appreciate him taking care of my family."

I pull the door open and fill my lungs with the night air. I don't hit him. It takes everything—every conversation with Serena about becoming more than my worst impulses, every word my mother whispered about being nothing like him—but I don't hit him.

On my way over the threshold, my gaze catches the table by the window. Between the fast-food wrappers and a half-empty bottle of bourbon, there's a stack of legal documents—crisp, professional, completely out of place in this room.

The letterhead at the top is unmistakable.

Bennett & Associates.

Simon follows my gaze. His hand moves—casual, unhurried—to rest on top of the stack, covering the name like a card in a poker game. "Goodnight, Caleb," he says softly. "Drive safe."

I close the door behind me and stand in the parking lot with my fists finally free of my pockets, trembling at my sides. My father isn't acting alone.

The Bennetts aren't pulling strings from a distance—they're writing his script, funding his war, arming a man who knows exactly where to aim.

And the worst part—the part that burns hotter than anything Simon said in that room—is that he doesn't even realize he's the weapon. He thinks he's the one holding the gun.