My Husband’s Secret Texts to His Assistant (Her Marriage in Crisis #90)

1. Cassie

— ? —

Cassie

The thing about being someone’s wife and assistant is that eventually, you stop knowing where one ends and the other begins.

I’m reviewing Charles’s calendar for the third time this morning, cross-referencing it with the catering order for Friday’s client dinner, when he walks into the kitchen and pours himself coffee without looking at me.

“Morning,” I say.

“Mm.”

That’s it. That’s what six years gets you. A sound that could mean anything or nothing at all.

I watch him scroll through his phone while I finish my notes.

He’s wearing the blue tie I picked out last week, the one that makes his eyes look less tired.

He didn’t notice when I laid it on his dresser this morning.

He never notices anymore. I could lay out a clown costume and he’d probably put it on without a second glance, too absorbed in whatever’s on his screen to register what his wife has done for him.

“Your ten o’clock got pushed to ten-thirty,” I tell him. “And the Hendersons canceled dinner, so I moved the reservation to next Thursday.”

“Fine.”

“Also, your mother called. She wants to know if we’re coming to the thing next month.”

“What thing?”

“The charity gala. The one she’s been planning for six months. The one she mentions every single time we see her.”

He finally looks up from his phone, and for a second I think he’s going to snap at me.

But then his expression shifts into something I don’t recognize, something that looks almost nervous.

Charles doesn’t do nervous. Charles does impatient, distracted, occasionally charming when clients are watching. But nervous is new.

“Actually,” he says, “I wanted to talk to you about something.”

I set down my pen. Charles never wants to talk about anything. He wants me to handle things so he doesn’t have to talk about them. In six years, I can count on one hand the number of times he’s started a serious conversation, and most of those were about money or his mother.

“Okay.”

He pulls out the chair across from me and sits, which is another red flag.

We don’t sit together at breakfast anymore.

We orbit each other, efficient and distant, like two planets that forgot they were supposed to share the same sun.

Most mornings he stands at the counter, inhales his coffee, and leaves before I’ve finished my first cup.

The fact that he’s sitting down, that he’s looking at me directly, sends a ripple of unease through my chest.

“I’ve been thinking.” He clears his throat. “The workload has been a lot lately. For both of us.”

“I’m handling it fine.”

“I know you are. You always do.” He reaches across the table, and his fingers brush mine.

The touch is so unexpected that I actually flinch.

When was the last time he reached for me on his own?

When was the last time physical contact between us wasn’t something I initiated, practically begged for?

“That’s the problem, Cass. You’re handling everything.

The office, the house, my schedule, my life. It’s too much.”

“You do so much around here,” he says, and for one stupid second my heart lifts. “I don’t know how you keep it all straight.”

“That’s the job.” I keep my voice light. “Somebody has to remember when your mother’s birthday is.”

“See, that’s exactly what I mean.” He’s already looking back at his phone. “You’re just good at the details. It’s a gift.”

A gift. Six years of holding his whole life together, and it lands like being double-jointed, a party trick I happen to have.

I wait for him to look up, to actually land on my face and see the woman who’s been running herself ragged while he coasts on family money and a name he didn’t earn. He doesn’t. He never does anymore.

“I’m hiring a second assistant,” he says.

The words land wrong, off-kilter, not quite what I expected. Not an apology. Not recognition. A solution I didn’t ask for to a problem I’m not sure I have.

“What?”

“For the office. Someone to take some of the load off you.” He squeezes my hand, and his smile is the one he used to give me when we were dating, the one that made me feel like the only woman in the world.

I haven’t seen that smile in months, and part of me wants to melt into it, wants to believe it means something.

“I want us to have more time together. Real time. Not just work stuff.”

I stare at him, trying to find the lie. But he looks earnest. He looks like he means it.

And God, I want him to mean it. I want this to be the turning point, the moment he wakes up and remembers that he married me for a reason, that we used to be happy, that somewhere beneath the routine and the distance there’s still a marriage worth saving.

“Charles, I don’t need any help with the workload. I’ve been doing this for five years.”

“I already made the decision.” His tone shifts, just slightly, carrying the edge that says this conversation is over. “She starts today.”

She starts today. I notice how casually he says “she,” not “someone,” not “a new hire,” and the specificity of it settles into my stomach like a stone.

He’s already chosen her. He’s already set this in motion without consulting me, without even mentioning it until the morning of.

How long has he been planning this? How long has he been conducting interviews and making decisions about my job while I sat next to him at dinner, oblivious?

“You already hired someone?”

“HR found her. Great references, tons of experience.” He stands, checking his watch. “You’ll train her, get her up to speed. Shouldn’t take more than a few weeks.”

“Charles, don’t you think we should have discussed this first? This affects my job directly. I’m the one who’s going to have to train her, work with her, share responsibilities with her. Don’t I get a say in who that person is?”

He didn’t ask me. He didn’t consult me, or mention that he was even thinking about this, or give me any warning at all. He just decided, and now I’m supposed to smile and train whoever this woman is while pretending I’m grateful for help I never requested.

“So she’s here to help me,” I say, testing the shape of it. “That’s what this is. Another set of hands.”

“Exactly.” Charles looks pleased I’m catching on. “Take some of the load off you. Free you up.”

“Free me up for what?”

He pauses, and for half a second I think he’ll say it, us, time together, the thing we keep losing somewhere between his schedule and mine. “For whatever you want,” he says instead, warm and vague and already halfway out of the conversation. “You’ve earned a break.”

“It’s going to be great, Cass. You’ll see.” He drops a kiss on the top of my head, quick and distracted, the way you’d pat a dog you’re fond of but too busy to really look at, and grabs his briefcase. “I’ll see you at the office.”

The front door closes behind him, and I sit alone in the kitchen, coffee going cold, trying to understand what just happened.

I want to believe him so badly it’s embarrassing, so I decide to. I decide this is him reaching out, clumsy and sideways, but reaching. It’s easier than the alternative, which is admitting I don’t know how to name what’s broken either.

Charles has never been good at talking about feelings.

He shows love through actions, through gestures, through solving problems I didn’t ask him to solve.

When we were dating, he’d surprise me with weekend trips instead of saying he missed me.

He’d buy me jewelry instead of telling me I was beautiful.

It drove me crazy at first, this inability to just say what he meant, but I learned to read his language, to translate his actions into the words he couldn’t seem to speak.

Maybe this is that. Maybe hiring an assistant is Charles-speak for “I see how hard you’re working, and I want to make it easier.”

I finish my coffee and head upstairs to get ready for work, pushing down the unease that’s settled in my chest.

It’s probably nothing.

The new assistant is waiting in the lobby when I arrive, and I see her before she sees me.

She’s young, blonde, bright-eyed, perched on one of the leather chairs like she’s posing for a magazine shoot.

Her dress is designer, quietly expensive, the sort that screams money even while pretending not to.

Her makeup is flawless, not a single line out of place, and her posture is perfect enough to suggest either finishing school or years of practice in front of a mirror.

She’s beautiful. That’s the first thing I notice, and I hate myself for noticing it, for letting it matter. Plenty of beautiful women work in offices. It doesn’t mean anything.

Her smile, when she spots me approaching, is wide and warm and just a little too eager.

“You must be Mrs. Wallace!” She springs up, hand extended. “I’m Celine. I’m so excited to be here.”

Her handshake is firm but brief, like she’s been coached on exactly how long to hold it.

Up close, I can see she’s even younger than I thought, maybe twenty-two or twenty-three.

There’s a softness to her face that I lost years ago, back when I still believed hard work would be rewarded and good men existed outside of novels.

“Cassie,” I say. “Call me Cassie.”

“Cassie.” She says my name like she’s tasting it, deciding if she likes the flavor. “Charles talks about you all the time. He says you’re the reason the whole place runs.”

Charles talks about me? To a woman he just hired?

Before she even started? When did they have time to discuss me?

The interview process, I assume, but the casual way she drops his first name, without the “Mr. Wallace” that would be appropriate for a new employee discussing her boss, makes my skin prickle.

“That’s nice of him to say.”

“Oh, he means it. He told me you’re basically irreplaceable.” She laughs, light and musical. “I have big shoes to fill.”