Rekindled Read Online Free Page A

work.”
    “Are you going to try to find work at a salon again?”
    “Considering right now I only have six dollars to my name, I’ll take whatever job I can get.”
    “Six dollars? Jesus, I knew you said Zach took everything, but I thought that was an exaggeration.”
    “Nope. Cleaned me out of everything.”
    “How? I just don’t understand how this all happened.”
    My eyes cut to his. “And you think I do? You think I saw this coming?”
    “No, I didn’t say that,” he says placing his hand over mine. “I just meant—“
    “I know what you meant. How stupid does someone have to be to not even know her house is being foreclosed?”
    “I didn’t say that.”
    “You didn’t have to. I should have known better,” I went on. “It’s my fault for believing him when he said he was getting help.”
    “Callie…”
    “I should have known better than to trust him when he said he was paying our bills on time. I should have insisted that I share in that responsibility, after all it was my paychecks, too, being deposited, but he always made such a big deal about it saying it felt like a blow to his masculinity if he didn’t pay them. You have to pick your battles, and I thought I was being smart in letting him have this one.” I scoff in disgust. “I should have known that when he traded in his Porsche for a used Toyota that it wasn’t because he was trying to provide safer transportation for Jonah, but because he needed the cash for something. Do you have any idea how embarrassing it is to go to Starbucks one morning and have every single one of your cards declined because your jackass husband maxed them all out so he could pawn the items for cash? Fifty thousand dollars , Caleb. Fifty thousand. ”
    “Jesus,” he says, raking his hands over his face.
    “And that was just the credit cards. Not to mention the twenty-thousand we had saved in the bank, or the money he had pulled from the mortgage on our house and never bothered to pay back, so the government foreclosed on it. The day our electricity was turned off, I found out that he hadn’t made a payment in two months and he was hiding the notices from me.”
    I can feel my voice unraveling as I recount every betrayal of Zach’s. My hands tremble as anger feeds through my body until I can barely see straight.
    “And you discovered all this in one day?” he asks.
    “Pretty much. The electricity was shut off four days ago and he was supposed to be at a work conference in Chicago. When I talked to him that evening he said it must be some kind of mistake on their end and that he’d get it sorted first thing in the morning. When it wasn’t turned back on the next morning, I tried calling him, and he didn’t pick up. I just figured he was busy at the conference, though, so I continued my day as normal. It wasn’t until that afternoon when I tried to buy a coffee and none of my cards worked that I tried calling him again.”
    “And I’m guessing he didn’t answer then either?”
    “Obviously not,” I say, drily. “I had to take my laptop back to Starbucks to check all the accounts we had and that’s when I found the bank accounts drained and the credit card charges. I tried calling the hotel directly right afterwards and they said they didn’t have any record of a Zachary Biggs staying there. God, all those business trips he took over the years…and all those random expenses I never bothered questioning.”
    “And you’re sure he’s gambling again?”
    “Honestly at this point, I have no clue. He hasn’t contacted me since he left, so for all I know he could be halfway around the world right now.”
    Caleb nods before walking around and pulling me into a hug. “Well, you can stay here as long as you’d like. Everything will be okay,” he says, placing a kiss on the top of my head. “I won’t let anything happen to you or Jonah.”
    I watch as he heads upstairs, and I know I’m in good hands. I know my brother would do anything for me