My Husband’s Secret Texts with His Assistant (Her Marriage in Crisis #94)

1. Skye

— ? —

Skye

I’m done waiting for my life to begin.

The dress fits so perfectly it feels like it was sewn right onto my skin, tracking every single bead and stitch and whisper of silk. After a whole year of planning, I’m just standing here in a bridal suite that honestly smells like Chanel and bad decisions.

Fifteen minutes. That’s all that separates me from becoming Skye Miller.

My mother’s been crying in the corner for the last hour. Happy tears, she keeps saying, dabbing at her mascara. Shelby’s on her knees behind me, tugging at my train for what has to be the eighth time.

“It’s crooked,” she mutters.

“It’s not crooked.”

“It’s definitely crooked. Hold still.”

I hold perfectly still, realizing I have spent my entire life waiting and planning under the foolish belief that doing everything right will make everything turn out right.

“There.” Shelby sits back on her heels, surveying her work. “Perfect. You look like a princess.”

“I feel like I’m going to throw up.”

“That’s normal. Every bride feels that way.”

But it’s not normal. Nothing about the last three days has been normal. I’ve been walking around with a secret burning a hole in my chest, counting down the minutes until I could finally tell Jaime. Finally see his face light up.

The door swings open.

A staff member stumbles in, young and flustered, clutching a phone. “Mrs. Miller left this in the groom’s suite. I mean, Mr. Miller. I mean-” Her face goes crimson. “The groom forgot it.”

I take it from her trembling hands, and a laugh bubbles up in my chest. Jaime without his phone. The man can’t survive five minutes without checking his notifications. He sleeps with it on his pillow. He brings it into the shower in a waterproof case. Once, he answered an email during sex.

“Thanks,” I say, already tucking it into the hidden pocket of my dress. “I’ll bring it to him at the altar. Give him a heart attack.”

She scurries out and the door clicks shut.

My mother blows her nose loudly. “I can’t believe my baby’s getting married. It feels like yesterday you were learning to walk.”

“Mom, please.”

“I’m just so happy for you, sweetheart. Jaime is such a wonderful man.”

I’m still smiling when the phone buzzes against my hip.

I fight the immediate, instinctive urge to look. Don’t look, Skye. It’s not your phone. It’s not your business. You’re getting married in fifteen minutes. Don’t you dare-

The screen lights up through the silk.

Leslie.

My heart stops.

It is his assistant, the woman who always wears a bright smile and short skirts while standing uncomfortably close to him at office parties, the exact person I already questioned him about twice.

Twice, and both times I ended up apologizing to HIM.

You’re imagining things, Skye.

She’s just friendly, Skye.

Why do you always do this, Skye?

Both times I walk away feeling crazy, paranoid, and insecure, convinced that something is fundamentally wrong with me for even asking the question.

I trained myself to stop seeing her. To look right through her at company events. To swallow the bile that rose every time she touched his arm or laughed at his jokes or let her hand linger on his shoulder just a beat too long.

Because seeing her made me the crazy one.

My fingers move. The message glows on the screen: This is such a sad day for both of us. You’ll be trapped in that marriage.

Everything inside me goes cold.

I open the thread.

At first, I think there’s been some mistake. The conversation is almost empty, I scroll and the scroll bar barely moves because there’s just so much NOTHING. The earliest message sent five hours ago.

Then it hits me. He deleted it.

It isn’t just a few messages but months of conversation erased down to five hours, instantly explaining all those late nights he claimed to be working, the frequent business trips, and the way he always angled his buzzing phone just slightly out of my sight.

My hands start to shake.

You can’t explain deletion. You can’t spin it, justify it, smooth it over with pretty words and practiced apologies. Deletion IS the explanation. He read her messages, and then he made damn sure I never could.

Most of the messages came from Leslie.

Leslie: She has no idea, does she? Poor thing.

Leslie: I can’t stop thinking about last night.

Leslie: She’s such a loser. You deserve better.

She called me a loser.

He chooses my wedding day to destroy me, leaving me to stand here in a million-dollar dress while a church full of guests waits for me to walk down a rose-petal aisle and I secretly carry his baby inside me.

Two replies from Jaime.

Jaime: Be early today. I want to see you. We’ll talk about what happens to you after the wedding.

Like they’ve already planned a future together, and I’m just the inconvenient obstacle standing in their way.

And one more that should’ve died with everything else.

Jaime: Don’t text me when Skye’s around.

He treats me like a security camera to step out of frame of, reducing my entire existence to an obstacle, a nuisance, and a logistical problem to be managed.

I look back at the one full year spent planning this wedding, realizing I wasted all that time picking out flowers, tasting cakes, sorting seating arrangements, and agonizing over invitation fonts.

I spent months learning to tolerate his hyper-critical mother and gave up my apartment, my independence, and my entire sense of self for nothing.

For this.

“Skye?”

Shelby’s voice comes from far away, another planet in another lifetime.

“Skye, you’re white as a ghost. What’s wrong?”

I can’t speak. My throat has sealed shut. I hold out the phone, watch her take it, watch her eyes scan the screen.

Her eyebrows draw together in confusion before horror pulls her mouth open, giving way to a murderous rage that completely transforms her face.

“That fucking bastard.”

Her voice shakes.

She pulls out her phone and starts taking pictures of Jaime’s screen.

“I’ll kill him. I’ll literally kill him. I’ll walk down that aisle and I’ll put my hands around his throat and I’ll squeeze until his eyes pop out of his-”

“I’m pregnant.”

My voice sounds entirely flat and dead as the words spill out of me.

Shelby freezes. The phone nearly slips from her fingers. “What?”

“Three days.” I hear myself speaking, but I don’t feel connected to the words.

Like I’m floating somewhere above my body, watching a stranger in a wedding dress have her entire life ripped apart.

“I found out three days ago. I was going to tell him tonight. At the reception. During our first dance.”

I had it all planned out. I’d pull him close, press my lips to his ear, whisper the secret I’d been carrying like a precious, fragile thing.

We’re having a baby. His face would light up.

He’d spin me around. We’d cry together, right there on the dance floor, while everyone watched and smiled and thought about how perfect we were.

That future turns to ash in my throat.

“Oh, honey.” Shelby’s eyes fill with tears. “Oh, God. Skye.”

She reaches for me, but I step back. If she touches me right now, I’ll shatter. I’ll break into a thousand pieces and they’ll have to sweep me up and carry me out in a dustpan.

My mother looks up from the corner, mascara-streaked face confused. “What’s going on? What’s wrong?”

“Nothing, Mom.”

“You’re crying. Why are you crying? Is it happy tears? I’m having happy tears too-”

“Mom. Please. Just... give me a minute.”

She blinks, hurt, but subsides back into her chair.

A fierce, animal instinct stirs in my chest, a three-day-old impulse that already has a single job.

Protect this.

Protect this baby from a father who doesn’t deserve to know it exists. From a future filled with lies and deleted messages and apologies I’ll be forced to make for seeing what’s right in front of my face.

The pounding on the door makes us both jump.

“Skye!” The wedding coordinator’s voice is sharp with panic. “You’re late! Everyone’s waiting!”

“What do you want to do?” Shelby whispers. “Tell me what you need. Anything. I’ll burn this church to the ground. I’ll slash his tires. I’ll post those screenshots on every social media platform known to man. Just say the word.”

I stare at the door. Beyond it, the church is full, the pews decorated with white roses. My father waits to walk me down the aisle. Jaime stands at the altar in his custom suit, probably patting his pockets, wondering where his phone went.

Wondering if he remembered to delete her messages.

I asked him about her twice.

There is no third conversation. There is no version of “let me explain” that I haven’t already lived through and lost. I gave him chances and gave him the benefit of every doubt. And while I was busy trusting him, he was busy texting her.

I look in the mirror to find my veil perfect and my makeup flawless, but my eyes are completely empty.

“Skye.” Shelby grabs my arm, fingers digging in hard enough to leave bruises. “Talk to me. What are you going to do?”

A strange calm settles over me, the quiet clarity that arrives right before everything burns and I finally stop being the woman everyone expects me to be to become the person I am actually meant to be.

“Open the door,” I say.

“What?”

“Open the door, Shelby.”

She doesn’t move. “You’re not seriously going out there. You’re not seriously going to marry him after-”

“I’m not going to marry him.”

The words taste like freedom.

“I’m going to destroy him.”

Shelby stares at me for a long moment as her expression shifts from fear to understanding, perhaps even showing admiration for the ruthless person I am becoming.

She opens the door.

The rest of the wedding attendants are waiting behind the door.

The wedding coordinator nearly falls through it, clipboard clutched to her chest like a shield.

“Finally! We’re five minutes behind schedule!

Your father is having a nervous breakdown, the string quartet has played Canon in D three times already, and Mrs. Miller senior is threatening to-”

“Tell them I’m coming.”

She blinks. “I... what?”

“Tell them the bride is coming.” I gather my train, settle my veil, watch my reflection transform into something cold and beautiful. “And make sure someone’s recording. Every angle. I want it all captured.”

The coordinator’s mouth opens and closes like a fish. “Recording? But the videographer is already-”

“Phone cameras too. Make sure everyone has their phones out. Tell them I want it to be special. Tell them I want to remember this moment forever.”

She scurries away, heels clicking frantically against the hardwood.

Shelby falls into step beside me, matching my pace as I walk toward the sanctuary. “What exactly is the plan here?”

“I don’t know yet.”

“You don’t know?”

“I’ll figure it out when I see his face.”

Her laughter rings out, sounding completely wild and slightly hysterical. “God, I love you. I’ve always loved you, but right now? Right now I would follow you into hell.”

“Good. Because that’s exactly where we’re going.”

The hallway stretches out before us, white carpet and soft lighting and the distant sound of music.

My heels click against the floor. My dress whispers with every step while four people follow me to fix my train before I enter the church.

The phone burns in my pocket like a weapon, loaded and ready.

Everyone I invited is about to witness the end of everything I thought my life would be.

And I’m not sorry, sad, or scared.

I’m just done.

I want them all to watch and record every single second while Jaime stands at that altar with his perfect smile, his deleted messages, and his hidden plans for whatever happens to me after the wedding.

He wanted a bride?

He’s about to get one.