Elise's POV
"What?!"
Elise nearly dropped the glass in her hand due to shock at what she was hearing. She stared at Carter like he'd just told her the world was ending.
Because maybe, in a way, he had.
"We're bankrupt, Elise," he said, his voice low, trembling with something she wasn't used to hearing from him—shame. "The job in Chicago… it was a scam."
Elise took a shaky step backward. "A scam?"
He looked older. Not in the age sense, but in the way his shoulders sagged, like the weight of failure had pressed him into someone smaller than the man she once married. His eyes were red-rimmed, like he hadn't slept in days.
And maybe even cried.
"I invested everything," he said. "The signing bonus, my savings, even the emergency fund you put aside. I wired it into the startup's account. They promised double returns. I was desperate, Elise. I thought it would fix everything."
Her breath hitched, heart pounding against her ribs, threatening to burst out. "You didn't even tell me. You made a decision that huge and didn't think I had the right to know?"
"I was going to surprise you," he mumbled. "I thought I was finally doing something right."
"You were playing with our lives, Carter!" she shouted, slamming the glass down onto the counter. "You didn't just gamble with money, you gambled with us!"
His hands clenched into fists at his sides, but he didn't raise his voice.
He remained silent.
That somehow made it worse before he spoke.
"I was trying to make up for everything I couldn't give you. I thought if I came back successful, with something to show… maybe it would fix us."
"We didn't need fixing with money!" Elise yelled, her voice breaking. "We needed honesty. Commitment. You should've talked to me. We could've figured it out together!"
Tears spilled before she could stop them, hot and angry streaks streaming down her face. "And now you're standing here telling me it's all gone? All of it?"
He nodded slowly. "Everything."
Her knees buckled slightly, and she gripped the back of a chair for support. "Oh my God."
"I'm so sorry," he whispered but his words meant nothing to her.
Elise covered her face, a sob escaping from her lips, she tried so hard to breathe, to calm the storm building inside her. "What are we going to do now?" she asked, choking on the words.
Carter hesitated, and when he finally spoke, his voice was barely a whisper.
"I don't… I don't know."
****
The silence between them grew thick and suffocating as the days passed.
For days, they moved around like ghosts in the same space, floating in the same space in silence, walking through a life neither of them recognized anymore.
Elise barely ate. The bills piled up untouched in the mailbox. Their phones rang with calls they both ignored—banks, landlords, debt collectors.
Reality came knocking at the door but they refused to open it.
But that was until the rain came again.
At first, it was just a drizzle. Then it became a storm. And then it became the final blow.
This was on the fifth day after Carter's return, Elise woke up to water moving across the floor of their bedroom. She gasped, bolting upright.
"Carter!"
He was already awake, standing barefoot in the hallway, soaked to the knees. His face was pale.
"The pipe burst. The rain water is coming in. The basement is completely flooded and it's seeping through the walls."
She stared at him, her brain slow to process what was happening.
Their home.
Their last anchor.
It was flooding.
"No. No, no, no…" Elise rushed to the closet, grabbing what little she could, tossing clothes into a duffel bag with shaking hands. "We have to call someone. We have to stop it."
"There's no insurance," Carter said behind her. "I canceled the homeowner's policy last month to pay for part of the investment."
She stopped dead in her tracks.
"You did what?"
His silence was the answer.
Elise's chest constricted. "So we have nothing? No money. No backup. No house?"
"I'm sorry," he said again. "I thought I was investing to build us a better future."
"You sold our present!" she snapped. "You left us with nothing but scraps to deal with."
They scrambled to salvage what they could, but the damage was done. Water had soaked through the carpets, deep into the wood, and soaked everything they didn't have the strength to lift. Photos, memories, little pieces of their life—gone in an instant.
By nightfall, they were sitting in Carter's car, soaked, cold, and completely distraught.
Homeless.
She didn't know what to do now.